If you love gardening, there is nothing more frustrating than seeing all your time and effort go to waste due to fungi attacking your greens and blooms. To make matters worse, these culprits spread rapidly when conditions are favorable and eventually cause a wide variety of parasitic diseases on plants.

However, plant fungal diseases are usually the result of some factors that you can actually control. In fact, as simple as paying attention to your garden’s hygiene and cleanliness can do a whole lot in protecting your plants against fungi attacks. Written below are three more ways you could follow to keep damaging fungi at bay.

Mind your plant placement

Remember that fungi thrive well in damp conditions and planting your greens too close together will eventually result to crowding, which limits the amount of air circulating between the plants. When this happens, your greens are not able to shed water well, especially on their leaves. And if left unattended, fungal spores that are carried by air easily attach themselves on leaf surfaces, thereby setting the stage for fungal invasion.

To avoid this, it is vital that you site your plants properly to allow optimal air circulation around them. It is also wise to group plants together base on their level of water needs so that when you create an irrigation system, you will be able to apply the same amount of water to specific plants within your garden.

Ensure good landscape sanitation

As mentioned earlier, the key to keeping your garden free from fungal diseases is to observe cleanliness. Hence, if you have greens or blooms that are susceptible to fungal diseases, make sure that you regularly remove and discard leaf trimmings, old root systems and fallen fruits from their growing area to avoid the onset of fungi attack. If, for instance, you will reuse old pots, sterilize them before you put the greens in to minimize the risk of fungi infecting the plants.

Practice preventive measures

Keeping your plants in tip-top condition by properly attending to their needs is your safest bet to ensure that they will be able to withstand fungi attacks. Therefore, when gardening, don’t forget to practice preventive measures such as watering the plants’ bases instead of their leaves, applying fresh mulch every now and then to prevent spores from bouncing on the surfaces of leaves, and applying compost to keep both your soil and plants healthy.

Additionally, use horticultural oils and baking soda solutions to keep fungal diseases from infecting your plants in the first place. And don’t forget to provide your greens and blooms with optimum growing conditions (sufficient light, water and soil) so that they will grow healthily.

This gardening advice was penned by one of the regular contributors of Heritage Cleaning, a stone cleaning specialist in Scotland. Their steam-based stone cleaning system is acknowledged by Historic Scotland and has been used in the restoration and conservation of listed buildings throughout the country.