Preventing Plant Disease

Plant disease can spread by wind, insects, or water. While it’s impossible to control these factors, there is one simple, and important thing you can do to prevent plant disease- keep the garden clean. What does that mean?

Rake up debris. Fungi and bacteria can live in dead or diseased plant tissue for a long time. A diseased leaf can blow across the yard, and spread that ailment to a healthy part of the garden. Rain splashes infection from the ground onto healthy leaves. So keep leaves, twigs and dead flowers cleaned up, especially under a diseased plant. DO NOT compost infected tissue. Throw it away.

Prune. Cut away dead or diseased twigs, limbs, flowers and fruit, and throw them away so that they cannot spread fungus spores or bacteria. Use a bypass pruner on live tissue. It will make a clean cut, causing less damage to the branch, which helps keep disease from invading. Pruning Sealer is another way protect pruning wounds.
Clean your Tools. When you are finished working, clean your tools thoroughly before putting them away. Never go from an infected plant to a healthy one without changing gloves and cleaning your tools.

Keeping your tools clean, and your garden beds debris free will go a long way to keeping your garden healthy and disease free.

Felco F2 Bypass Pruner