Vegetable Gardening Guide - Keeping a Disease Free Garden

Having a vegetable garden also means that you will need to be on top of the situation - when it comes to checking and ensuring that your vegetables are disease free. It is an ongoing process to keep the fruits of your labor free from potential threats. Here are a few tips you can use.

With any type of gardening, it all begins with good soil preparation and choosing the right seeds. Also try to select the healthiest looking plants when transplanting. Immediate removal of diseased plants will protect your other vegetables as well.

Proper watering practices will help as well. You should give the plants moisture early to allow them time to dry before the sun sets. Careful watering can benefit your plants in a number of ways. If a plant is diseased, and water splashes from it to another plant, it could spread that disease. Think about how a cold is spread from a sneezing person to someone else. Spacing your plants properly should help reduce this possibility.

Viruses can be spread from plant to plant in many ways. Some are spread by insects, so controlling them will aid you in disease control. Other animals, as well as humans can spread harmful diseases among your plants as well. An example of this is tobacco mosaic virus, which can be spread by a gardener's gloves or possibly on the legs of animals that walk through your garden.

Maintaining a tight check on weeds will help to lower the chances of diseases. This improves the health, as well as the beauty of your garden. Many organisms can move to your vegetables from the weeds they are so fond of. They are also transferable via other medium such as air, water and living organisms like bugs.

Knowing which diseases to look for on certain plants will give you a head start.

Lettuce mold will show up as a rotted wet spot at the base when the edges are touching the ground. The white mold is called Sclerotinia, and the gray is Botrytis. Remove the affected areas, or if it's too bad, take out the entire plant.

Lettuce is also prone to the spinach mosaic virus. It will start with mottled looking leaves that, later, turn yellow. It begins to look limp and will droop. Some varieties are more resistant to this disease than others, so keep that in mind.

Wilting or rotting of asparagus may be caused by something called Fusarium. The shoots will begin to turn yellow and the spears will be spindly. Discolored and rotted roots may also show up. Remove the affected plants as necessary. The Puccinia fungus will cause another problem with asparagus called rust. Red spots on the shoots and spears will indicate this problem. Excess watering is sometimes the cause of this.

Tomatoes are commonly susceptible to blight and leaf spots, as well as others. Especially in cool summers, these diseases will usually show up by mid August. Certain soil fungi are common to only tomatoes. The roots of walnut trees sometimes carry a toxin that is potentially dangerous to nearby tomatoes. Making sure the leaves are dry before nightfall will help reduce this.

Knowing what to look for and how to avoid it will help you produce large and healthy crops.