Extension Communications
3614 Administrative Services Building
Ames, Iowa 50011-3614
(515) 294-9915
11/2/98
Contacts:
Mark Gleason, Extension Plant Pathology, (515) 294-0579
Elaine Edwards, Extension Communications Systems, (515)
294-5168
Yard and Garden Column for the Week Beginning Nov. 6
Garden Cleanup: Bag, Bury Or Burn
By Mark Gleason
Extension plant pathologist
Iowa State University Extension
No point in denying it anymore -- the 1998 garden season is gone. There's nothing like a killing frost to punctuate the end for plants; if they're not underground or indoors by now, they're toast. But before we switch to building birdhouses or reading seed catalogs, let's spend a moment imagining next year's garden. As nice as 1998's garden was, 1999's will be even better, we fondly hope. Here are a few simple things you can do now to make that hope come true.
We had more than our share of rain in 1998, and more than our share of garden disease problems. Sorry to dredge up traumatic memories, but remember how sick the tomatoes became? After the rainiest June in Iowa in 60 years, it was straight downhill for many tomato gardens; some had no green leaves at all by early August. How about blighted peonies? Or irises? Or roses? It was a great year to be a fungus.
Before forgetting the frightening fungi of '98, let's focus on keeping them out of the garden in '99. Now is the time to get back to the scene of the crime, your garden, and get revenge. The last thing you want to do is encourage these repulsive little microbes. Yes, they're still out there, slouching like sullen street punks, waiting for another chance to ruin something.
You can take your garden back, and banish these microbial punks, with a thorough garden cleanup. The key word is thorough. Many disease-causing fungi hang out in dead plant tissue. They bid their time through snow and ice until the green plants return, when the fungi wake up and terrorize the garden all over again. When you take away the dried plants, you save your garden from early attacks next year. Sure, rotating plant types in the garden also can be helpful, but most of the backyard gardens I've seen are just too small to make rotation very meaningful.
Let's do the tomatoes first. Pull up the plants by the roots, then rake up and collect any straggling tomato tissue on the soil, stakes or cages. You just removed about 99 percent of the Septoria leaf spot and early blight fungi waiting for your tomatoes next year. Now the peonies -- cut all the fronds at soil line, then rake the peony bed clean. Ditto for the German (bearded) irises because a clean iris bed now means less risk from iris leaf spot and iris borer next year. And while you're at it, try to rake the rose bed clean, too (easier said than done with all those entangling thorns, but possible).
Now that you've removed the bad guys, what should you do with them? Burning is a very effective fungicide -- if your town's laws and your neighbors' smoke sensitivity (or your own) will allow it. Alternatively, you can bury the plant debris with soil but don't dig it up next year. Or you can compost it, but only if you have that rarest of rarities, a true compost pile. I'm talking about a compost pile like the ones pictured in gardening magazines with layers of soil and fertilizer, which you water faithfully and turn regularly to encourage adequate heating to destroy microbes. If you, like almost everyone else including me, can't be bothered with all this labor, your "compost pile" is merely an organic mulch pile, which doesn't develop much heat. In fact, it preserves rather than destroys disease organisms.
If you can't burn or bury, and true composting is an impossible dream, consider transporting sick plants off your property to the town dump or composting facility. I'm as gung-ho as anyone when it comes to recycling yard waste on my property, except when it comes to disease-sheltering garden waste. Then I make an exception, and pay the garbage haulers to take away a few bags of the sick stuff. It's worth it to me to realize that I just made life easier and more productive for next year's garden.
Why bother with yard cleanup this fall with football games on TV all weekend? The answer is that you can do an effective job now, but not in the spring. As someone who has occasionally procrastinated until the snow fell, I can testify that spring cleaning is a seriously wimpy disease-control practice. Failure to act now allows the fungi to survive the winter safe and sound in their plant-debris beds, smack in the middle of your garden. The other problem is that garden-plant debris becomes brittle and crispy over the winter, to the point where it merely crumbles as you futilely try to rake it. If you gather up the garden now, on the other hand, the pieces still stick together, and more of the bad guys are banished from the garden.
The name for this practice, sanitation, it as humble as
the activity itself. But a few minutes' sanitation now will
repay you with weeks and months of disease suppression next
year. You'll save money on chemical fungicides, and enjoy a
better-looking and more productive garden. And sanitation
can provide a rare opportunity to revenge yourself on those
miserable fungal parasites. As you feed your sick tomato
plants into the blaze, you can almost hear tiny fungi
shrieking....
ml: isugarden
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