Composting Weeds
Many people worry about adding weeds to their compost heap, but with a bit of care, most weeds can be composted. The main thing to be aware of is that, in most compost heaps, the temperatures are not high enough for long enough to kill off weed seeds and roots. This means you could potentially be spreading weeds back around your plot when you use your compost.
So here are a few general tips to help you avoid this.
1. annual seeds (e.g. chickweed, shepherd's purse, spurge, cleavers, groundsel, hairy bittercress). Try to deal with these before the flowers progress to seed heads. Just pull them up whole and add directly to your heap. 2. Perennial weeds (e.g. nettles, dandelions). Add the leaves to your compost heap, but take care not to add seed heads. Do not add the roots directly to your heap 3. Pernicious weeds (e.g. couch grass, bindweed, ground elder, horsetail). Best to keep these out of your compost heap entirely
Tomorrow's Composting Tip tomorrow will give suggestions for dealing with those bits of weeds that can't go directly on to your heap.