Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
(swroot) writes:
| Nick Maclaren wrote:
|
| Very, very few weeds will survive in a compost heap, though a fair
| number will survive at the edges, and many of the tougher ripe seeds
| will still be viable after composting. I compost lots of ground elder
| and both kinds of bindweed, and they all just vanish.
|
| I don't yet trust my composting skills :-)
| Aren't you supposed to eat the Ground Elder?
You can.
Have you tried it? If so, what does it taste like (*don't* tell me
'chicken')...
| If I can't do that, or it's something with seeds, then the weeds are
| stored in a lidded bin/in the garage until I remember I'll be passing
| the tip, at which point I add them to the 'green waste' compacter. In
| this county green waste is either roughly composted, then spread on
| fields farmed using glyphosate (they don't have to worry about problem
| weeds) or processed using anaerobic digestion.
|
| You can do that yourself, very easily, though the smell isn't attar
| of roses :-)
|
| Do tell... I thought it's very difficult to maintain the correct
| bacterial fauna, conditions, etc?
Don't believe a word of it! It is dead easy. Composting is the
most natural thing you do in gardening, and pretty well all ways
of doing it are idiot resistant (nothing is foolproof, not even
falling off a ladder). Wormeries are the trickiest methods.
Speaking of compost, I spent a half hour on Sunday emptying one of my
Daleks with a fork, mixing the compostables and adding lime and stuff,
then refilling it. And this morning the compost is composting, too hot
to touch! Brilliant!
The problem with anaerobic digestion is (a) getting it to work fast
and (b) getting it not to smell. If you are just interested in
using it to kill weeds and start them rotting, then just put the
weeds in a large bucket, butt or plastic bag, and keep them wet.
Nature will do the rest. Your family or neighbours may work you
over when the smell reaches them, but that is not a problem with
the effectiveness of the process!
Ah. I was expecting complicated instructions regarding pH maintenance
and stuff... I can rot weeds in a bucket, no problem :-)
regards
sarah
--
"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view,
is silence about truth." Aldous Huxley