Vegetable Gardening: Effective Disease Control Methods

Vigilance is required to keep your vegetable garden free from disease. Using a broad-based effort that combines various methods makes this chore easier.

Begin with good soil preparation and proper seed selection. If you transplant, picking healthy plants will keep disease from being introduced and spread. Remove any diseased plant before it can infect others nearby.

Water at appropriate times, usually early in the day. That gives the leaves a chance to dry before nighttime temperatures set in. Watering practices can influence the spread of disease in other ways. Water splashed off one plant onto another exposes the ones nearby to any disease the first carries. It’s similar to being near a person with a cold who sneezes into the air. Even rainfall will produce the same effect to some degree. Space your plants out.

Viruses are spread by other forms of contact, too. Insects may carry them from one to the next. So, keeping the insect population under control provides benefits beyond preventing them from eating your plants. But animals and gardeners can spread them, as well. Tobacco mosaic virus may be spread from the gardener’s glove and on the legs of rabbits, for example.

Keeping the garden well weeded will lower the prospect of disease. Keeping the area attractive turns out to have health benefits, as well. Many organisms thrive on weeds, then move onto your vegetables. They can be carried by wind, insect, water movement and other means.

Controlling various disease can be helped if you are able to identify the signs of these diseases.

Lettuce mold appears as a wet rot at the base when the outer edges touch the ground. The Sclerotinia mold is white and Botrytis mold is gray. Removal of the mold by removing the infected sections, or an entire plant, can help keep the problem down.

Leafy vegetables commonly encounter spinach mosaic virus as well. In this case, leaves become mottled, and may later turn yellow. The plant appears wilted and stunted. Choosing resistant varieties can eliminate this problem altogether.

Fusarium can cause asparagus to wilt or rot. The spears look spindly and shoots may become yellow. The roots may rot and become discolored. Eliminate the infected plants by thinning the crop. Another common problem with asparagus is rust, cause by Puccinia fungus. Red spots appear on the shoots of spears. This fungus may survive through the winter. Prevent rust by avoiding excessive watering.

Other conditions that affect tomatoes are leaf spots and blight. If the summer has been cool, these will usually appear by mid-August. There are also fungi in the soil that can affect tomatoes. The roots of walnut trees can carry a harmful toxin to tomato plants. Dark concentric rings will appear on leaves with this condition. Allowing the leaves to dry before sunset will help you prevent these problems.

You will optimize your chances of a healthy, abundant crop if you can recognize and treat the signs of disease in the early stages.