In article
songbird writes:

i'll be interested in what he says, but i
would not be surprised if it isn't aimed at
reducing fungal diseases (if you don't have
organic material on the surface of the soil
then the spores have fewer places to hide
from the sun's uv rays).

my own recent experiences has told me that
this is a false approach. instead i had very
good results from using leaves and wood chips
to help greatly reduce a spotted disease that
has been getting at the lillies in the spring.

My understanding is that (how shocking!) it depends.

The usual logic for burning cuttings is to directly remove any disease
specific to the plant that's already in the cuttings, and indirectly
remove highly-compatible host material for diseases of the plant.

Contrariwise, covering the soil surface cuts down on (primarily viral,
so far as I recall) soil-borne diseases spread by foliage contact with
rain-splashed soil particles. Tomatoes are a classic in this line.

So, you'd probably be fine chipping (except they are a bear to chip,
actually - unclogging a chipper gets rather tedious) grape vine prunings
and putting them around your tomatoes, if those were far from your
grapes. Not so much putting them around your grapes. Since vinyards
mostly just grow grapes, burning makes sense for both disease control
and returning non-volatile nutrients, but probably more the former.

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