Your gardening methods can go a long way toward keeping diseases out of your vegetable and flower patch and away from your fruits and landscape trees:

• Choose disease-resistant plants. Many popular flowers, vegetables, perennials, turf grasses, trees, and shrubs have varieties available that resist common diseases and even some pests.
• Mulch to reduce insects, weeds, and diseases. A thick layer of organic mulch around your garden plants and shrubs keeps weeds from gaining an upper hand. It also helps to maintain consistent soil moisture and temperature, which keeps plant roots healthy and better able to resist disease.
• Choose plants that are adapted to your climate and site. If your soil drains poorly, for example, don’t plant shrubs that require well-drained soil.
• Space and prune plants to provide good air circulation. Fresh air helps leaves dry quickly and thwarts diseases.
• Water the soil, not the plants. Early-morning watering is best because the sun will evaporate any water on the leaves. Avoid evening watering because the foliage will stay wet all night, giving fungus spores a chance to grow and infect plants.
• Avoid working with wet plants because diseases spread easily when the foliage is wet. Many diseases spread through splashed water. Beans, strawberries, raspberries, and other plants are particularly susceptible.
• Avoid excess nitrogen fertilizer. Nitrogen makes plants grow fast and juicy. As a result, the outer layers of the leaves and stems (similar to human skin) that protect the plant are thinner than usual and more susceptible to insect damage.
• Keep your yard clean. Dispose of diseased leaves, fruit, and wood in the garbage, not the compost pile. Keep your yard tidy to discourage pests that live in dead plant debris, log piles, and other hidden places. Some insect pests — such as aphids, bark beetles, and tarnished plant bugs — can spread diseases between plants. Keep them under control, and you’ll help prevent disease.
• Inspect plants frequently. You have a better chance of preventing a serious outbreak if you catch it early. Look for stem and leaf wounds and damage, off-color foliage, wilting, leaf spots, and insects whenever you work among your landscape and garden plants.
• Practice crop rotation. Many insects and diseases live in the soil from one year to the next, waiting for their favorite host plants to return. Foil them by planting something different in each spot each year.

Understanding Disease-Control Methods

Preventing plant stress and environmental imbalances are the most important first steps in controlling disease.  ....read more