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Can you compost yellow flag iris?
rosiepirana
Posts: 2
Hi- have removed the equivalent of 8 full Ikea bags of yellow flag iris from a pond 1.5m x1m! I read that it is a most invasive plant- in fact in the discussions in US they seem to suggest its as bad as Himalayan Balsam! I know I have to get every little bit out and as nothing else was in the pond I am in the process of emptying it. I want to know if we can compost these 8 bags on our allotment or take them to a green waste site. I am confused as although UK sites tell me its vigourous, they say nothing about its invasive character & what to do with it once out. Thanks
0
Posts
As there's so much of it I'd consider taking it to the green waste dump as they heat up more than a domestic compost heap and will kill it. If not, then spread it out to dry and die before you compost it so that none of the roots survive the process and live on to invade again.
It is dreadful stuff. We were given a piece for our newly excavated unlined pond some years ago and it terra-formed it. We pulled it all up, along with bulrushes, one year but it came back with a vengeance.
This new garden has a similar pond invaded by bulrushes sow e'll be looking for a man with an excavator on his bulldozer and hoping there aren't flag iris too.
different plants become invasive in different countries, best to do your research for the country you are in.. This one is a good spreader but nothing compared to some. I put bits on the compost heap and they're fine. But as you have a huge amount you will need an even huger amount of other stuff to mix with and bury them. If you haven't got that I'd do as Obelixx suggests and get it off the site
In the sticks near Peterborough
I don't know much about this plant but I would guess if you chopped up just the leaves for the compost heap and disposed of any roots/rhizomes on a bonfire that might work?
I am waging war on this myself. It is beautiful on the edge of my large pond and can fight it out with the reed mace in my wilderness area but is going from other places. I cut off the leaves as suggested above and then put the rhizomes in thick garden waste bags.
They do rot down, but take ages. Mine is a large garden and I have room to store the bags. Best of all is a black silage bag. It is absolutely cavernous and I am using it for all the things like nettle, gound elder and iris, that I do not want to take over again. It will make good compost eventually and it will give me some satisfaction to get my own back on the baddies by feeding them to the goodies
Having cut off the rhyzomes I also chop up the leaves to speed things up .I might not last out 8 bags in my dedication to compost.....
Should be fine in the regular compost heap. It only grows vigorously in suitably wet conditions - even if the odd bit of rhizome did survive composting it would be easy to spot and remove when you use the compost. Not a pernicious weed like ground elder, horsetail etc.
Thanks everyone- will donate my enormous collection of flag iris to the local council so it will end up as compost somewhere!