Tomatoes - End of season
Tomsk
Posts: 204
My vines look like they're done for the year, with rot and blight creeping in everywhere.
Is there a right way to handle vines once you're finished with them? Since you don't grow the same vines again the next year, I don't suppose it matters if you cut down all the foliage, unlike bulbs and tubers?
But within the soil will be a huge tangle of roots, so should I just leave them to rot or do they need manually removing if I want to plant things in the same planter next year?
I remember trying to plant new flowers in an old window box once, and in the end I had to empty all the soil into the compost bin because it was just a mass of roots from previous flowers. There's too much soil in my planter to empty it, so I have to work with the soil already inside it.
Posts
If you have got blight in your tomato vines definitely do not put them on the compost bin.
Cut the vines off leaving about 3-4 inches of stem above the soil (ie enough to grasp) and after a few weeks you'll be able to easily pull most of the root-ball out. The smaller roots in the soil will soon rot away completely. I have soil borders in my greenhouse and do this every year. I also replace the top few inches with multi-purpose compost annually as the tomatoes will have used up most of the nutrients in it.
Either burn the vines or put them in household rubbish if they have had blight.