ok, lost my thread about finding greens for compost

Don't know why, but I can't find the thread I was reading about greens and browns. Pagancat, I think it was you that said I could use weeks. Does that mean I can just go out and pull weeds and not worry about them sprouting and making more?
Got plenty of weeds!! I just thought seeds would end up in compost and then I'd really be in trouble.
Someone please make sure I'm understanding the weed thing, or I will have compost with weed seeds to transfer to my beds
I ;hope you can read this, I have a cat in my lap
who is determined to help me. So try to not notice misspelled words, it's her fault

The heat generated by the composting will kill any weed seeds, I put weeds in all the time.

If I am hurrying a pile though I get a few weeds come up, mostly tomatoes----lol---but I just look at it as more compost!!

Same thing happened to me, only potatoes and pumpkins! Like you, just was glad to have the other compost. Those pumkin seeds muct have been strong, because they came up everywhere I p
ut compost!!!!




Mine did that too, only pumpkins and potatoes. Must have been tough pumpkin seeds cause ev erywhere I spread the compost, i Had pumpkins come up.

If your compost is good and hot, the heat will kill weeds. If you don't monitor the temp regularly, you might want to consider just cutting off and trashing the seed heads and composting the rest of the plant. I often do this anyway, in case they end up near the ends of the pile which tend to be cooler than the center. I also don't compost too many tomatoes for that reason, or nicotiana, or anything that reseeds like crazy for me.

Because I use a lot of my neighbors oak leaves I inevitably end up with oak trees growing in there from the acorns.

My compost usually gets to 130 to 150 degrees and stays good and hot for at least 4 or 5 days, so I don't fret about it too much. But I'm sure I do spread some undesirable seeds with the compost occasionally, I'm sure.

Karen

Yep, I don't compost many pumpkin seeds for that reason. I smash the pumpkins on concrete and scrape out and trash the seeds, and compost the rest of the pumpkin. Sometimes I collect the carved jack-0-lanterns from neighbors, too. No seeds.

Karen

LorraineR, could you edit your post and back space out the blank lines? It looks like your enter key got stuck and just kept adding blank space.

Tomatoes could sprout anywhere they want to for me so long as they give lovely juicy fruit!

I remember talking to a supervisor at a waste water treatment plant. Every so often they would have to clean out the 'solid' waste - it was spread on a field to dry before it was hauled away. He said that their process would kill absolutely anything, but when they spread out all the waste, lovely, huge, flourishing tomato plants would grow out of it. Tomato seeds are about the only survivors.

I may have been the one who suggested composting the weeds, because that is what I do in fact. I try to pull them before they set seeds.

As a bit of reality fix, you should keep in mind that all of your soil contains ungerminated seeds, and whenever you disturb it some seeds will surface to germinate. That is one of the best arguments for no-till gardening (aside from less digging!).

I have had plenty of happy surprises from seeds that germinated out of compost also.

I started off trying to keep weeds out of my compost, but as this is my first year composting I've had to purchase bagged compost and I've noticed that I got a lot of weeds coming up after spreading that stuff. So I guess I'm now at the mindset that whatever comes from my own compost bin can't be as bad as what I'd get from the bagged stuff, and I've been throwing weeds in as long as they haven't gone to seed, and I don't put in bindweed at all because I've been fighting it all season and still not really winning. As an extra security measure, I've started sprinkling corn gluten meal on top of any compost or mulch I put down to keep seeds from sprouting.

What does the corn glutten meal do?

corn gluten meal is an organic preemergent, it prevents seeds from germinating. it also contains some nitrogen. if you check out the organic gardening board, you'll probably find several posts about it.

I am so sorry about all the blank spacing in my post. One of my kittens was laying by the computer and I guess she was closer to the keys than I thought!!
Thanks for the info about the weeds. For the last 2 days, I've been out pulling weeds. I also went into the woods and pulled leaves off some bushes and trees that were still green. Was that ok?

LOL, I had a key stick once and it left so much blank space you had to scroll forever to get to the bottom!

The leaves are a good source of material for composting but your trees and bushes might start shivering if you take too many!

I'm short so can't reach very high to get the leaves. Also, lots of them are bushes I want gone, so...