Fallen and rotting tomatoes-good for next year's garden?

We had a huge surplus of tomatoes that came in late this year. As such, we have lots of fallen and rotting tomatoes (green and red) in our garden. Should we toss them out-a yucky job- or just turn the soil with them? It is a totollay organic garden and except for one last stalk of celery, some onions and a butternuit squash our garden is done until Spring.

Eliminating the plant material will help cut down on disease issues to next year's crop. A few tomatoes probably won't make much difference. Rotate where you grow them if possible.

teatpuller wrote:Eliminating the plant material will help cut down on disease issues to next year's crop. A few tomatoes probably won't make much difference. Rotate where you grow them if possible.

+1 on the rotation. However, properly composted tomatoes and plants will be fine to use anywhere in your garden.

"properly composted" is easier said than done.

I ended up with a lot of rogue tomato plants all over my garden this year. I can only imagine these came from the previous year's tomatoes that had fall, being taken by squirrels,etc.

The only problem with spading under fallen and leftover tomatoes is the likelihood that seeds will survive the winter and produce volunteer plants the next year. The fruits are unlikely to be a disease vector. Trying to compost the fruits is unlikely to kill the seeds as many will survive temperatures higher than anyone is likely to get in an autumn compost pile. Unless you can have a separate compost pile or bin for tomatoes and their relatives, turning under chopped vines is better than putting remains in your compost.

Rotating the crop is essential for disease control in organic growing with tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant and okra collectively being in the same ground no more frequently than one year in four. Otherwise diseases are likely to build up and require fungicides.

Thanks for all the advice. We have had problems with rogue tomatillos and we think we finally erradicated those. We do not have space for crop rotation.