I live in an apartment and I gather dried leaves from the sidewalk for composting. But some of these dried leaves look like they are diseased. Can they be used in a compost pile ? Picking them out will be very time consuming.

I wouldn't worry about it.

If your compost gets hot enough rumor has it that the heat will kill off the disease, fungus, etc.

It will and if it gets real, real hot, can start a fire.
Avoid the latter.

RpR said:It will and if it gets real, real hot, can start a fire.
Avoid the latter.

I wanna see the fire.

I did look to see if there were any examples of compost catching on fire, but It appears that is mostly a problem at commercial sites that have huge amounts of materials or things that can be fairly tightly compressed like hay. It does not appear to be a problem home gardeners have to worry about.

Seedfork said:I did look to see if there were any examples of compost catching on fire, but It appears that is mostly a problem at commercial sites that have huge amounts of materials or things that can be fairly tightly compressed like hay. It does not appear to be a problem home gardeners have to worry about.

I love composting and usually say I garden to compost. I've been watching composting videos on YouTube for a while. I LOVE watching the commercial site videos. Really cool to see some of the vehicles, like the compost aeration/watering vehicles. Very happy to see these operations being done. My guess is that fires happen at the facilities that have large tall piles rather than the facilities that use long rows.

The pile in my home town caught fire forty some years ago.
It was burning so hot they did not know just what too do till they finally had some one take the largest bucket loader, a truly big one, and drive right through the middle, or as close to the middle as he could get, of it as fast as he could go.
They had pushed some of the brush piles near it away.
They would have just let it burn itself out but as it was by brush piles and flames were shooting tens of feet into the air already as some of the wood had caught fire.
They wanted to move it away from the brush piles or it would have burnt for days.
After it was some what spread out they let it burn itself out, which it did till there was really nothing but ashes.

This was, at the time, outside the city limits so no houses were threatened, in a wild woody sloughy area where the city dump once was but that had been filled in a covered a decade earlier.
Had it gotten to the slough, it would have been nasty as it could have started a fire that would have followed the river which had heavily wooded brushy shores for miles; this was also during a dryer set of years.
Where the compost pile was was also where human waste was hauled from the waste treatment site in winter.
They were glad they had hauled the manure away to farm sites as had that pile been there generating gas, it would have been a real mess, and quite stinky also
One summer I worked for the city and I drove one of the dump trucks hauling that slop to the fields for dumping.
Now they have high tech site built where the piles used to be , but they still have brush and compost piles but the site is manned full time and is no longer just a unmanned brush dump.

RpR said:The pile in my home town caught fire forty some years ago.
It was burning so hot they did not know just what too do till they finally had some one take the largest bucket loader, a truly big one, and drive right through the middle, or as close to the middle as he could get, of it as fast as he could go.
They had pushed some of the brush piles near it away.
They would have just let it burn itself out but as it was by brush piles and flames were shooting tens of feet into the air already as some of the wood had caught fire.
They wanted to move it away from the brush piles or it would have burnt for days.
After it was some what spread out they let it burn itself out, which it did till there was really nothing but ashes.

This was, at the time, outside the city limits so no houses were threatened, in a wild woody sloughy area where the city dump once was but that had been filled in a covered a decade earlier.
Had it gotten to the slough, it would have been nasty as it could have started a fire that would have followed the river which had heavily wooded brushy shores for miles; this was also during a dryer set of years.
Where the compost pile was was also where human waste was hauled from the waste treatment site in winter.
They were glad they had hauled the manure away to farm sites as had that pile been there generating gas, it would have been a real mess, and quite stinky also
One summer I worked for the city and I drove one of the dump trucks hauling that slop to the fields for dumping.
Now they have high tech site built where the piles used to be , but they still have brush and compost piles but the site is manned full time and is no longer just a unmanned brush dump.

Ah I wonder if the pile had built up some methane and that's what cause the initial fire. I don't know how hot commercial compost piles get, and it would depend on the height and materials, etc. So forget all that thought. I researched. So commercial piles can get pretty darn hot. When the pile isn't turned, the pile dries out, hot temps = kindling point = flame = fire.

Now that I think about it, I seem to recall some horse stable owners telling me that their manure piles would actually catch on fire as well. Mostly the same reason. I've gotten some manure that is like dry than the sahara. I could see compost piles catching on fire.

I'm guessing that if you live in an apartment, collecting leaves on the street, your compost pile is going to be nowhere near the size it takes to get hot. And compost piles with just brown leaves don't get very hot. I'd be willing to guess, however, that whatever disease was affecting your trees won't be affecting your bedded plants.

Decay is a part of composting, Autumnal leaves are breaking down as is their wont.

Leaves often have earthworm eggs in it.

All of the above is about as providential as can be (ie good).

Leaves have earthworm eggs on them? None that I've ever seen. Earthworm eggs are in the soil where earthworms live.