Autumn rots all that summer has brought forth. It does so both gently and brutally. The leaves of pumpkins turn ghostly white with mildews, perennials start to drain their leaves of colour and all number of spores and microbes set to work. Slugs, bold now the sun’s heat has gone, move out in force to clean up the remainders.
I think of my compost bin and how a summer of snipping away and leftovers must be ready to spread out. Emptying your bin now also means you have an emptier bin to start filling with the material that will accumulate over the coming months. I say emptier, because there is always some stuff that needs to go back into round two of rotting – rose prunings, thick cabbage stems and woody prunings. Take an old hammer or mallet and bash this stuff: the more you break it up, the quicker it breaks down.
The good, well-broken down compost should be spread out around perennials, fruit bushes, trees and shrubs, under roses, and over vegetable beds, where it will bury any errant weed seed and provide insulation to the soil for coming months. Make sure you don’t cover the crown of perennials or pile up the compost around the stems and trunks of trees, because it can cause rot. There’s no need to dig the compost in; the worms will do a much better job than you at incorporating it into the soil.
There’s always debate about what you should and shouldn’t dispose of in compost when it comes to diseased material, particularly now while there’s plenty of mildewed leaves and black spot to get rid of. Mildews and rusts are fine as long as you cover or bury them so they start to rot quickly and don’t continue their cycle. The leaves of a blighted tomato or potato can go on because the spores can survive only on live material, but be wary of composting potatoes that will think the heap is just a new bed and continue to grow, spreading the disease. Again, make sure you cover the blighted material or bury it into the compost.
Brown rots on fruit such as apples, plums and pears that has concentric rings of spores and entirely rotten fruit must be picked off before winter and buried in the ground, rather than put on the compost, otherwise they will linger for another round. Dig down to 30cm deep to bury them. (The same method applies to black spot on leaves.) Burying is often far more environmentally friendly than burning material. However, club root, canker and fire blight needs to be destroyed, and that is best done either on a bonfire or in the waste.
