The age of “temporary soil sterilization” or “soil fumigants” which can be safely used by the home gardener has long passed. These chemicals were designed to make your gardening easier and more enjoyable by killing weed seeds, certain plant disease organisms and nematodes in the soil. However, this does not mean we cannot learn about the pests soil fumigants controlled.
Fungi
About 70 per cent of all plant diseases are caused by fungi. Fungi cause a large number of destructive diseases of roots, stems, leaves, bulbs, tubers, flowers and fruits of our garden plants and lawn grasses. Plant diseases caused by fungi are estimated to cost Americans over a billion dollars yearly. Many of these organisms live in the soil – free, or attacking decaying roots, leaves and other plant debris.
Fungi are generally microscopic, filament-like organisms that usually reproduce by spores (seeds) which are commonly blown or splashed about. Fungi lack chlorophyll, the green coloring matter in higher plants, and are hence unable to make their own food. Fungi, like animals and man, are dependent on green plants – either living or dead – for their food. When conditions of temperature and moisture are favorable, fungi attack living plants and cause disease.
The spores of fungi produce germ tubes that may penetrate directly into a plant through natural openings or through wounds, causing infection. These organisms are present everywhere. In the old days applying a soil fumigant as a pre-planting treatment would help considerably in preventing such common diseases as damping-off, root rots, crown rots and certain leaf blights to garden plants and lawn grasses, by killing the causal fungi in the soil before infection occurs.
Nematodes
Nematodes are minute, generally microscopic, eel-shaped organisms that inhabit the soil in tremendous numbers. Water is required for them to move around. Nematodes have been estimated to cause a yearly loss of at least ten per cent of the farmer’s gross income. Very few home gardens or house plant pots in mid-America are entirely free of these pests, although in many cases populations are not large enough to cause severe injury.
Most nematode problems are caused by their feeding in or on the surface of roots, stems, bulbs and tubers but some leaf nematodes can infect the upper part of the plant. They reproduce by eggs or living young. Nematodes are not commonly transported by wind as are the spores of fungi. Numerous species have been shown to be parasitic on roots or other underground parts of all common flower and vegetable garden plants as well as lawn grasses. Nematode injury can easily be confused with drouth or fertilizer injury, a soil deficiency, disease, insect and possibly other types of injury.
Parasitic nematodes on plants like the zz plant can only be identified by taking the soil from several pots or areas in the garden or lawn containing suspected plants and subjecting the samples to a rather complicated laboratory soil examination. Proper care of zz plant and to other plant is needed in order to avoid parasitic nematodes.
A great many garden sites in the southern states have been abandoned and many others have become almost unproductive because the soil has become so heavily infested with the root knot nematode.
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