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Mon, Mar 21, 11 at 9:04
| Are there certain plants/weeds that you choose not to compost? Personally I throw my wild onions in the trash. Those little bulbs are tough and I don't want to take a chance and risk mixing them back into my garden. I often also trash my peony foliage at the end of the season because it usually has really bad mildew by then. What else should be avoided? Could black walnut leaves pose a problem?
- Steve |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by darth_weeder z7 NY (My Page) on Mon, Mar 21, 11 at 10:40
| I'm with you on the wild onions/ garlic/whatever they are they are impossble to get rid of/kill or are they? otherwise I compost everything else except maybe poison ivy |
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| I don't put ivy in my compost--I don't want that getting a toehold anywhere. Agree on wild onion, or for that matter most invasives. My compost gets hot, but I don't want to risk whether it gets hot enough. |
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| One ornamental grass that I have found at the bottom of a finished pile after 3 or 4 years is hardy pampas grass, Erianthus ravanae. The foliage biodegraded but not the canes...otherwise, just about everything else goes in. hortster |
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| Wild garlic-Allium vineale & I crush the bulbs when I dig them up, never live again. They go straight to HELL. Southern Dew berry-Rubus trivial, submerge in water until they rot. Bahia grass- dig it up & let it dry in the sun until crispy, then burn it. Yes I hate these weeds, I have family who tried to kill them with round up. It did not work. So I make sure they are all dead. |
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- Posted by steve22802 7a VA (My Page) on Mon, Mar 21, 11 at 21:25
| The worst thing with those wild onions is when they get in your lawn or come up in the center of a clumping perennial. Grrrrr! :( A friend of mine went out of town for several weeks last summer and left his lawn unmowed at exactly the wrong time. The wild onions went to seed and now they are absolutely EVERYWHERE in his lawn!!! :( Arrrgh what a mess! |
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| I would avoid Poison Ivy, Oak, and Sumac (if I had them) in the compost but everything else goes in. Many people will not compost Black Walnut leaves but will compost other Walnuts forgetting that all Walnuts (Juglan species) have that growth suppressing property. |
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| Kitchen scraps...milk products, tomatoes, potatoes...but most everything else goes in. Fish carcasses I'm especially fond of adding and since I fish a lot and catch my quota, they make a great addition. I don't have many weeds and those I do get rid of I don't bother tossing in or out, if they make it in there, so be it, otherwise they go with the trash. |
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- Posted by steve22802 7a VA (My Page) on Tue, Mar 22, 11 at 15:04
| Goren, you don't compost tomatoes? That seems really unusual, what's the rational for that? |
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| AYE! I do compost my tomatoes and OMG the seeds germinate EVERYWHERE that I spread the compost! I can see why! My pile usually gets pretty darn hot too! I just pull up the sprouts tho and leave them there, its not a really big deal. |
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| Tomato seeds can go through 3-stage sewage treatment and germinate in the sludge. |
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| Steve. Not Tomatoes because of Tobacco Mosaic Virus. One of the few diseases that can survive the heat of a compost pile. |
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| You are more likely to get Tobacco Mosaic Virus from tobacco products than form tomatoes although any of the nightshade family can get that disease.I have composted tomatoes, fruits and plants, for yearws with no sign of TMV. |
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| Kim is right that the chance is not great, but it is one I don't take. All Solanaceae and Nicotiana are possible sources for this Virus. |
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| I just turned my bigger compost yesterday and found perfect parsnips deeply burried. These were the small ones, pencil size, that I had discarded in the fall. My heap never did get up to the steam stage, I suppose that after throwing in the leafs and the last lawn clippings I had added too much garden soil to the layers. I do have DOZENS of worms in each forkfull. I guess that I Vermicultured rather than composted. Is that bagged steer manure that I added not organic enough to get the pile,4X4x4', working? |
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| They say the tomato that T-Rex ate before he dined on a herbivore still has its seeds floating around. Considering the stuff that I've seen tomatoes growing out of, I believe it! |
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| Even when I'm pretty sure I'll have a hot compost pile, I avoid putting bindweed in. I'm not sure if it needs part of a root to start a plant or if it will start from the vine or leaves and I'm not willing to chance it. |
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- Posted by steve22802 7a VA (My Page) on Thu, Mar 24, 11 at 16:04
| Ewwww yeah, bindweed, ugggh! I'll be throwing that in the trash too! Nasty stuff! :( |
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- Posted by lazygardens PhxAZ%3A Sunset 13 (My Page) on Thu, Mar 24, 11 at 18:41
| I don't compost cactus. The pads decompose quickly, leaving the needles that last for years. |
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| Bindweed -- I'll put in but only after I've let the stuff get seriously dried out. Like in, petrified. Chickweed and oxalis goes in but must be dried out first. I generally toss wild onion bulbs, but sometimes I'll let those dry out and then compost. I've been pulling Canada thistle from the vegetable bed (yes, the soil is so loose that I can hand-pull dandelions and thistles) and adding it to the pile, too, but I'm very careful to set the stuff on top so that the roots dry out. What exactly is the deal with poison ivy/oak/sumac? I don't compost it, but only because I've read that one "shouldn't" do it. If I were to add it to the pile, what would happen? |
