"Nick Maclaren" wrote
"Bob Hobden" writes:
| Leslie wrote
| with regards to tomato and potato blight foliage.
|
| I have read that all foliage should be put into the dustbin and
other
| advice to put in compost heap as blight only over winters on green
plant
| material.
|
| What opinions if any do you folks have.
|
| http://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profile...ato_blight.asp

That still promotes the old wife's tale that it isn't safe to
compost blighted plants - that is quite simply wrong. Blight in
the UK CURRENTLY overwinters only on living material (typically
potato tubers, and possibly native Solanum species).

The reason is that spores produced by a single strain do not
overwinter, and it needs a sort of sexual stage to produce ones
that do. Currently, this has not been demonstrated to occur in
the UK. In this, Wikipedia is more reliable than the RHS - though
I am basing my statement on academic papers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans

Yes, it's safe to compost blighted plant material, provided that
you ensure that any potato tubers in it do not survive composting
and, to a lesser extent, the blight spores are not spread from the
material on the compost heap.

I would not take the chance, it's simply not worth the risk composting any
diseased plant material.

--
Regards
Bob Hobden