If you read some of the old gardening books the growers then often used their own 'compost' for seed sowing (plus the soil from mole hills). I often wonder how they went on with weed seed germination. Trying to explain the difference between compost heap material and sterile seed sowing material is as Dove says one of those never ending head banging gardening advice problems. It comes up almost as often as identifying Thorn Apple or Shoo fly plants.
The chaps that wrote the old gardening books were very often head gardeners on big estates ... they had huge compost areas, 'fuelled' by plenty of manure from the stables ... they were able to get these big compost heaps to very high temperatures.
A friend who was Head Gardener at an estate years ago said that the way she was taught was to put manure and garden compost into hot bed for growing melons ... any residual weed seeds in the compost would germinate and be weeded out before the melons were planted ... the compost and manure mix left after the melons were over was saved to mix with loam from molehills to use for seed compost the following year.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
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A friend who was Head Gardener at an estate years ago said that the way she was taught was to put manure and garden compost into hot bed for growing melons ... any residual weed seeds in the compost would germinate and be weeded out before the melons were planted ... the compost and manure mix left after the melons were over was saved to mix with loam from molehills to use for seed compost the following year.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.