Biologist Leena Luoto fights against entrenched, wrong advice. Composting is the best solution for apples with mummy disease, as the spores do not spread in the soil.
If a home gardener has fruit trees, he has hardly avoided coming across apple or plum mummy disease.
First, brown spots appear on the fruit. Then a mold-like growth appears in the middle of the spots, from which white spore pollen spreads. It is a fungus called Monilia fructigena.
Many home gardeners believe that mummy disease spreads through the soil, and therefore the fruit should either be burned or put in mixed waste in the waste collection container. This is not the case at all.
There is no reason to warn against composting mummy apples.
Luoto also maintains a popular Facebook account called *For the best of the garden*. He knows the chaos of the social media world, how things can easily go their own way there.
– Burning vegetable matter is no longer the time. Now, the aim is to turn all organic matter into soil, not to throw it into the wind.
Leena Luodo has an apt saying related to nature’s own cycle.
– What nature produces, nature can accommodate. Yes, nature itself processes matter.
Excellent soil raw material
So mummy disease is not spread in the soil, but it happens through the air.
– When the fruit has sprung on the tree with a brown and white surface, it has already spread spores. Airspace cannot be closed, Luoto reminds.
Leena Luoto wants to hammer home one thing into every home gardener’s head.
– Composting is a great way to get rid of mummy-infected apples or plums. In a good harvest year, there can be a lot of them.
The Martta organization also speaks in favor of composting, whose website has detailed instructions for disposing of apple waste.
There are only a few popular publications about mummy disease. Information is thin, and misunderstandings are repeated.
– If the mummy fruits are carefully placed in the compost and covered with leaves or soil, the rotting fungi and bacteria of the compost will take over the fungal mycelium of the rotting mummy disease. When the compost has matured for a year or two, the whole mummy fruit has turned into water, carbon dioxide and soil, Luoto explains.
If it is not possible to compost in your own yard, you should ask the municipality what is the bio-waste processing procedure there. Many municipalities accept garden waste free of charge.
Small environmental actions
Due to climate change, you should remember that when you compost leaves or shred them on the lawn against winter, you bind carbon at the same time.
– People could also start appreciating leaves and mummy apples if there was a carbon sequestration index for garden waste, says Leena Luoto.
So even home gardeners can do environmental things?
– Everyone in the garden can influence climate change and carbon sequestration.
*You can discuss the topic* *with Yle ID* *25. until 11 p.m. in September.*