Does a compost pile destroy weed seeds? Or extra particularly, does YOUR compost pile destroy weed seeds?
We’re often assured by composting specialists that sizzling composting destroys seeds … but I’ve some pumpkins that beg to vary.
These pumpkins grew as volunteers from a compost pile a couple of years in the past. Granted, it wasn’t a often turned compost pile, which means they in all probability missed the most well liked a part of the heap, however what number of of you flip your compost often? And I’m going to guess that you simply nonetheless had little tomatoes or weeds pop up in it. Come on, admit it!
My guess is ALL of you.
Right here’s an instance of “sizzling composting kills weed seeds” recommendation from Aggie Horticulture:
“The composting course of additionally naturally kills weed seeds. Correctly managed, a compost pile ought to simply attain 140°F, which breaks down all natural matter, together with weed seeds.”
They acknowledge the problem, although, as the following line reads:
“The key phrase is correctly.”
My guess is that few gardeners attain that lofty, “correct” standing.
Why Our Yard Compost Pile Doesn’t Kill Weed Seeds
A typical yard compost pile isn’t insulated or turned typically sufficient to keep up warmth. These viable seeds within the compost don’t get rotated by way of the new heart of the pile.
Sure, the warmth generated by thermophilic micro organism (an organism dwelling at sizzling temperatures) is excessive sufficient to destroy weed seeds, however getting each little bit of your compostable supplies sizzling sufficient to kill the seeds takes excellent compost administration.
My outdated compost pile didn’t do it. It was constructed from reclaimed panorama logs with too many gaps to get all the pieces sizzling. Plus, turning it was a ache.
I think about in the event you owned a cement truck and packed the barrel of it with a correct mixture of carboniferous and nitrogenous supplies. Then you definately rotated it daily or so, and maybe insulated the within with foam. You can get that compost to warmth up completely.
I’m joking. A bit.
My composting strategies have gone from difficult to easy through the years. I’ve realized creating excellent compost doesn’t actually matter.
Nature doesn’t create completely sifted, completely rotted, brown humus. No! She throws logs and leaves on the bottom. There’s all the time some completed materials and a few contemporary materials, fungi consuming at this, and a few insect boring away at that.
However Let Me Again Up. What Prompted As we speak’s Submit?
This Viewer Requested a Query
There was a remark that prompted at the moment’s nice massive submit on weed seeds in a compost pile. 4 phrases that led to 1,145 phrases (give or take):
Martha requested this query on this anaerobic compost tea video I posted:
My reply was:
“Good query. I attempt to keep away from throwing vegetation with mature seeds into the tea. They by no means appear to get fully die in a sizzling compost pile, both. Although we hear on a regular basis that “sizzling composting kills weed seeds!” It’s in all probability true for those in the course of the pile, however I’m all the time getting volunteer tomatoes, wheat from straw, weeds, and pumpkins popping up even from a sizzling compost pile. My guess is that this tea technique will rot down a lot of the seeds, if it sits lengthy sufficient … however not all of them.”
It takes a number of religion in your compost to intentionally throw in weedy supplies, regardless of the way you’re composting.
If in case you have spiny pigweed going to seed in your meals forest, do you actually suppose you’ll be capable of throw that in your compost bin and use the ensuing compost in your spring gardens with out spiny pigweed popping up?
Do you need to take that danger?
I Hear You, “However I Compost the Proper Means!”
That’s high quality—I admire the “thermometer and sifter” brigade.
To these about to compost, I salute you!
I’m completely certain that I might destroy weed seeds by sizzling composting if I assumed it out correctly. Nevertheless, my curiosity is extra in gardening than within the processes that lead as much as it. Making a “excellent” trying compost pile, or compost for that matter, isn’t as vital to me as rising corn, pumpkins, beans, yams, and fruit bushes. I additionally don’t like spending cash to make excellent methods.
Should you get pleasure from it, that’s incredible. I really like the scent, look and style (effectively, perhaps not style) of completed compost. I made some nice-looking stuff myself this 12 months and simply sifted it the opposite day.
I made that compost with virtually no work, although. No thermometers, no turning, no measuring ratios of carbon/nitrogen to get that 25/1 combine. No, I simply threw all of it on the bottom in considered one of my backyard beds.
And—oh YES—LOTS of seeds got here up in it! Sufficient to start out my new fruit tree nursery.
I view this as a function, not a bug. Typically I simply let compost piles flip into backyard beds since there are such a lot of volunteer edibles developing.
However What About Killing Weed Seeds???
Proper—that’s what you all need to know, proper? How CAN you compost these pesky weedy vegetation?
My favourite technique is to maintain them out of the compost pile and gardens altogether.
In my former meals forest, I might chop down weeds and throw them on the bottom round my fruit bushes and different shrubs. In the event that they self-seeded and got here again, I’d chop them down once more.
Not like delicate annual backyard vegetation reminiscent of lettuce and cabbage, bushes and shrubs don’t should be completely weeded in an effort to produce. I simply knocked down the weeds repeatedly. Each time I did, guess what?
These fallen weeds rotted into humus.
Nature does this on a regular basis.
The winter freezes come once-a-year and kill all of the weeds. They fall to the bottom and decay into the soil, which improves it.
If you wish to use weeds to feed your gardens, you’ll have a lot better luck in a no-till system the place you throw a pile of seedy weeds on the bottom. Then, cowl them up with mulch … after which, DON’T TILL!
Should you until, you’ll carry these seeds as much as the sunshine and heat. They’ll go loopy in your eggplants. Nevertheless, beneath a layer of mulch, they’ll ultimately rot away safely.
That’s my two cents on composting and destroying weed seeds. Sure, a compost pile can destroy weed seeds … BUT … and it’s an enormous however … most of us aren’t doing it “correctly.”
Don’t belief an excessive amount of within the magic of compost to pile-drive your pesky pigweed issues.
Personally, I favor chilly composting anyhow! I consider it retains extra of the great things within the pile as a substitute of steaming it away into the air. Nature virtually all the time chilly composts! Whereas that course of takes longer, I feel it’s a less complicated and gentler technique. I wrote a complete guide on composting (Compost All the pieces: The Good Information to Excessive Composting) and lots of the strategies in that guide are chilly compost approaches.
You may also like these composting articles from David the Good:
Construct a Tremendous Easy Compost Pile From Native Supplies
Again to Eden Hen Run Composting: Straightforward and Productive!
So, inform us … have you had success hot-composting seedy weeds? The feedback under are ready for yours!
(This submit was initially printed on July 31, 2017.)
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