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 2 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.
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How to Chop-and-Drop Your Dead Vegetables
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Chop-and-Drop: A Quick and Easy Way to Abundance
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.
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!
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:
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How to Chop-and-Drop Your Dead Vegetables
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Chop-and-Drop: A Quick and Easy Way to Abundance
While you are over on the first of those 2 blog posts (the new one) make sure to leave a comment! If you are the first to do so you will get a piece of pie!
The pie will get you access to some special features on perimes, discounts at some vendors, and you can use it to purchase some products on the permies digital marketplace.
If you leave a comment on the
more recent of the 2 blog posts make sure to leave a post here on permies too so I can easily give you the slice of pie.
Thank you!