[gathsman]

Hello.

My allotment has banned the use of Bonfires, as i'm new to allotmenteering I never really inderstood the implications of this, but now the better weather has arrived I am now beginning to find out!

My question is what should I do with the copious amounts of weeds I am now digging up?  Currently I just have them piling up next to my shed as I'm unable to bring them home to bin etc and there is nowhere to store them on my allotment.

I am currently digging up all manner of weeds such as dandelions, grasses prickly things.

Cheers

[HilaryG]

Hi there,
Most weeds can go on the compost heap. The heat generated in a reasonable sized heap should kill off most weeds. I have tried putting the worst offenders (dandelions, couch grass, dock, etc.) in a large bucket of water in the hope of drowning them after a few weeks. They go pretty soggy and then I put them on the compost with everything else.   

[bazh]

The annual weeds should be composted or just dug in if your digging the ground over, unless you want to bag and take away the perennials you can drown them or dry them out if we ever see the sun for more than an hour at a time but drying out is risky unless we have a hot dry week (yeah right!)

I've just composted 2 blue barrels worth of bindweed roots that have been drowning for 3 months beware I nearly puked the smell was absolutely horrendous 

[solway cropper]

Weeds make a very good liquid feed but some, like couch grass need a few months of soaking as they seem almost indestructible. Never waste anything that you can find a use for.

Roasted and ground dandelion roots are supposed to make a good coffee substitute but when I tried it the resulting liquid was revolting!!

[Christo]

At the moment I am just storing all the weeds in rubble bags. It's a new plot, so I'm digging out quite a few. As long as the bags are well sealed up they seem to decompose quite well. I suspect the really pernicious ones will remain untroubled though. I've always taken the bags to the council tip, but after reading posts here about how council compost is made, I should probably think of a better way of dealing with the nasties! 

[catweazle]

have they banned all fires or just bonfires?

is a 45 gal drum fire aceptable?

[bazh]

At the moment I am just storing all the weeds in rubble bags. It's a new plot, so I'm digging out quite a few. As long as the bags are well sealed up they seem to decompose quite well. I suspect the really pernicious ones will remain untroubled though. I've always taken the bags to the council tip, but after reading posts here about how council compost is made, I should probably think of a better way of dealing with the nasties! 

If there in rubble bags and sealed and you have room for them (in full sun preferably) just leave them be and add to the compost heap in the autumn.

[angelavdavis]

Dig em up, shake off the soil and drown 'em in a bucket of water, weighed down with an old brick.

After a week, find a"lid" of some sort to cover (bit of old ply) because by then it will smell evil! 

But nevertheless, put a peg on your nose and add a few small cupfuls into a watering can full of water before you leave the plot in the evening.

Luckily, your plants will love you for it, your plot neighbours won't if you water earlier in the day and it saves the blushes if you water and scarper!!

[solway cropper]

Luckily, your plants will love you for it, your plot neighbours won't if you water earlier in the day and it saves the blushes if you water and scarper!!

I live in a rural village so I can blame the farmers for spreading stuff on the fields when I apply my evil-smelling concoctions 

[Swing Swang]

Some weeds are edible

[goodtogrow]

When I cleared my plot I left everything I'd forked out upside down on the soil in a single layer.
It acted as a thick mulch to keep the next lot of seedling weeds down until I needed to plant.

Then they were moved to mulch the potatoes and anywhere else they could be used as a thick mulch, always leaving them upside down.

By the end of summer they had withered and died and all ended up on the compost heap.

As long as they're not left too long in one place they don't get chance to re-root.  But they do get chance to try, which exhausts them, and uses up their reserves of energy stored in their roots, which is why perennial weeds are such a  pain in the first place!

[lucywil]

have they banned all fires or just bonfires?

is a 45 gal drum fire aceptable?

I tried that one, but unfortunately the definition of a bonfire is any fire in the open air, whether it's on the open ground or in a drum/incinerator.

We take most of ours home and put them in the chicken run, they have great fun scratching through them eating the bugs, then they eat the weeds. Any big woody stuff we put in our brown bin that the council empty fortnightly

[waxwing]

All my die hard weeds get put in a bucket, soaked and drowned for 3 weeks. Then put through a riddle and all clean dying weeds are put in my black bin with tight lid.
The heat from decay and the sun kills the weeds and the mush is put on my  compost heap.

I must be the only one on the allotment who does this, because the waste green tip area is full of the nasty weeds, plus totaly perfect compostable material that people have dumped. Some people are wasteful 

[Yorkie]

I have never known a domestic compost bin to get hot enough to decompose perennial weeds reliably if you put the weeds in fresh, so to speak.  (No experience of drowning first).

However, council compost heaps will indeed get hot enough to kill them off - sheer volume and size will ensure that.

[waxwing]

I think the heat from the sun on the black bin and lack of light turn it into mush after about 6 months, not compost. It is then added to compost heap, never had an issue of weeds coming back. Its a bit long winded  but I hate waste.