knotweed
peteS
Posts: 939
After recently watching a news article on the menace and spread of Japanese Knotweed I began to wonder how wise it is to carry on buying compost from the local council as I do. As the raw material is obviously collected from many many sources, and as such any screening of the material collected would be impossible, what are the chances of remnants of the weed surviving the composting process and finding it's way into a bag being sold to the public. I'm thinking mainly the seeds as I'm pretty sure the composting process would kill off any soft material.
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I dont think any Japanese Knotweed in the UK produces viable seed
Sounds like good news. I've been using council made compost for a number of years now and is much cheaper than from a garden centre, but a potential problem from knotweed never occurred to me before I saw the article.
I wouldn't buy it, I know what I put into my green bins! (Not Fallopia japonica though, I don't have a problem with that!)
I don't use council soil improver due to concerns about introducing horrors such as JKW into the garden. It might be illegal to put JKW etc in the council bins but you can bet your bottom dollar some people do it - either through failure to ID the plant, or ignorance of what should and should not go in the bin or just a 'don't care' attitude.
That said, I have no idea really what goes into the composts and soil improvers available from the GC and other suppliers - and there are some very unpleasant sounding composts out there according to some of the other threads on the forum. (ones that smell of petrol & other chemicals, ones containing glass, lumps of plastic and wood etc)
I am now of the opinion that it is worth paying more and trying to stick to local reputable suppliers who I can visit & question about the source of their raw materials. Other than that I use as much home produced garden compost and leaf mould as I possibly can - at least I know what goes in it!
Maybe I've suddenly become paranoid since watching the article on KW as I've used council produced compost for several years now and it has always looked and felt great with no evidence of anything horrible growing from it. Maybe it's time to go over to good old well rotted horse manure.