Home Gardening

Prepare vegetable gardens for spring planting
The Coast Gardener Newspaper and Web Column - January 26, 2002

With this past Wednesday's warm temperatures, gardeners are thinking about planting their spring gardens. A gardener recently told me that he plants his Irish potatoes around Mardi Gras. This is one of the few veggies that can be planted during late winter. It is, however, a good time to begin preparing your garden sites for planting.

One of the best defenses again vegetable diseases is sanitation. In other words, the removal of crop debris from last season helps to keep disease outbreaks lower during the growing season. Many diseases and even insects live throughout the winter in decaying organic material. Many crops such as cabbage, green beans and tomatoes will be less susceptible to disease.

Removing such vegetation should be an annual project at the end of every growing season. It pays to remove old roots as well, especially if root-knot nematodes (microscopic, worm-like organisms) were a problem. These nematodes produce tumor-like galls on root systems, and removing them will remove a large percentage of the population in your garden.

Composting vegetation is a good practice unless it is diseased. Temperatures in compost piles many not get high enough to kill eggs and other disease organisms. Composting is an excellent practice to break down disease-free vegetation, as it produces a nice, organic supplement for your garden.

Vegetation remaining in the garden should be plowed or tilled under the soil to a depth of six inches or so. This reduced the number of disease-causing organisms, called pathogens, from infecting your new crop.

Plowing to bury debris is an effective way to reduce the amount of southern blight on tomatoes, peppers, and other susceptible vegetables. Southern blight sclerotia (dark brown to tan colored reproductive structures about the size of mustard seed) are formed on diseased stalks. These structures can remain near the soil surface unless they are turned under during deep plowing.

In fact, sclerotia can survive in the soil for seven years or longer. Preventing disease outbreaks can be drastically reduced through the simple procedure of turning under garden topsoil.

Another important disease preventative is disinfecting your tomato stakes or bean poles. Plant support structures such as these can harbor disease-causing organisms during the time the structures are not in use.

Such structures should be washed thoroughly to remove soil and disinfected by washing or spraying them with a 10 percent bleach solution prior to reuse. One gallon of bleach added to nine gallons of water is effective against most pathogens.

Some diseases such as damping off of seedlings can be prevented if well-drained soil is used for planting. This is especially true for those of you who like to take your chances and plant early in the hopes of an early harvest.

If drainage is a problem, plant on raised beds to promote drainage and faster warming of soil. Faster seed germination and seedling emergence encourage young plants that are more resistant to early season diseases. In addition, transplanted seedlings are more resistant to root diseases when grown in raised reds.

Take advantage of the warm daytime temperatures to get your garden site off to a good start. Your reward will be a bountiful harvest of delicious vegetables this spring and summer.

These archived gardening columns were written by Chance McDavid, former Harrison County Extension Agent.