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weedy compost

B3B3 Posts: 27,477

My compost is extremely weedy. I know what I did wrong, but is there anything I can do about it. I don't want to use weedkiller. Would it help if I buried it under a layer of topsoil? I have bags of stuff that's been put through the shredder but there's a lot of longish strawy bits in it from pruning shrubs so I was going to put them on the compost heap to break down some more. Would they be any use as a mulch instead?

In London. Keen but lazy.

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  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117

    If the compost's weedy it's probably just not been hot enough. I'd add the shreddings to the compost heap too and let them break down. Your compost also needs to be damp so it may have dried out too much and therefore not have got going as well as it should.  

    I'd only tend to use woody shreddings as mulch, but others may feel differently. It depends where you're using them too - they may not look very pretty, so it's down to aesthetics more than anything. image

    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,477

    Thanks fairy. The compost heap is quite old and rather large. We have removed the dry stuff from the top so that we could get at the rotted stuff. It's soft,damp and wormy. The idea was to put it in an accessible heap elsewhere and put the unrotted stuff back to compost down.

    I was wondering if there was a way to make the rotted stuff usable. I had spread some of it on the garden and within less than a fortnight, it was covered in seedlings - mostly euphorbia,nigella and herb Robert

    In London. Keen but lazy.
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