0:00Hi guys. In this video, we're going to be talking about common fungal diseases and how to counteract them. So, Dad,

0:06what's your advice for dealing with fungal diseases?

0:10Well, there's cultural things you can do and then of course there's sprays and things you can use. So, I think start with the cultural things.

0:22Um, I can't overemphasize enough the importance of healthy plants.

0:28I've seen over and over um plants that are really really healthy are less susceptible to diseases.

0:38So just really being on top of your game when it comes to to soil health um I think is the place to start.

0:51And then from there um you know fungal diseases for the most part it's all about moisture and too much moisture.

1:02So um if you're having issues and tomatoes of course are the the classic

1:09example of a plant that does not do well with moisture on the leaves.

1:15And so I would highly recommend using drip irrigation with your tomatoes.

1:21Uh so that's a simple cultural practice but keeping as much moisture off the leaves as possible.

1:30Um so drip versus overhead irrigation but also plant spacing.

1:37If you get plants spaced too tightly then there's not enough air flow and you

1:45have more issues with with fungal disease. So, space the plants out a little more. With soil blocks, you can

1:53do things in the winter like not planting the soil block, but just putting it on the surface.

2:00And um that gives a little more airflow around the base of the plant.

2:07And and then sunlight of course is another thing. Sunlight is one of the best uh antifungal

2:16um medicines, whatever you want to call it. So,

2:23just making sure that the plants are getting good airflow and good sunlight. Yeah. you know, with with trees,

2:33you know, fruing tree fruiting crops um or fruing tree crops,

2:42they often take out prune out the center of the plant just to get more sunlight and air in there. So

2:50in the vegetable garden, just be thinking of the same kind of things,

2:55just making sure that you're growing things in a way Mhm. So then as far as uh sprays or some

3:05sort of uh Yeah. If if it does get a little out of hand at times, like what are techniques? What's your first go-to

3:13technique for handling it with a with a spray or some sort of treatment?

3:18Well, you know, there's a lot of different fungal diseases and there's a lot of different sprays

3:25and obviously we're we're coming from an organic perspective where we're not wanting to spray a lot of stuff that they use for fungicides.

3:37Um, so you have some that are just killing the fungus and things like SanDate,

3:49which which is a hydrogen, what is it?

3:52Hydrogen dioxide or something that actually

3:59explodes the cells of the fungus or whatever. I don't know exactly how it works. So you have those which can be

4:07effective and then you have other ones which are kind of um good guys out competing bad

4:16guys kind of sprays where you're spraying beneficial

4:22organisms on the plants to out compete the disease organisms.

4:31Interesting. So you're you want to look at mode of action um and

4:39something that as is as disease specific as possible kind of with insecticides.

4:46You want to make sure you're not just nuking everything. Yeah. You know. So then if if you notice a crop appears to

4:54be having some sort of fungal issues um or has you know has been diseased how do you identify what kind of fungal disease it has?

5:05Well, there are books and you know websites where you can take, you know,

5:11look at pictures and I mean the bottom line is a lot of these diseases are such

5:18that the only way you're going to know positively is to send it to the A

5:25extension service kind of thing and have have them tested.

5:31But I guess I don't worry so much about the specific disease as just

5:40um focusing on keeping the plants healthy.

5:44Um although there are some diseases that you know especially with strawberries that you really want to avoid and in

5:53some cases pulling out infected plants is a good practice. Pull them out and get them far away.

6:00Yeah. Get them out of the field cuz you know fungus spreads through spores and

6:07so you don't want that happening in your field. Yeah. So I don't know that's kind of general but that's all we have time for.

6:17Yeah. Yeah. Well if if you want to try Sanidate uh it's available at Farmer's Friend. A little behind the behind the

6:25scenes there. we have to get a a hazardous shipping uh license or training to do that. And it was it's

6:32been quite a process uh going through thinking we have it figured out and starting to ship it and having issues and having to get stuff back and all

6:39this rigomearo. But we're finally uh shipping sanitate um and it's it's arriving at its

6:46intended destination. So that's good. Uh so yeah, come buy some sanitate from Farmer's Friend and if you have fungal

6:53issues that you need to spray, we can definitely provide that. Um hope this information was helpful and if you have any questions, drop them in the comment

7:02section down below and we might answer those questions in a future video. Until next time, happy growing.

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