Tomato Plant Cleanup

[cdg]

Do you pull your spent tomato plants for fall cleanup or do you cut them at ground level and leave the roots in the soil . I have raised beds if that makes a difference . Thanks

[slugworth]

grip and rip

[brownrexx]

I pull them out and dispose of the plants off site to prevent introducing any pathogens into my compost pile.

[SQWIBB]

Last year I chopped and dropped the entire plant, this year I plan on doing it a bit differently.
I just took out two plants they were doing ok, but they needed to go.
From these I cut at soil level, leave roots intact, tear off the green tomatoes and toss in a bucket with healthy foliage (for compost), the rest goes into the firepit.

[Solanum315]

Originally Posted by SQWIBB

Last year I chopped and dropped the entire plant, this year I plan on doing it a bit differently.
I just took out two plants they were doing ok, but they needed to go.
From these I cut at soil level, leave roots intact, tear off the green tomatoes and toss in a bucket with healthy foliage (for compost), the rest goes into the firepit.

Have you tried fried green tomatoes? Also I have found that pasta sauce made from green cherry and beefsteak tomatoes is usually better than red because when they fully mature, they are a little too sweet and I prefer pasta sauce more acid and less sweet. Just something to consider even though feeding the compost pile is important too.

[PaulF]

Everything goes and is disposed away from the garden.

[cdg]

Thanks very much to all .

[AlittleSalt]

I grew in containers and cut the tomato plants down to a 5 inch stem. Removed the plant. The roots will disintegrate over a few months. (I'm not saying this is the right or wrong way of doing things - just what I experienced).

[GoDawgs]

When we used to grow tomatoes in the raised beds we'd just pull the plants and just shake the soil off the roots. We now grow them in containers up by the house due to bacterial wilt problems in the garden. Plants now get pulled with the soil shaken off and disposed of on Mt. Brushmore down in the back area.

This year in stead of dumping the soil into some raised beds that could use a little more, we're going to play with growing a kitchen garden since the buckets are up near the house. Stuff like lettuce, arugula, baby bok choy, etc

[bower]

In the past I've always pulled the main root and leave the little ones in the ground.


A lot of people seem to dispose their plants off site which is a shame. I couldn't bring myself to do that but I did make a separate compost pile for tomato plants, and a few times I have hauled them off into the woods to rot in their own spot. They produce a ton of biomass for composting, I mean tomato plants are huge producers of vine no matter how well your fruit do.

In fact I haven't seen any detrimental effect of growing tomatoes in the soil where their own roots decomposed. And I have let volunteers to grow in a compost pile that contained some tomato waste, and they weren't bothered by that either. So I'm not really convinced about the mythology of tomato plant disposal. The scorched earth approach doesn't seem justified. In large commercial operations the recommended practice is to till the plant residues into the ground and then rotate to a different crop for one year. Basically just about all tomato diseases are destroyed when the plant material is completely decomposed.

Another safer way is also easy to do - make more than one compost pile. Have a pile where you incorporate the tomato vines and a separate one for garlic/onions waste. Then you can feed them to each other and not worry about any carry over of diseases etc.

Composting may be the best way of adding carbon to the soil instead of releasing to the atmosphere, according to one 19 year long study. There is a big footprint for sending vines to the dump or burning them, which could be sequestered instead. Even if you keep them out of the veggie garden and just feed them to your shrubs and trees, we could do a good thing by composting our dead plants instead.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by bower

In the past I've always pulled the main root and leave the little ones in the ground.


A lot of people seem to dispose their plants off site which is a shame. I couldn't bring myself to do that but I did make a separate compost pile for tomato plants, and a few times I have hauled them off into the woods to rot in their own spot. They produce a ton of biomass for composting, I mean tomato plants are huge producers of vine no matter how well your fruit do.

