Can you compost patato tops????

[steve76]

 Hi all
Sorry for the silly question I'm still new to all this, But some old timers on our site said that i could not compost my potato or tom's plant when done with and others have said you can as long as there is no disease etc....
    I didn't compots them last year as they had blight but so far this year all is OK..    I respect the help from these guys as they are a great source of knowledge but there is some confusion on this one any help to clear this one up would be great

Thanks all
 Steve.

[manicscousers]

any blighted ones, we burn, the rest go in the compost 

[pigeonseed]

Although I seem to remember robert brenchley saying blight can only over winter on living tissue, ie tubers of potato, and he seems to know a lot about it.... I always compost my potato leaves.. 

[chriscross1966]

Blight only survives on living tissue, but if you've got blighted halums burn them to get rid of the fact that they're still alive.....or bury them.... don't leave them with access to the air.... I normally compost my halms, but one year  (2009 IIRC) I had to burn them down due to blight.... thankfully so late in the year that I didn't lose any crop....

[Robert_Brenchley]

I tried to post on this before, but the machine misbehaved. Once the potato tissue's dead, the blight's dead; it survives in tubers, which overwinter as accidentals, or in farmer's outgrade piles. The main thing is to stop blighted plants spreading the spores, so either put them in a compost bin, on a covered heap, bury them, or burn them.

[cornykev]

I normally snip off the bottom root with any miniscore spuds bag and tip, the rest of the plant goes in my daleks.