QUESTION: Can you put cooked potatoes in compost? We’re new to composting and I don’t really understand the difference between cooked and raw. Does it make any difference? – Richard W
ANSWER: Cooked potatoes can be safely used in composting, and potato peelings left over after cooking are an especially popular ingredient. Potatoes will add the nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium to your compost.
However, cooked potatoes can be very attractive to the kinds of pest animals you don’t want stopping by to visit your compost in, so make sure not to simply drop the potatoes in and let them stay on top of the pile. Instead, bury the potatoes a bit so they’re underneath a layer of other materials. This trick will hide their scent from any opportunistic wildlife like rodents, or even your own dog! Pets can figure it out pretty quickly if there are tasty treats in your pile.
Before adding potatoes or bits of potatoes to your compost, you need to be absolutely certain they don’t carry potato blight, or you risk passing the disease on to your crops. Look for dark patches on your potatoes, or eventually, spoilage that starts at surface level with the skin and progresses toward the center.
If these are potatoes that you bought at the grocery store, you don’t have any worries here. It’s just when you are composting plants that have come out of your own garden, you want to make sure to avoid composting diseased plants because they can often cause the disease to spread.