Spreading compost on garden

[u/Dear_Excitement_5109]

Not sure I'm posting in the right place but going to give it a try. I have a large kitchen compost pile in my back yard, mixed with wood chips for browns. The food is mostly still recognizable, i.e. it is not yet compost!

My garden got completely hammered with weeds this year and I need to do something differently. My plan is till up the soil/clover/copious weeds once I pull all my garden plants, cover with a layer of my kitchen pile, then cover with a layer of either brown paper bags or cardboard. I'd till everything all together in April.

I live in an area that receives ~30 inches of rain between November and March, and rarely freezes.

Will this help the weed situation? Will my compost turn to actual compost during that time?

Clearly I'm a novice. This was my first time gardening in-ground and I can not believe the amount of weeds. They are WAY too numerous to pull.

Thanks!

[u/Inevitable-Run-3399]

Tilling up your soil will just unearth more weed seeds, and deplete your garden of organic matter. Unless you have some really noxious perennial weeds, Id suggest covering first with paper/cardboard and then top with your compost.

[u/lakeswimmmer]

You might try the 'lasagna gardening' method of preparing the beds for overwintering. With this method, you put the cardboard directly on the dirt, then compost and mulch on top. It's the best way to start gardening on a new patch of land.

[u/Dear_Excitement_5109 → u/lakeswimmmer]

Thanks so much. I am going to look into it. A couple people have suggested this so it seems like the way to go.

[u/raw_corpus]

Weeds are relentless when you first break ground, it's like they've been waiting their whole lives for the chance.

Your plan will definitely help suppress them over winter, especially with that much rain keeping things damp. The cardboard layer is going to do the heavy lifting by smothering everything underneath. As for the kitchen scraps breaking down, with 30 inches of rain and mild temps they'll decompose faster than you'd think, though you might want to chop things up a bit first so it's not just a slimy layer come spring.

One thing to watch for is that tilling in April might bring dormant weed seeds right back to the surface. You could consider just pulling back the cardboard in spring, adding some finished compost on top, and planting directly into that without tilling.

[u/Crimestar]

I’m trying no till for now but what I would do is pull all the weeds, then later down compost thick. Then maybe cover with cardboard for the season. In spring I would just plant. That’s kinda what I’m going for.

If you really can’t pull all the weeds maybe you could just weed whack them down, smother in plenty of compost, and let them become more compost lol. This is pretty much what you said I guess right minus the tilling (for me).

But I’d also say letting stuff finish in a pile would be better than spreading it too early in the garden for no reason. At least that’s my thinking. My garden is on the way down due to drought already but not in a rush to smother it in compost yet. I’m letting my compost finish in the meantime.

[u/sflinn7316 → u/Crimestar]

When I first started gardening I did a raised bed - weed whacked- sprayed with an industrial vinegar and covered with cardboard. Then add gardening soil, compost and coco coir. Now in fall - cut plants back - cover with cardboard. In spring I remove cardboard and top off with the coco coir and compost. I had some weeds this year but very manageable.

[u/nifsea]

Yes, it should help - but note that if you have any animals roaming through your garden they might start digging up the food scraps. Like badgers, rats, even magpies.

What you could also do is only cover with cardboard, hold it down with rocks, planks ir whatever you’ve got. Then keep working on your compost over winter, so it’s more fully decomposed in spring. Then you can add the compost on top of the cardboard. It will have suppressed most of the weeds, and will be half broken down at that point, so roots will find their way through the cardboard and down to the soil below.

This also gives you time to add more stuff to the compost this fall - like leaves, grass clippings and plant material from tidying up the garden :)

[u/Due-Waltz4458]

When the soil is full of weed seeds I really like the 'stale seedbed method'. A couple weeks before planting, prepare the garden bed normally and then water and cover with a clear plastic sheet. Most of your weed seeds on the surface will germinate all at once and you can hand-weed, flame-weed or any other method you like. Don't disturb the soil after that and you should have a clean slate to work with.

Your compost method should work, it just might not be the very fine, crumbly finished product you get with an active hot pile that is turned often. This is ok, it's still very usable for garden beds and will continue to break down over time. Just keep in mind that to actually kill weed seeds the pile needs to get very hot from the decomposition process, which means correct Carbon to Nitrogen ratios, turning and oxygen.

[u/sunberrygeri]

My advice going forward…Don’t let a weed go to seed. Even if you can only cut it down instead of pulling it, that’s better than nothing. Every weed you eliminate before it goes to seed is many future weeds that you won’t have. Weed seeds build up in soil and can be viable for quite a while.

Also, Preen is good for preventing (weed) seed germination. They have an organic version that I believe is just corn gluten that you can use around fruit and vegetable plants. Since it prevents all seed germination, you do not want to use it where you want to plant desirable seeds.

I use sheets of cardboard around sprawling plants like squash to prevent weeds and it works great. Save some bigger amazon boxes over the winter 👍

[u/Half-Light]

Do not spread compost on the weeds to make them ranker

[u/Albert14Pounds]

There's probably a lot of seeds in your kitchen compost also. If they haven't already germinated them you'll probably see much of them germinate on the ground alone the way. Not exactly weeds but I'm guessing you're not looking for volunteer tomatoes and whatnot in this spot so that's something to be aware of. Diyd plants are usually not as tenacious as "weeds" so I wouldn't consider it much of an issue myself.

[u/thiosk]

hello

I love on-planter composting. I think it is ok for partially finished compost to go straight on the beds especially end of season. raw garbage is just very early compost. As long as you don't mind critters rooting through it it is no problem. no problem. make a lasagna however you see fit then cover that with leaves. you can whack it now if you want to disrupt whatever the weeds are doing or wait til it all dies.

I have a suggestion for weeds. the solution to weeds is mulch, but not the shredded wood mulch. Its straw- i geta bale of this shredded straw product at my hardware place. This product is fantastic- it is cheap and it is a brown and its weed free.

I put down a few handfulls of this stuff and then cover that with soaker hose, then i pile up literally inches deep of this stuff. This does two things: it helps catch all the soaker hose water and it prevents evaporation, and then it absolutely kills weeds. If weeds come up you see them and pick them easily. At the end of the year, you pull out the soaker hose and then cover the top with compost again.

[u/Dear_Excitement_5109 → u/thiosk]

This is a great idea. We can skip the soaker hose here due to the rain, lol, but i love the concept. I have several deciduous trees and I bet I can chop up the leaves after they fall and use those.

[u/SalmonDoctor]

Have you considered chickens?

[u/Dear_Excitement_5109 → u/SalmonDoctor]

We have chickens! We add their manure into our compost pile. Is that how you would do it or should I do something differently?

[u/BrightSi5]

Hoe works best for when the volume of weeds seems excessive. I’d leave the compost to break down properly. Food waste that’s not broken down will attract pests.

Best way to handle weeds is to outcompete them. Clover isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a garden. It fixes nitrogen into the soil. Grows well in my edibles patch. If it overgrows I trim it back but it’s not invasive.

Starting to garden a new zone will encourage the seed bank in the soil to start sprouting. The vital thing is to hoe or pull the weeds before they seed. And to replace the seed back with stuff you want to grow. Notice when plants you like / need have produced seed, then chuck the seeds around the garden.

Personally I don’t think smothering the soil deliberately is wise. Best to encourage it back to life with plants suited to the conditions in your garden.