Disease and Insect Control, Part 1

The one thing I hate about vegetable gardening in Georgia is fighting disease and bugs in the summer. If you are growing your vegetables at home, you won't have nearly the disease and bug pressure that we do at the Community Garden.

If you use the proper chemical at the correct time and use the correct amount you will increase your success.

Of course, you will have even better success if you use IPM (Integrated Pest Management) techniques. Healthy soil. Healthy plants  Watch for bugs. Hand pick bugs when there are only a few. When the numbers get too high, then use the correct pesticide but not too much.

At the Community garden, we have an organic garden and use Serenade or Actinovate for plant diseases and AzaMax for our pesticide. All these products can be ordered through Amazon. Early in the season the prices are much better than during peak demand times.  Pike's does carry a small bottle of Serenade that is premixed and ready to spray. This is economical if you have a small garden or while your plants are small. If you have a large garden, it is more economical to get the large bottle of concentrate.

The sprayer we use is a Flo Master from Home Depot. It holds
a half gallon of mixed chemical and is easy to use.

 As for disease in the garden...well....it is easy for it to spread like wildfire so a good offense is an excellent defense. With as much rain as we've been having, conditions are ripe for all the different blights that affect tomatoes as well as powdery mildew attacking the cucumbers and squashes.

Since the chemicals we use are water soluble,  they wash off after frequent rains or if the rain was especially heavy. The AzaMax does stay a bit longer than the Serenade and Actinovate. Generally, spraying every 7 to 10 days is the recommended time frame. But if you spray on Day 1 and it then rains for 5 days straight, you should spray again as all your chemical has washed off.

Part Two will have the  mixing instructions that we use at the garden.

Vicki - Bed 41