Chop-and-drop is a great way to deal with your dead vegetables. I have written about this before but I wanted to take a moment to answer some common questions that I get on this topic. Often these questions focus on people who are worried about garden pests. Let’s dive into these questions!
First though, make sure to check out these 2 blog posts all about chop-and-drop.
Ready to go? Okay now what about pests?
Pests and Chop-and-Drop
When you look at the results of chop-and-drop it makes sense that pests and disease could be an issue. Let’s look at the potential concerns. But I do want to note that often the lifeforms that help decompose dead plants do not affect living plants.
Chop-and-drop as mulch: As a mulch chop-and-drop material creates a relatively moist environment that critters like slugs, snails and other pests like. But I have found in my own garden that this environment also supports a lot of predators of these same pests. This has resulted in a balance between the pests and predators which at least in my garden results in less not more pest issues.
Chop-and-dropping diseased plants: So you are cutting your dead vegetables and you find a plant suffering from some sort of disease. In some cases I don’t worry about this—some diseases like powdery mildew are so present in the environment that it will be in the environment regardless of if I chop-and-drop or not. But in other cases you may want to remove the diseased material and hot compost it or just remove the plant material in some extreme situations. I would look up any diseases you come across and see if removing infected plant material is recommended or not before chop-and-dropping the infected plants.
Your Thoughts?
So what do you think? Have you had disease issues on your vegetables? How have you dealt with it? Please leave a comment with your thoughts!
Also, if you're new to the idea of chop-and-drop don't forget to check out these blog posts:
Thank you!
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I just wrote a post on that for our blog and am adapting it to Steemit. Good to know someone we loves the technique
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Great to hear! :) I love seeing people promoting topics like this!
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Definitely about to chop and drop my broad beans... I have stuffed myself silly with them!
Hehe, nice! :) I need to get around and do some more chop-and-dropping to clean up some plants that have died back from the frost. Got to build up the mulch layer a bit more!
I had started doing that 2 years ago and have not had any issues. This year I raised my raised bed another board higher and have been filling it with all my garden waste, egg cartons, leaves and kitchen scraps. It is breaking down nicely and has settled a lot. So come spring I will have to add a lot more compost to reach the top of the board.