In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| And why does burning help? It is at least as likely to make things
| worse, by the rising hot air spreading the spores.
|
| Asbestos spores?

Sigh. Unless you soak the haulms in liquid oxygen before lighting
the fire, there will be a long period when there is merely warm
air passing by them.

| Because you're far more likely to spread spores by convection from a
| warm compost heap and over a longer period.

That implies that you are leaving them on top of the heap and
relatively dry - even then, I rather doubt your claim.

While it is POSSIBLE that composting haulms spreads more spores
than burning them, it is EQUALLY LIKELY that burning them spreads
more spores than composting them. In the absence of any data
indicating which, I am not going to make a judgement.

But this is all more-or-less irrelevant, anyway, unless you have
a small number of badly blighted plants early on in the season.
In general, any blight infection will affect all susceptible
plants in an area. There is no point in burning blighted haulms
at the end of the season, because it does not overwinter in that
form - and THAT is what the traditional recommendation is to do.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.