Gardening and Using Weeds in Composting
By Heather Roberts
Gardening is one of those things that requires a lot of patience and effort, but it all ends up being worth it in the end. A well-kept garden will bring aesthetic or practical joy to any gardener who spent enough time doing garden maintenance. You just need to find the time, the desire, and the strength, and then the whole process will seem effortless and actually enjoyable because you will be thinking of the end result and not the tedious work that leads there.
But there is one part or gardening which leaves you both exhausted and wondering how to proceed. One of garden clearance's more wearisome tasks is weed control. You always have to inspect the garden and every single plant, find those springing weeds and remove them before they can do any harm. And then what? Actually, this is exactly the bigger question. What to do with those weeds? Do you take them to the nearest waste bin, or do you try and find them a new, more helpful role. Something like composting.
Yes, being composted is the only useful role weed can have, but it is also a double-edged sword. Do it wrong, and if you spread the weed compost around the garden, you will only fill it with weed seeds, and the newly grown weeds will soon appear to damage the plants, most probably irreparably. Weed composting is almost as hard as the actual gardening as it also requires a lot of dedication and effort. But it also does pay off in the end - you get a nice compost to feed to your plants and have a better garden
So what do you do when you compost weed? First thing you need to do is learn about hot composting. This is the act of regularly turning over the compost pile so that it heats up on all sides, thus killing all the weed seeds and other harmful elements. Doing this will prevent more weeds to grow out once you spread the pile around the garden. You can do it with the more passive cold composting too, but then you would have to be very careful about what kind of weeds you are throwing into the pile. You should, for instance, absolutely avoid weeds that have went to seeding. This will only reset all your hard work and now you have to pull out the weeds all over again. There are also different types of weeds which you should be aware of. Buttercups, quackgrass, and crabgrass, for instance, will absolutely devastate any garden you have returned them to. Mint, raspberry canes, witchgrass, and dock are also destructive as they will cling to roots and if you start pulling them out, you will soon find out that you are pulling out your own garden
So think hard when composting weeds. You do have to learn a lot and be careful, but once you get used to the process, you won't have to throw out useful grass anymore and you can maintain a full practical lifecycle while gardening, assuring that no object is left unused. Read more at: gardenergardening.co.uk.
Author Bio:
Heather Roberts is a freelance guest blogger from London, UK. She has many published articles on various topics such as gardening, landscaping and home maintenance etc. She loves to spend her time with family and friends and she also tries to live an eco-friendly life.