Should you compost your tomato plants?

Yes, compost everything -- you want to return all possible nutrients to your soil.  No, composting tomatoes spreads disease and weeds.

I'm ambivalent.  One the one hand, I don't usually have much trouble with diseased tomato plants.  I struggle mightily with insects, but haven't had much tomato blight or viral problems.  On the other hand, the old vines take forever to break down in my compost pile.  And I know for a fact that my compost doesn't get hot enough.

If I were trying to grow tomatoes from seeds, I'd never have any success.  But they are always popping up in the compost, after I've diligently spread it all around my garden.  Picture those huge, sprawling cherry tomato plants all over the garden!

Experts say you can safely compost tomato plants, even diseased ones, if you're confident that your compost pile reaches temperatures of 150 degrees, and you cure it long enough for all the plant material to completely die.  The worst of the tomato diseases, like late blight, cannot survive without a living host.  So in theory, if your compost-making process is perfect, disease won't be a problem.

If, like me, you don't have disease problems, go ahead and compost your old tomato plants.  My seedlings are as likely to come from kitchen waste as they are from garden debris.

Here's a good explanation of the tomato-composting issue.

On My Knees, Weeding Not Praying

I've spent the past two days on my knees in the front yard, removing what I suspect is Proso Millet from the lawn.  I have to confess, the weeds are so thick and so uniform that I was on the point of accusing a certain 7-year-old person in my house of actually putting birdseed in the spreader and broadcasting it.  I couldn't understand why we had so many of them and why they were so regularly distributed.  We do feed the birds, spending our pocket change on birdseed of all sorts, but we always have, and never have we had such an infestation.

Then it occurred to me that the weed population must have something to do with the unusually severe winter we had here.  This has been a banner spring for weeds!  Proso millet in particular germinates and begins to grow when soil temperatures warm to 55 degrees.  That happened here about a month ago.  On the other hand, St. Augustinegrass doesn't really kick in until the soil temperatures are above 60 degrees, particularly after such a long dormancy.  Right now, soil temperatures are between 65 and 70 degrees so the lawns are greening up, but I'm having to overcome the weeds' head start.  In a normal spring, the soil temperatures must warm fast enough to allow the lawn to crowd out the millet.  Not this year!

So, two days on my knees was long enough to receive a tiny bit of enlightenment and keep my daughter out of the doghouse.

Here's a link to a soil temperature map I like.

You can access historical data about Texas soils here.