Should you add weeds to your compost pile?

I’ve been researching online and it seems there are pros and cons to each side. Whatever we do, we would rather not spread more weeds all over with the garden by spreading around our home made finished compost.

Make sure weeds don’t sprout from your compost by drowning them first!

Yes, plants need air… even roots and seeds, so if you put all your suspect weeds, seedheads, running roots, etc, in a bucket of rainwater for several weeks, all the living vegetative material will die and start to smell… well, ‘fragrant’.

The liquid can be used as a feed, as it will contain soluble nutrients (like nettle tea, comfrey tea)or you can tip the whole lot on the heap. This is a guaranteed way of dealing with all roots, seeds, regenerative stems… everything. I’ve even done this with Japanese Knotweed, one of the most difficult to kill plants.