I have lots of dead plants of course and need to know what I can or should compost and should not. Will the composting process kill diseases? Can I vermicompost the dead plants to kill viruses? Should I simply get rid of the tomato and pepper plants and not chance it? Any other plants I should not compost if there is a disease/virus threat?
None of them have had any that I know of. Just making sure I can compost anything that can get them. Have read and been told not to plant toms, peppers and other virus prone plants in the same place so I thought I would ask if you can tranfer disease through compost even if there was none. So I guess I should ask is it safe to compost anything and everything as long as it doesn't have a disease or virus?
Yes, healthy plants that have given up the ghost are good for the compost pile. Chopping up the bigger ones into smaller pieces (like most tomato and pepper plants) will help them break down more quickly, but isn't absolutely necessary.
I'm kind of funny about putting in the roots of stuff I wouldn't want to grow anywhere, like vines and things. Someone, I think it was Netty, suggested to put the stuff in a black plastic bag for a while to make sure they're good a dead (that sounds awful, doesn't it?) before putting them in the compost. That has worked well.
I have had people make articulate and powerful arguments against building up bacterial and viral tomato diseases by composting spent tomato and pepper plants into composts that will return finished compost back into tomato-pepper growing beds. All that said if you have a non-food or non-tomato bed that they can be sheet composted upon I cannot think (or been told) of a reason why it would hurt your tomatoes. Some folks don't have enough space to rotate crops.
