Can I put the leaves from my fruit trees in my compost pile even though the fruit from those trees was wormy this season or should I burn them instead?
Under ideal conditions, compost piles can achieve temperatures hot enough to kill any number of problems impacting the health of your plants and/or the beauty of your property, including diseases, insects and weed seeds.
However, it's extremely difficult to maintain anything close to ideal conditions in a backyard compost pile unless that pile has become something of a project that you don't mind monitoring and maintaining on pretty much a daily basis.
That's because you need to constantly review your compost pile's moisture levels and nitrogen-to-carbon ratios and adjust them when and if necessary. You also need to ensure your pile is properly aerated by turning it over several times a week to inject enough oxygen to create the conditions necessary for temperatures to rise high enough to kill any insects or diseases that ravaged your fruit trees this season.
Most of us don't have the time, effort, or inclination to monitor and maintain our compost piles to such an extreme degree even though we know it comes with the benefit of breaking down decaying material much faster than a compost pile that's maintained simply by throwing plant material on it and turning it over on a haphazard schedule, if at all.
Not even the promise of receiving fresh compost less than a month after the plant material has been added to a pile is enough to lure most of us away from much more enjoyable gardening pursuits.
The end result is that most backyard compost piles don't hit internal temperatures hot enough to destroy invading organisms.
As you have no doubt already realized, you need to destroy or dispose of any and all infested fruit from your tree or you'll increase the risk of the problem cropping up again next year. The leaves from these trees will also need to be either burned or removed from your property.
In addition, any leaves left lying on the ground that came from healthy trees have the potential to harbour over-wintering insects and diseases, so they should be raked up and added to your compost pile so that next year your trees will have a fighting chance of producing healthy fruit.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
Originally published in the Creston Valley Advance.
