GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - What shop-bought vegetables should NOT be composted?

10-05-2004, 04:20 PM

The message
from (Nick Maclaren) contains these words:

In article ,
Janet Baraclough.. writes:
| The message
| from (Steve Harris) contains these words:
|
| Are there vegetable trimmings from the kitchen that you would NOT
put on
| your compost heap for fear of infecting your own produce?
|
| I don't put the peel from any potatoes (homegrown or shop) in the
| compost, it doesn't seem worth risking blight for such a trivial amount
| of compost material.

I believe that this is an old wife's tale (that is not a personal
remark!), because blight is not likely to spread through potato
peelings. There are, however, some diseases (probably including
white rot of alliums) that could spread through compost. I don't,
however, worry, as the main sources of infection are the wind and
flying insects ....

It would be nice to find a serious scientific analysis of this,
rather than seeing yet another repetition of the old stories that
have been passed around for centuries. Regrettably, professional
scientists are no more immune to making that mistake than anyone
else :-(

It isn't logical, but it's one of those habits imposed in childhood by
my grandparents that can never *quite* be shaken off. Every so often,
some belief of theirs surfaces as the latest scientific discovery, and
the shade of my grandmother mouths "I told you so".

I'm still waiting for the arcane properties of green paint to be recognised.

Janet