Composting weeds

Greenbird

First time composting. Trying to gauge the general consensus on composing weeds as advice seems to vary.

Do you compost weeds?

In particular:

Nettle 
Bramble 
Chickweed
Smartweed
Dock

Those seem to be the regulars in my garden. I've bagged them all up, hoping to take them down the allotment with the rest of my green and browns.

Hostafan1

I'd compost all of those, ( maybe not the dock ) just keep an eye when you're coming to use the rotted stuff that nothing still looks alive.
If it does, chuck it back in to start again

Nanny Beach

Not brambles,they are aPITA coming over from next door huge b******s,thick stems. They go through the shredder and in the council garden bin.

Dovefromabove

I would compost young nettles that haven’t developed seeds …roots removed. 

I would compost shredded bramble without roots. 

No chickweed … I’ve made that mistake before. It’s always hot viable seeds on it no matter how young it is. 

I would compost dock leaves but no flowers/seeds/roots. 

Smartweed aka Persicaria? Its arrived in this garden this year from somewhere. I wouldn’t compost it

Wilderbeast

Personally I put absolutely everything in my compost as the heaps are hot 🔥🔥🔥 I'd be less confident if they were just cold composting. Charles Dowding who is very well known for No dig gardening does warmish composting and puts absolutely everything in his heaps including bindweed and claims to have no problems whatsoever

Fairygirl

If in doubt, don't do it would be my advice, but it does depend on your circumstances.
If you leave many dodgy weeds out somewhere to dry out completely roots in particular, that helps.

Skandi

I put everything in my compost including couch grass, docks, dandelions and nettles, none of them come back out of the piles, the trick is just to bury the roots in the middle of the heap where even if it doesn't get hot enough they can't get to the light and will die anyway. Seeds.. well yes those do sometimes come through.

Greenbird

Seems like the advice is mixed, as I sort of expected.

I think I'm going to leave it in the bags for another few weeks. Then dig it into the heap. By next year, I'll have a definitive answer.

If the experiment fails, the worse that can happen is extra weeding, which I don't mind so much.

Buttercupdays

I put my most rampant weeds, like ground elder in a black silage bag.  Holds a lot and the black adds extra warmth when the sun shines, which speeds up composting and hopefully is worse for weed seeds. Though I dead head the ground elder to confine its spread to known areas rather than battling new fronts. I always check there are no visible root remains too, before using.