In your yard, one of the most mystifying things that can happen is when a plant gets a disease. When has it happened? Is it going to spread? Would my plants all die? How will I get rid of this? Anything called the disease triangle is the most important thing to understand about disease prevention (drawing, right).
The disease can only happen when three factors coincide: you have a plant that can get sick (a host), a pathogen that can invade the plant (like a fungus, bacterium, or virus), and environmental conditions that encourage the disease (like humidity or drought).
The disease would not occur if all of these items are not present, so mitigation means knocking at least one side of the triangle out. Rather than waiting in your garden for an issue to pop up, consider consulting a horticulturist for your gardens in Melbourne to be the best defence against disease.
What follows are 10 ways to remove at least one side of the triangle of disease and keep your plants healthy with the right plant selection.
Examine Plants Thoroughly Before Their Sourcing
In your garden, the best way to limit illness is to avoid introducing it in the first place. With a new plant, having a disease is not the kind of bonus that either of us needs. What a good plant should look like is one of the hardest things to remember, making it impossible to know if the one that you want is sick.
Collecting a few books, magazines, and catalogues that display what a healthy specimen looks like is a smart idea. Don’t carry a plant with dead spots, rotted roots, or insects back home. These issues can spread easily to your healthy plants and are often difficult to get rid of once identified.
Use Fully Composted Yard Waste
Not all materials decompose at the same rate in a compost pile. Some products, although others have not, may have deteriorated enough to be placed in the garden. Thorough composting for prolonged periods of time produces high temperatures that actually destroy any pathogens in the material.
Potential diseases can be reintroduced into your garden by contaminated plant debris that has not undergone this process. You should avoid using yard waste as mulch under sensitive plants if you are not aware of the conditions of your compost pile, and avoid putting potentially contaminated debris in your pile.
Your Horticulturist in Melbourne Will Keep An Eye Out For Pests/pathogens
Even if you live in a mild environment, it is still best to clean out the garden in autumn. This is not only an efficient disease deterrent but also a perfect way to manage diseases that are already in your garden.
When they grow in spring, diseases will overwinter on dead leaves and debris and attack the new leaves. Examples of diseases that can be significantly decreased if the dead leaves are cleared away each autumn are the Iris leaf spot, lily leaf streak, and black spot on roses. In order to generate winter interest, if you leave stems and foliage, make sure to eliminate them before new growth begins in spring.
Too many of the same species, can attract specific pests whether insects or pathogens, Diversify.
Start Preparing for Autumn
Even if you live in a mild environment, it is still best to clean out the garden in the autumn. This is not only an efficient disease deterrent but also a perfect way to manage diseases that are already in your garden.
Apply The Proper Fertiliser
As too much of any fertiliser will burn roots and impact soil structure, decreasing their capacity to absorb water, you need to take caution when fertilising plants. This, in fact, renders the plants more vulnerable to drought, cold, and heat stress. Nutrient-hungry plants are smaller and can be seriously affected by leaf spots, while diseases can be fought off by a stronger plant. Another way to impose stress on a plant is an overabundance of a certain nutrient.
With the help of horticulturist for your gardens in Melbourne, you will be provided with reliable information on nutrient levels in your soil by getting a soil test through your local extension office. Without it, it is possible that any feeding of your plants is guesswork on your part and may lead to too much of one nutrient or not enough of another.
Look for Appropriately Immune Plants
Disease-resistant plants are those that can get ill with a specific problem, but instead of succumbing to it they can fend off the disease. For example, some tomatoes are coded as “VFN resistant,” meaning that the variety of tomatoes is resistant to Verticillium and Fusarium fungi and nematodes.
You’ll probably be disappointed if you start searching for these codes on flowers since disease resistance on plant tags is rarely found. This does not mean that various varieties of flower are not disease resistant. Plants that are resistant to diseases such as powdery mildew and black spot are sold by several rose firms.
Nursery workers and fellow gardeners will help you recognise several plants with the best or most resistant varieties. Plants and varieties resistant to specific diseases may also be identified in reference books and catalogues.
Prune Damaged Plants At The Right Time
In late winter, early autumn trimming trees and shrubs is easier than waiting until spring. Over the winter, wounded limbs may become infected, allowing the illness to be produced while the plant is dormant.
Late-winter pruning stops new growth from transmitting disease. While new damage can be caused by late-winter storms, it is still safer to cut back a broken limb than to neglect it until spring is underway. To make clean cuts that heal easily, always use sharp instruments and make sure to cut back to healthy, living tissue. And if this doesn’t help then hiring a qualified horticulturist for your gardens in Melbourne can be beneficial.
Your Horticulturist Will Do The Right Plant Sourcing For your Melbourne
Garden Effective gardening is focused on the use of suitable plants for your area and site and quality stock. Therefore, it’s important have suitable, expert plant sourcing.
Water From Time To Time
It’s a good idea to water your garden, but since many diseases need water just as much as plants do, how you go about it makes a huge difference. To travel, grow, and reproduce, many pathogens in the soil and air need water. Choose watering methods that reduce moisture on the foliage of a plant to avoid giving these diseases an atmosphere they enjoy. Soaker hoses and irrigation by drip or spray, do this. Keep the leaves out of the way if you are watering by hand, while you water the roots.
When leaves are wet, the most common leaf problems are intensified, so the least desirable alternative is overhead sprinkling. However, if you choose this strategy, water at a time when the leaves can dry easily, but before evaporating, the roots still have time to absorb the moisture.
Wrapping Up
You need the right advice – whether it is about reducing pests/pathogens, strengthening plats or rearrangung plants. Book a consultation quote with the help of a horticulturist like Clay Fields Hort from Melbourne.