In This Issue
• Plant Disease, Disarray, Tear Down and Rebuild
• Sharing Epicurious’ Guide to Food Garden Books
Disease, Disarray, Tear Down and Rebuild — Indoors and Out
A Seasons of Change Farmer Story
Our apartment building neighbor Jill Tessler has been providing interesting and useful information about growing food indoors since shortly after Local Food Forum launched. In her latest installment, Jill broadens her scope to discuss how to deal with signs of plant disease in your garden — whether indoors or out.
Sometimes plant ailments are small and localized and can simply be snipped away. At other times they may endanger a whole plant or, worse, be contagious and threaten other plants as well. In the article below, Jill provides helpful ideas for how to deal with these situations, both physically and emotionally.
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Gardens require tending and will tell you about your own tending style, including in times of duress. The first signs of disease in a garden are a checking point. Have you been listening to your plants consistently? Is there any neglect that simply needs to be cared for?
But when you make adjustments and the signs persist, a great deal of emotion sets in. Fear that your garden is in peril and it may be beyond your control. Sadness that your previously healthy plants are suffering, and other personal emotions about responsibility and care. It will take emotion, energy and effort to rescue your affected community members.
Mild disease sometimes responds to attentive pruning, gently cutting away anything that doesn’t look fully vibrant, while leaving enough tissue behind for healing. Most plants need a minimum amount of leaves in order to make enough sugar to grow new parts.
Grooming and pruning are on spectrum, with grooming being more gentle and pruning being more aggressive. Both are normal aspects of maintaining the health of your garden through various conditions and seasons: Grooming needs arise regularly on a daily/weekly basis, while pruning is often necessary for seasonal dormancy states. Both can be enjoyable, but pruning for disease if the condition is unknown can be a more anxiety-laden affair until things look like they are turning around.
Disease that is consuming a large portion of a plant is problematic. Disease that is clearly affecting numerous plants or spreading plant to plant is very problematic as it is signs of large-scale environmental problems (which are typically obvious, like a heat wave or wildlife discovering your bounty) or a contagion.
In the event of contagions, regardless if the disease is a pest or a blight, the community needs to be assessed and treated as a whole. This can mean quarantining all plants with any identifiable signs until complete response to treatment can be confirmed.
Depending on the condition, it may be best to destroy all symptomatic plants. It may even be best to do a global teardown, and replace all contaminated soil and substrates.
These decisions can be challenging to make because of the difficulty assessing the cause and scope of the problem, because of your emotional attachment to certain plants that you may not wish to destroy even if they are showing clear signs of disease, etc. Getting objective support from a plant-wise friend, from an online plant-knowledgeable community, or from an app that can act as plant doctor using photos of your patients are all good ways to get support and objectivity about what needs to be done.
Although it is never easy tear down things you’ve been spending time and energy fostering, watching disease consume organisms unchecked is typically sadder and more painful. You may have to remind yourself that the short-term discomfort of pruning, eliminating plants, or even tearing down a garden can, in time, be replaced again with the joy of new growth.
Sharing Epicurious’ Guide to Food Garden Books
While we’re on the subject of gardening… We at Local Food Forum think growing your own food gardens is a great idea (even if living on an upper floor of a highrise limits our options). The Epicurious food site recently published a guide to books for those who are starting food gardens, and we decided it might be useful to some readers to share it.
The titles and authors are below. Click the button to access the full Epicurious story.
• Grow Cook Nourish by Darina Allen
• Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control by Jessica Walliser
• Container Gardening Complete: Creative Projects for Growing Vegetables and Flowers in Small Spaces by Jessica Walliser
• Tender Vol. I: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch by Nigel Slater
• The New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman
• The Truth About Organic Gardening by Jeff Gillman
• Weedless Gardening and The Pruning Book by Lee Reich