From your garden

All normal green garden waste can be composted—after all, disposing of such material is one of the main reasons for composting in the first place. Nearly all of it can go on the compost pile without any treatment, but tough stuff like brassica stalks should first be chopped up, or smashed, with a club hammer or spade. The same goes for tough kitchen waste such as corn cobs.

What about weed seeds? Well, they are not such a serious problem. Even a classic, hot compost pile never achieved a 100 percent kill, so gardeners have always had to live with weed seeds in compost. Of course, the best defense is vigilance in the first place, so that weeds end up on the compost pile before they get around to setting seed.

Also, keep a lookout for weeds growing near the pile itself, or even on it. Trials at the Royal Horticultural Society in the UK suggest that most of the weed seeds found in an open compost pile were not there at the start, but blew in while the pile was rotting down.