Latest Charles Dowding video on Making Compost

[MsCowpea]

Charles Dowding, of No Dig fame

[Labradors]

Very interesting and what gorgeous gardens he has!

Did you catch the part where he suggested using plants with blight????? Then there were the noxious weed roots

Linda

[zendog]

Thanks for sharing that. I used to be fairly careful about getting any weed seed in my compost, but after reading a study somewhere about how much weed seed is resident in most soils and seeing how many dormant weed seeds germinate and grow in my community garden bed anytime I touch the soil, I stopped worrying about it. I seem to have the same amount of weeds, possibly less as I work on keeping the beds well weeded each year, but the biggest change is I have twice as much compost and my plants look happier as a result. I also composted all my tomato plants last fall, regardless of any diseased leaves and my disease load seems the same as always. Of course being in hot, humid Virginia, the foliar diseases are always an issue. The only plants I haven't tossed in the compost were a couple of tomatoes that got very twisty growth this spring that I suspected was a virus.

[Ginger2778]

Very good video. He teaches very well. And oh my, what a garden he has!

[MsCowpea]

As much as I admire Charles Dowding and think he is extremely knowledgeable I just can’t compost my totally diseased, disgusting looking, dead and dying tomato plants. It is a psychological thing with me. I am sure he is correct if you do it correctly but I have a huge volume of diseased tomato plants and I just don’t want them in my compost. I take them out over a period of time and send them out with the trash.