Potato leaves on the compost heap.

[Marbles1974]

Hello everyone,

Hope everyone is OK! First post on here for a long time.

I grew potatoes this year (both at the allotment and in tubs in the garden). Really happy with the result - although I think we might be sick of spuds soon So, I have a ton of leaves leftover. Is it OK to put these on the compost heap? I have a vague memory of both my father and my grandfather saying this is a big "NO NO".

[ameno]

It's absolutely fine to compost them, even if they had blight. Blight cannot survive for more than a few weeks without a living host, so as the leaves start to rot the blight will die.

You shouldn't put any blighted tubers in the compost, though, as these can potentially survive and grow next year, and then the resulting plants will get blight almost immediately and spread it to everything else (this is how blight overwinters: on infected tubers, usually in farmers' tips).

[Marbles1974]

Thanks ameno - much appreciated.

[mrsbusy]

Is that the same for blighted tomato plants? My outdoor tomato plants have withered away due to blight - luckily the tomatoes ripened early and only the last few were affected. The plants are growing through very vigorous parsley and I was thinking of leaving the roots in the ground to avoid disturbing the parsley. Maybe that's not a good idea?

[ameno]

Is that the same for blighted tomato plants? My outdoor tomato plants have withered away due to blight - luckily the tomatoes ripened early and only the last few were affected. The plants are growing through very vigorous parsley and I was thinking of leaving the roots in the ground to avoid disturbing the parsley. Maybe that's not a good idea?

Yeah, blighted tomato plants and fruit are fine to compost, too. They'll all die in the compost bin soon enough, and then so too will the blight a few weeks later.
Leaving roots in the ground should be fine, too, as they won't survive the winter.

[rary]

In the past the potato haulms were usually burned, as it was reckoned that if put on the compost heap there was a chance that the compost could possibly finish up being added to the ground where you were going to grow potatoes, and of course any small potatoes attached to the roots possibly carried diseases with them especially if the compost heap was not sufficiently heating up to compost everything, personally I don't home compost them, I put them into the brown bin as the council composting heats up enough to kill everything off

[ameno]

Tiny potatoes attached to the roots (pea sized or so) won't survive the winter on the compost heap, anyway. They'll just die and rot. And anything bigger than that you can fairly easily remove before composting. If you're putting whole potato tubers on the compost heap then you kind of only have yourself to blame.
At the very least, I've never had volunteer potatoes coming up in my home compost (despite always getting the odd one in the ground where I grew them te year before).

[rary]

You must have a very good compost system going, I have had potato shaws showing in my compost heap from potato peelings, not everyone has the space for turning compost heaps, nor in many cases the ability to to do so, as was stated by Marbles, both his father and grandfather said puting potato leaves was a big no, no, I myself gardened in the same time as his father and possibly grandfather, when gardeners relied on experience, and did what they considered the safe way of dealing with these things, as an example, I will not put brassica roots on my compost, no matter how many people say it is safe to do so, others may consider it a waste of a resource, I consider it safe gardening