Put citrus fruit into the composter
Q. Can downed critus fruit be thrown into the composter? Love your website!
A. I’m delighted to hear you like my website, especially since it gives me a way to communicate with gardeners like you.
It’s absolutely fine to add citrus fruit to the compost pile, but it’s best to pick up fallen fruit frequently. If you do that, you may find that some of your fallen fruit is still good to eat. Wash off the skin and cut it open to see. When fallen fruit lies on the ground too long, however, especially in wet weather, it can cause spores to splash up on the tree from the ground below. This may cause brown rot to strike the otherwise healthy fruit still hanging on the tree.
Once you add the fallen fruit to the compost pile it will rot quickly and no harm will be done to the compost. Any decomposition that has begun will simply join into the merry microbial mix that brings about the happy miracle of compost. “Glorious rot” I used to call it. Partially rotted citrus actually seems to help heat up the pile and does no apparent harm to the finished product. Fruit that is whole and unblemished, however, might not rot, so bash it with a sharp spade or stick your compost fork in it. I’ve done that and had to use my boot to shove it off again. Citrus rinds alone that you’ve juiced in the kitchen and added to the pile without the meat in the center, may take longer to decompose. Chop up the rinds before composting them so they can rot more quickly.
Hi Pat;
Love your web site updates. I really enjoyed seeing your granddaughters blog, and Archer in the Fairy garden. Can’t wait to see more of it! Is that mood moss?
Herbally yours,
Aenne
I am so glad you enjoy my website as well as Girls Gone Child, one of the websites of my talented granddaughter Rebecca Woolf. Regarding the “Fairy Garden”, my friend and Master Garden Volunteer Denise, helped me put a large Mexican terra-cotta pot upside down with drainage hole facing up. On this we placed a large dish-shaped pot—also terra-cotta. I already had these pots. I placed a piece of broken crockery over the drainage hole of the top one and filled with potting soil, mounding the potting soil in the middle and keeping the sides low. Then we placed a whole flat of Irish moss on top of the potting soil and shoved the edges down tightly into the pot all around the edges, cutting and fitting here and there. The final touch was to add the fairies and the toadstools that I purchased at a local nursery, that seem quite weather resistant so far. I find fish emulsion to be the best fertilizer.
We made this arrangement while my 3-year-old great-daughter, Anushka, was still visiting us from Spain with her parents, Yvette and Ivan. Rebecca’s and Hal’s kids, my great grandchildren Archer, age 4, and Fable, age 18 months, who live in Hollywood, are enjoying it also. But Archer most enjoys running around on the paths and steps in my garden. I enjoy making my garden a special destination for them and for the grandchildren of friends who live in my neighborhood. My next project is a Hobbit garden, with some Hobbit houses in it. (See photos of the fairy garden at Nana’s house—i.e.:me— on Rebecca’s blog.)
I tell my garden clients to keep in mind how big their compost area is, with relation to how much citrus should be added.
If you are doing worm composting in a container, one orange can add quite a bit of acid to the mix. Not as much to be concerned about in a decent size outdoor compost bin.
You think?
Jeff
What do you think about peaches that have fallen from the tree affected by brown rot. Will the compost destroy any spores or could I be spreading the brown rot when I eventually use it. Mary
Don’t put peaches with brown rot into compost. Few people keep compost hot nor toss and turn it enough to keep all parts hot. Even then there is no guarantee such treatment would kill brown rot on peaches. Put fruit infected with brown rot into the trash.