Kitchen Garden Forum

We occasioanlly get blight (and we grow a lot of potatoes, including this year: Kestrel, Swift, Anya, Lady Balfour and Sarpo Mira) and have never sprayed. At the moment only Anya are affected and we've cut their foliage off. But my main point is: we have always the blight-infested foliage in the large timber compost bin where it "stews" for about 5 years before we use the compost and I don't think we have had problems doing that. Are we just lucky or do the spores die off after some years?

Hi Monika,
Quite frankly I for one am not prepared to take the chance. I suppose that I am lucky having many other things to make compost with and a more than adequate supply of FYM close to hand. But even if these other sources were not available to me I still would burn all Potato Haulm and old finished Tomato Plants.
JB.

Thus JB gains a small amout of natural potash, yes?

I have chucked mine a in a deep trench and they will be well covered with a foot of solid clay soil where they will rot down over the winter, have figured out this is better than having them dry in a heap and then burn them which will take days or weeks in this wet damp weather. I won't dig this trench now till well into next year.