In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| 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.
|
| Bigger sigh. The idea is that you put them *ON* a fire, not light one
| under them. Come on now - use a little common-sense, please.

Which implies that you have a large supply of material to keep the
fire going vigorously, while you put the haulms right into the centre
in small enough quantities not to damp the fire. All right, the
remark about the liquid oxygen was an exaggeration, but an effective
sterilising fire isn't an easy thing to manage, and most gardeners
are not in a position to arrange one.

| 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.
|
| Can't agree. But not having anything blighted to hand, I'm not even
| thinking of setting-up an experiment.

Do you have even a scrap of actual evidence for your claim? I know
of none that even indicates whether domestic incineration is more
or less likely to spread spores than composting.

| 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.
|
| I've read that last paragraph three times and am still none the wiser as
| to its meaning.

There are two circumstances when you might want to destroy possibly
blighted haulms. One is ones infected fairly early on, but that
is usually ineffective because (in general) the infection that
caused them to become blighted will have infected every other
plant. And the other is cleaning up at the end of season, and
that is pointless, because blight doesn't overwinter in haulms.

Clearer?


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.