It is very frustrating when you spend all your time looking after your garden, encouraging a flower to grow; only to see it destroyed by pest and disease problems.
Fortunately there are steps you can take to prevent these issues from happening.
Professional Help
It’s important to acknowledge that sometimes you do need professional help to get rid of pests. You may be surprised by the variety of services exterminators provide. Take a look at this to find out more.
The professionals can do more than just fix issues. They can identify them before they happen and help you to identify potential problems before they happen.
Vigilance
It is also important to stay vigilant when keeping your plants healthy. Many pests are very small and can be easily overlooked until they have multiplied several times.
By keeping a close eye on your plants you’ll be able to spot problems early which will make it much easier to deal with.
Cut It Out
If your plant does have a disease then you need to remove the section of the plant or, if necessary the entre plant. It is better to lose one plant than to have the disease spread to all the other plants.
Don’t forget that if you remove a diseased plant it needs to be disposed of away from your garden. Adding it to the compost pile will simply encourage it to spread when you use the compost in the future.
Clean It
A clean tool can help you to minimize disease. Contaminated soil or simply dirty tools will attract bacteria which can be harmful to your plants. You can introduce a wide variety of disease through plant maintenance.
You also need to wash your hands before handling plants; they don’t generally take well to human bacteria and diseases.
Sulfur Candles
A great idea for your greenhouse is to light a sulfur candle. The smoke will slowly fill your greenhouse and kill pests as well as fungal spores.
Of course this is not so effective in an open space.
Spacing
When plants have spaces between them there is a decreased chance of diseases and pests crossing between them. This means paying attention when you plant and pruning to ensure every plant has its own space.
Netting
Some pests are a little larger, such as mice and even birds. They may want to attack your plants and eat any produce they have.
Netting across the top of the plants is an effective method of keeping many of these pests out without restricting their sunlight.
Equally if you have growing plants then it is important to use trellis to get your plants to grow upwards and away from pests and diseases.
Herbs
If you have an issue with ants or other insects eating your plants then you can put crushed mint round them or even surround them with fresh mint plants. This will deter many pests as they don’t like the smell.
Other effective herbs include citronella and lemongrass.
