Well, it's too late actually...I have been putting trimmings and stuff from tomato plants with late blight in the compost heap all summer. I guess I really mean, "Is my compost going to be useless?" I think it was late blight that didn't really spread to all the plants until August. I picked and ate a lot of decent tomatoes before and since anyway, but there's definitely something I wouldn't want to carry over into next year. I want to treat the next garden with compost tea and give the soil better nutrients, but I'm worried about making compost tea with this stuff. I was a bad gardener this year :-(
2010-10-27T14:42:40Z
Oh man - I am the Worst. Gardener. Ever. I'm still leaving this question open for awhile because I might learn even more than the answer to my question.
M M T2010-10-27T17:26:01Z
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In addition to the other advice you have received, you will need to either treat the soil with something to control the blight next year or you will have the same problem again. The spores can live in the soil for up to 3 years, longer in climates that do not experience freezing temperatures. This is one instance where crop rotation is a big help. Don't plant the same thing in the same location year after year. We had a problem with late blight the summer before last; heck, everyone on the East coast had it! We started a new bed just for the tomatoes and planted beans, greens for salad and sugar snap peas in the beds that the tomatoes had been in the year before.
Never put anything with blight into a compost pile. The pile will not heat the blight enough to kill the spores and next year they will be spread through out the entire garden when you use the compost.
The area Tomato's grew in this year is already contaminated with the spores and the blight will return and attack any tomato's you ever plant there again. Contaminated compost will spread the spores to the entire garden patch.
Never put tomato plants into your compost heap. And I mean NEVER. Tomato plants carry a host of diseases which will transfer to your other plants. Even if they are healthy. In the fall you should pull up tomato plants and throw them in the trash or burn them, If you burn them you can compost the ashes. Your compose heap is now ruined as there is a high likely hood it is infected. The only solution is to heat your compost to kill any diseases. But you have to heat it to 1200 degrees or more for a long time. Since this is impractical your only option is to get rid of it. And place your new compost pile in a new location. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
sure, it extremely is one reason however the different is that some flowers take out specific foodstuff and others take out different foodstuff. Composting is large yet no longer something diseased ought to flow in and it ought to have equivalent green to brown stuff so it may artwork, additionally it needs enzymes to artwork. you may get it from catalog or placed a lot of airborne dirt and airborne dirt and dirt and earthworms out of your backyard or backyard in the compost pile to help it alongside. additionally a can of beer is stable now and then, the yeast facilitates it alongside. If the blight is in the soil which it extremely is a large sort of situations and in case you reside the place it gets chilly you have a stable reason to coach the backyard over in the previous winter so it may kill tne blight it extremely is in the soil. additionally, you're able to ought to call and ask a grasp Gardner on your section for suggestion. they are able to probable be discovered by your close by agraculture extension service who might inform you relating to the blight you have. stable good fortune.