Healthy soil, healthy plants! Discover the secrets to building and maintaining thriving soil. Learn about soil types, amendments, and the importance of soil health for a flourishing garden.
The small dark spots scattered across your grass are almost certainly helminthosporium leaf spot, a fungal lawn disease that looks worse than it usually is. For most home lawns the spotted-blade phase is cosmetic and fades with a few weeks…
Your lawn looks thirsty in the same spots every summer, no matter how much you water. You have raised the sprinkler run time, fed it, even replaced the sod once, and the thin patches come back in exactly the same…
Leptosphaerulina leaf spot of alfalfa starts as pepper spots on new leaves and ends with leaf drop before harvest. The spots grow into eyespots, oval and brown with dark margins and yellow halos, and they merge along the leaf veins…
Stubby root nematode is a microscopic soil roundworm that feeds on root tips and carries Tobacco Rattle Virus into potato, where the virus causes corky ringspot. A load with only a small share of symptomatic tubers can face rejection of…
The lumpy growth on your rose’s crown is probably crown gall, and here is the sentence most articles bury three screens down: there is no cure. Galls can take several weeks to 12 months or more to appear after the…
Dagger nematode is a virus carrier that happens to feed on roots. In a commercial orchard or vineyard, the virus damage decides the budget, and the feeding damage only sets the stage. A soil assay before planting is the cheapest…
Verticillium wilt has no cure once it enters the xylem. The fungus plugs the water pipes from inside, so a maple wilts in moist soil and no spray reaches the blockage. 10 strategies below protect the plants around the sick…
Walk the lawn at sunrise and look for straw-colored circles the size of a silver dollar before the dew dries. That is dollar spot, a leaf fungus that shows up on hungry lawns in wet weather. The rest of this…
You wake up after two days of rain, look out at the lawn, and there it is: a lumpy yellow blob up to 8 inches across sitting on grass that was clean yesterday. It looks like scrambled eggs. Or, less…
White rot on onion and garlic has no cure once it reaches the bulb. The fungus waits in the soil as tiny black sclerotia, and a single sclerotium per 20 pounds of soil can start disease in a bed. The…
Hold one suspect leaf to the light and read the veins before you reach for a spray. That is the whole foliar nematode test in miniature. The rest of this page is 9 strategies, from that vein check to the…
Stunt nematode damage looks like drought. The lawn thins in the same patches every summer, garden plants stall and yellow, and extra water changes nothing. 9 strategies below separate stunt nematode from root-knot nematode and set a management plan that…
Order 1 soil and root assay before you buy any product labeled for lesion nematode. Lesion nematode feeds inside roots, so no spray reaches it and no eye can confirm it. The assay count decides whether the bed needs work…
Web blight is a fast foliar disease caused by the fungus Rhizoctonia solani. It webs leaves together with fine tan mycelium, turns them dark brown or black, and collapses whole plants in hot humid weather. The 9 strategies below stop…
Septoria leaf spot strips tomato leaves from the bottom up, and it rarely touches the fruit. The 10 strategies below hold the canopy by cutting splash, drying leaves fast, and spraying only when rain will not stop. Start at the…
White mold kills from the stem outward. The fungus Sclerotinia sclerotiorum rots stems, girdles them, and leaves cottony white growth studded with hard black sclerotia. The 10 strategies below separate this disease from two harmless look-alikes and keep it from…
Order 1 soil assay before you buy any product labeled for spiral nematode. Spiral nematode feeds on lawn roots from outside the root, and most lawns carry it without visible damage. The assay count decides whether the lawn needs work…
Fusarium wilt has no cure once it reaches the xylem. The fungus blocks the water pipes from inside, so a tomato wilts in moist soil and no spray reaches the blockage. 11 no-spray strategies below save the crop around the…
Your lawn has thin, yellow patches that ignore water and fertilizer. A single cup of infested soil can hold 1,000 of them, each thinner than a human hair. You have ruled out grubs, you have ruled out fungus, and the…
Your tomato plants look thirsty no matter how much you water them. They yellow from the bottom up, stay stunted while the neighbor’s plants tower, and when you finally pull one up in frustration, the roots are covered in lumpy…
