they should compost ok, I often compost fairly large amounts of lavender which is also very woody. if you did have a small shredder to run them through they would come out very fine and compost in no time (although I dont think it would be worth hiring one to do them), but just chop them into pieces, that's what I do with the lavender. once you toss some other things in with them they'll compost just fine, on their own though they can be a bit slow.

I don't think sagebrush would be a problem.

I think water would be the problem. I seems to me that it would take quite a bit of water.

Thanks for the input. It's mostly greenish sagebrush, but varying levels of decay/age are apparent. Being in NV, I forsee a great deal of problem with watering the composter in general. (That's part of why I'm going with the holey can rather than a wire bin; I want to minimize excess evaporation.)

I guess I'll manually chop them, make sure there's plenty of nitrogen available in the bin, and hope for the best. Thanks again!

I live in Northern California near Reno Nevada. We have a lot of sage and I was wondering how your composting went. I was considering composting it or using it for wood chips in my Orchard. Any suggestions?

As a general rule of thumb, fresh cut brush/woody shrubs have about a 55:1 - 70:1 ratio. Chop it fine, watch the temperature when it goes thermophyllic. Mix in deciduous leaves with a portion of good nitrogen that is available.

great thank you so much for the info

Leo:

Do you have link for a reference to that?

Thanks

To be clear: growth inhibition from the finished compost.

Note that composting will likely degrade allopathic substances ie even if sagebrush has this effect, doesn't mean the finished compost will. Your mileage may vary of course, so at own risk if near particularly sensitive plants or not well composted.

But this allopathic issue comes up a lot for various plants, and consensus is mostly that everything composts to mostly harmless given enough time. If it's an organic compound, something will eat it.