In fact I haven't seen any detrimental effect of growing tomatoes in the soil where their own roots decomposed. And I have let volunteers to grow in a compost pile that contained some tomato waste, and they weren't bothered by that either. So I'm not really convinced about the mythology of tomato plant disposal. The scorched earth approach doesn't seem justified. In large commercial operations the recommended practice is to till the plant residues into the ground and then rotate to a different crop for one year. Basically just about all tomato diseases are destroyed when the plant material is completely decomposed.

Another safer way is also easy to do - make more than one compost pile. Have a pile where you incorporate the tomato vines and a separate one for garlic/onions waste. Then you can feed them to each other and not worry about any carry over of diseases etc.

Composting may be the best way of adding carbon to the soil instead of releasing to the atmosphere, according to one 19 year long study. There is a big footprint for sending vines to the dump or burning them, which could be sequestered instead. Even if you keep them out of the veggie garden and just feed them to your shrubs and trees, we could do a good thing by composting our dead plants instead.

I'm doing better than I thought.
None of my stuff goes to the city dump just trash.
Even the countless sticks that fall out of the trees and the leaves get chopped up and put back in the soil as nature intended.
Tomato plants get solarized on the driveway and some how vanish.

[bower]

Originally Posted by Worth1

I'm doing better than I thought.
None of my stuff goes to the city dump just trash.
Even the countless sticks that fall out of the trees and the leaves get chopped up and put back in the soil as nature intended.
Tomato plants get solarized on the driveway and some how vanish.

Yeah, the issue with plant material that goes to the dump, it tends to be rotting anaerobically among the trash and therefore emits methane instead of the (small or balanced) amount of CO2 emitted from an aerobic compost process. The cool thing I learned about compost, it's the organisms that live in that fresh soil which also are able to sequester carbon in the ground. No till without added compost may not sequester much (if any). I'm sure that depends also on specific soil and moisture conditions, eventually we'll get the full picture but science takes time alright.

Your Texas heat must be great for incorporating leaves and sticks into the soil. The structure of tree litter is such that it is naturally aerobic as it slowly breaks down with fungi involved. I have so much sticks and brush from conifers around my place, we used to burn yearly. Have not done that for quite a few years but the slowly decomposing needles and branches don't make a very hospitable soil at the end of the day - except for conifers of course. I'm trying a hugel approach now in the area near the house, trying to make some soil with a compost over fir branches. Got some bags of maple leaves from my brother's place too, which are desperately needed to make this old clay a better place for some food trees to grow. Funny how all trees seem to make the kind of soil they needed themselves! Nature's way, you got it.

[rhines81]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

I grew in containers and cut the tomato plants down to a 5 inch stem. Removed the plant. The roots will disintegrate over a few months. (I'm not saying this is the right or wrong way of doing things - just what I experienced).

For potted tomato plants, even though I hate to do it, I dump all of the pot off-site, soil and everything. One year I had horn worms pretty bad and their moths lay eggs everywhere especially in the potting soil. Dumping the soil took care of a repeat from the year before, although it was at a co$t.

[bower]

Re Early Blight - I read elsewhere that the conidia (spore containing structures) can survive on the soil surface. So while tilling under should help, there's still a risk that these basically not visible structures could be turned up again and some remain at the surface level where they can be activated by rain or wind to release spores.
Also, EB has alternate hosts in all the solanacea family - eggplant, pepper, potato and the nightshade weeds.

I just realized that there are unrotted tomato stalks in my last year's compost pile (last thing added in the fall and not properly covered) and this may be affecting my potato patch as several plants have turned yellow. Doh.

[Labradors2]

Originally Posted by rhines81

For potted tomato plants, even though I hate to do it, I dump all of the pot off-site, soil and everything. One year I had horn worms pretty bad and their moths lay eggs everywhere especially in the potting soil. Dumping the soil took care of a repeat from the year before, although it was at a co$t.

Are you sure about the eggs? Whilst it is possible that there would be pupa in the potting soil, and the 2" long brown pupa would be super easy to spot, I didn't think the moths would lay eggs in the soil, but on the leaves. When caterpillar eggs hatch, they need a food source right away which is why they are usually laid on the underside of leaves.

Linda