Weed Soup??? (grow, mowing, weeds, leaves)

[Eldemila]

Has anyone heard of this?? Would be interested in knowing if anyone has ever done this, and if it worked, or just spread more weed seed around??? I've been basically throwing the weeds I've pulled in the garbage as to not spread more seeds, or have the weeds live on. This would be great, if it works without worry!


https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...eal-with-weeds


Keep your perennial weeds in a separate pile from the stuff for your compost. Perennial weeds need to be treated differently from ordinary compost waste: their persistent nature means that only the hottest of composts will kill them. One solution is to rot them first in a bucket of water. This is known as weed soup – when it stinks, pour it over the compost. The joy here is that you are keeping within your system all the nutrients perennial weeds are so good at taking up, rather than throwing them away. Anything with thick taproots, such as dock, dandelion, alkanet and comfrey, will accumulate minerals from the soil, so their weed soup is particularly nutritious. If there’s a lot of liquid I use it to feed pot plants, before dumping the sludge on the compost.

[luv4horses]

Perennials that survive frequent mowing and pulling on (breaking off) often have a strong underground system (roots, stolons, bulbs, rhizomes, tubers) that will support rapid regrowth of the weed. Where and how you compost the tops means nothing in terms of longevity. Any compost method, or any safe herbicide use in the field, can return the minerals to the soil. One might argue that killing weeds where they grow in the field is environmentally superior to composting since it leaves the minerals in place. Spreading compost or the "weed soup" as they call it is difficult to do well enough to return minerals to where they are needed in nature.

I think the inventor of that method you are quoting had a little knowledge about plants but not much about the environment.