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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Mulching and Composting Despite Soil-Borne Diseases?
  • Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 10:24:59 -0500


On Feb 26, 2011, at 1:06 AM, Spidra Webster wrote:

Here's something I've had a hard time figuring out. I've read some books on
organic gardening, some material on permaculture. Ideally, I want to be
letting stuff that drops to the ground compost, as it would in nature. But
there are a number of diseases and pests whose control is effected by raking
away the windfalls, leaves and detritus. Camellias, for instance, are prone
to that fungus that makes the petals go brown and part of controlling it is
to pick up the fallen flowers and dispose of them. I've ready many times
that people should pick up dropped stone fruit, apples, pears, etc. as a
pest/disease control. How to reconcile these things? On the one hand you
want material to compost, ideally in situ for some things, and on the other
hand you need to get rid of disease/pest vectors.

If you just let the material rot wherever it falls, this is indeed natural, but it isn't really making compost. Composting, properly done, involves making a pile of materials which are chosen, mixed, and piled in a fashion that means that the pile will heat up significantly. The temperatures within a hot compost heap will kill many pathogens. At other stages in the composting process, beneficial microorganisms should help finish off pathogens.

In addition, you can take compost that contained stone fruit, for instance, and use it on your vegetable ground, and vice versa: in other words, apply the compost on a crop not susceptible, or less susceptible, to whatever diseases you think might have been in the compost material. As home compost heaps often don't heat sufficiently throughout the whole pile, this might be a good idea.

Some diseased material shouldn't go into compost at all, but should be buried or burned or even landfilled. It depends on the disease -- you need to try to identify what the problems are that you actually have, and then find out about those organisms. Co-operative Extension offices can usually be a lot of help with this.

Modern society has caused a lot of pathogens to get moved to areas where their natural enemies haven't arrived yet and/or don't survive well; so in a lot of cases what we have aren''t well functioning balanced natural systems, but severely disrupted systems. Nature, given the chance, will bring them back into balance again eventually; but that eventual balance will take some considerable time to develop, and may or may not contain whatever species humans want to exist in that area.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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