There you are, in your garden or flower bed, on your knees, pulling out those stupid weeds creating little piles throughout. You’re thinking, “what am I going to do with these things?” Wait a minute, you think, “can I compost weeds?” The answer is yes, with one concern.
Considering if You Should Compost Weeds
Weeds themselves are no problem to compost. After all, they are organic matter, and like grass clippings and other plant material, they added much-needed brown material to the compost system. That’s easy.
The risk with adding weeds to your compost is that you may add seeds and roots to your compost. So, the weeds you take out of your garden are then put in the compost; they germinate and are added back to the garden. If the same weed grows back, was it ever removed?
How to Compost Weeds
The good news is that most well-tended compost systems generate a lot of heat. That heat should kill off the weeds and seeds. So, you want to take steps to keep your system running well. This will also help with composting almost anything.
Here are some steps to keeping your composting system running at the right temperature:
- Frequently turn over the system – stirring it up, keeping it aerated (adding oxygen)
- Make Sure to Give Your Compost Pile Time to Warm Up – Before adding more plants to a system with plants in it, consider creating a new pile.
- Check your compost system with a compost thermometer. It should run about 145 Fahrenheit (about 63 degrees C). This is the best way to ensure it’s in the right temperature zone.
How to Compost Weeds without Heating Up Your Composting System
Sometimes with home systems, it can be tough to get them to heat up enough. There is another way that you can compost your weeds. This way is very safe, requires a bit more work, and ensures that your weeds will not grow back (at least not these weeds, we aren’t promising no weeds will grow back.)
Here is how you compost weeds without worrying about keeping your compost warm enough:
- Put the weeds into a bucket of water
- Fill the bucket with water. Make sure to weigh down the weeds with a stone or brick. You want to keep the roots below the water.
- Cover the bucket. You want to keep light out, make sure the water doesn’t evaporate, and prevent mosquitos from breeding in it. This also prevents rain from overfilling it.
- Leave it for a month (or more if you like.) Your weeds should be good and drowned by this point.
- Use the water in your garden. It makes a great fertilizer.
- Add the weeds to your compost. It can be safely composted now.
Doing these things should prevent weeds from spreading back into your garden or lawn and add valuable carbon to your compost pile.
You can compost weeds, but there are a few things to consider. You don’t want to add those weeds back into your garden. A hot composting system isn’t a problem. Most of us don’t have that at home, so we need to do a little bit more work to kill off the weeds first.