Home-made compost
bobsparkes
Posts: 12
I have a problem with my home-made compost. Every time I ask about it, I get the same advice: mix weed-pickings, spent flower plants, grass-cuttings, etc. with shredded paper and cardboard in a big pile and leave it to heat up to kill off any pathogens and seeds. I’ve been doing this for several years and always with the same results – the resulting compost produces so many weeds either for mulching or as seed compost that I can’t use it. My heap is surely big enough – about 100 cubic feet – although I have to admit that it doesn’t get regularly turned over as advised. Is this the problem?
One reason for my failure may be because I throw in weed roots as well and this includes a fair amount of soil. Also, if I am disposing of a pot plant, I normally empty the whole contents of the pot into the compost heap, soil and all. Does the soil stop the heap from heating up? Another theory I have that the weather in the Scottish Central belt is too cold so the heap never gets hot enough. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Because of the weeds my compost produces, I bought a soil sterilizer a few years ago and now spend time in the winter sterilizing my compost (by raising its temperature to 180F for about half-an-hour), This certainly kills the weed seeds, but the resulting compost doesn’t work as well as commercially bought {peat-free!) compost, I still need to add inorganic fertilizer. My query here is whether the sterilizer also kills off the beneficial microbes. Any ideas?
Posts
My compost looks great, but a few weeks after spreading it there are weeds everywhere.
So as @Inglezinho says above - don't include any weeds - it's the only way to be sure.
If you're prepared to turn the heap every few weeks then weed seeds will mostly be killed. I don't have that level of dedication, so I leave the weeds out
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
I know plenty of people who do add weeds to their compost heap. I dont, for the reason you are explaining. I never have added weeds to it. There are still plenty of other ingredients that can be added to get a decent pile and get plenty of compost at the end.
My thoughts on it are, I spend a lot of my gardening time trying to control the weeds (i have extra strength weeds in my garden). I dont want to do anything to ruin my efforts.
I've never had a problem with mine.
Thank you all for your helpful comments, although I doubt if I can follow them all, particularly “regular turning”.
I agree with Hostafan1 and I certainly don’t put perennial weeds into my compost heap - they go into Stirling Council’s garden waste bin. I'm happy to do this because I know that their method of composting works better than mine (I’ve seen their compost heaps – they’re 20 feet high!). However, Hostafan’s claim to have no problems maybe stems from the superior temperatures in the South of England (at the moment the temperature in my unheated greenhouse plummets to 20F at night!). I also envy Posy, with her belief in hoeing, this just doesn’t work up here, given our persistent rain.
Pete8 and Inglezinho advise against putting weeds into the heap, however, although I wasn’t thinking about perennial weeds, only the annual ones (Hairy Bittercress is my real enemy), I'll try StephenTame’s suggestion of getting the weeds to rot before adding them to the heap.
Thrxvs and others tell me not to add the soil and this too is something I’ll keep somewhere else in future. I’ll also have a look at the Charles Dowding videos and try to get a better “mix” of the ingredients.
So thank you, all. I’ll maybe come back next year and tell you how I get on.
Bob