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| OK, here's one that NEVER goes in, never ever, under no conditions and without exception....water hemlock. It grows on the property outside our deer fence (obviously, the perennial beds and vegetable garden are inside), and I'm so super-cautious about it that I have separate compost piles outside the fence. Stuff I've pulled outside the fenced area, even if obviously safe (fern bracken, for example) NEVER goes into the piles inside the fence. That part undoubtedly seems like overkill, but it simplifies matters -- I don't want to have to try to remember (and conceivably misremember) whether this bucket contains fern bracken and asters while that one contains water hemlock. This is not something I want to make any mistakes about! Those outside piles are used only in beds outside the fence, too. No way, no how do I want even a minute piece of that stuff to find its way into the vegetable garden. The thought of even a nano-molecule of root there gives me the willies. |
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| It is not sumac, it is one kind of sumac, that is poisonous, along with 2 kinds of poison oak & 2 kinds of poison ivy. All 5 of these plants are in the Cashew Family & the whole plant is poisonous. As any Boy/Girl scout should be able to tell you. The Other kinds of sumac seeds are food for wild birds, a lemonade & citrus-substitute. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Good & bad Sumac
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| jolj, are you responding to my question? I am quite aware of what poison oak/ivy/sumac are. I asked about their effects once composted. |
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- Posted by borderbarb (My Page) on Sat, Mar 26, 11 at 16:23
| Re: why not compost PI/S .... because of severe exposure in my childhood, I am sooooo allergic to those plants. My last bout was from handling an old pair of my son's levis 3 years after he left them at my house...and by "handle", I mean pick them up and toss them in the trash. So, can't speak for the effect of composting on plant allergens, but air-drying in a garden shed for 3 years didn't kill poison ivy 'stuff'. |
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| So are you saying that even when composted, the oils remain or may remain? That's what I wanted to know, borderbarb. Thanks! |
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- Posted by borderbarb San Diego (My Page) on Sun, Mar 27, 11 at 13:20
| Well, for me, it's 'better safe than ITCHY'. "For sensitive/sensitized people" seems to be the controlling factor. Found a pretty interesting article ... with lots of pro/con. ....SNIP...One of the more interesting references was a paper from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology Volume 4 (1941) by B. Shelmire. Shelmire ponded, dried, crushed, washed, drowned and "roofed" pieces of the plant and still found it a potent source of urushiol even after a year and a half (to sensitive individuals). ....SNIP....Intuitively, some poison ivy experts and composting practitioners guess that the poison ivy toxin decomposes during composting but there are plenty of "ifs" and "maybes" in their statements. Outside of the compost pile, there is ample evidence that the poison ivy toxin can persist and remain potent for years. Unfortunately, there isn�t a clear cut answer about the fate of poison ivy during composting. [barb: in other words, expert/experimental advice is YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN] ....SNIP.... The plant is most potent in the spring and early summer when the sap is rising and the urushiol content is high. ....SNIP..... Still, there are other indications that urushiol decomposes naturally. First, we are not overrun with cases of poison ivy despite the persistence of the toxin and ubiquity of the plants. Secondly, according to Susan Carol Hauser, author of Nature�s Revenge(1), leaves that naturally fall off the plant do not contain urushiol. Furthermore, leaves do gradually lose potency over time. Finally, there is anecdotal testimony. For instance, commenting to the U.S. Composting Council Internet listserv, the manager of a large yard trimmings facility mentioned that users of raw shredded yard trimmings mulch have reported developing the poison ivy rash while no users of the composted product have ...SNIP..... As a side note, given the uncertainties, it is wise to keep poison ivy vegetation out of the backyard compost pile. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Poison Ivy composting
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Wed, May 25, 11 at 11:31
| bindweed/buckwheat poison ivy !!!!!!!! dandelion heads or anything I let go to seed THORNS: berry vines, roses, smilax smilax tubers Aegopodium podagaria (bishop weed) in general. But once I dug up enough at my mom's house to fill 2 big trash bags. So I just left those bags alone until they turned into soup, which I spread (dripped) sparingly all over the ground around the flowers. Stunk for a few hours until it all dried up. Probably would have been best added to a compost pile but she refuses to have one. I would do this again with a large quantity of any of the above except PI & thorny things. |
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- Posted by TheMasterGardener1 none (My Page) on Wed, May 25, 11 at 21:25
| If it is a "hot" compost pile then compost anything. If it is "cold" then be selective. No weeds,ect.... |
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| Oops! I wish this thread had been started a couple of weeks earlier. I have buried a few wheelbarrows full of tomato prunings in my compost heap over the last two weeks and there were lots of tomatoes on them. There must be thousands and thousands of tomato seeds in my compost pile. |
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| I have actually have been throwing poison ivy into the compost heap--half from a morbid curiosity to see if the urisiol would break down for me. It's certainly a much better idea than burning--a dried out woody hunk of it got thrown onto the burn pile by an unwitting individual last year and I got into the smoke. I ended up on steroids to control the reactions. Will let you know how the composting turns out--I'm fairly confident that it'll compost just as nice as everything else and be neutralized in the process. I'm not putting any woody chunks from the tree-climbing variety in there however--just the young green stuff that won't take long to decompose. |
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| Well, that should be an interesting experiment. Let us know what happens. I've recently read that one should not compost garlic mustard seed pods. Possibly the flowers, too, although I don't recall whether they were mentioned or not. The article's point was that there are enough energy reserves in the plant to enable the seeds to develop -- and that there are almost no compost piles that can get hot enough to kill them off. |
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