Quote:
Originally Posted by LuvsToPlant
tjg911...
I know you refered to Carolyn...
...but since this is a public forum...thought I would add.
Hope you don't mind.
As I mentioned above...prevention is always the best.
Thats what I teach in my classes.
Cleaning up the garden in the fall, disenfecting tools and the such.
...although if you have not had a problem with any plant diseases
that easily transmits...you probably could get by without sterilizing
yours pots and trays.
To me it is not a big chore...I stack all trays and pots/6 packs and just submerge
into a bucket of solution...and let sit 30 minutes or so...then air dry.
I have before not soaked the pots...and crossed my fingers many times.
But then again...I am working with 10,000 pots times 15 100 foot greenhouses.
Now tHaTs alot of work.....
If you keep a clean enviroment...your chances are better.
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I think it is much more important for those of you who are commercial, as you are, to be more cautious. And in my post above I wrote:
(My commercial friend Charlie used new inserts every year and his seed sowing system was a mechanical one that none of us would have.)
And I could have added new pots and almost everything else new; he doesn't recycle and treat anything. He has 28 greenhouses and raises not just tomatoes and other veggies but also lots and lots of annuals. And once something in the way of disease gets going in such closed environments it can really be bad, as well you know. He's getting in plug trays from several places as I'm sure you are as well, for the flowers especially, so again, he's very cautious.
But Tom is not commercial, nor are most of the folks who post here which I think is a somewhat different story, if you will.
And continually in each post to Tom I've said the choice is his as to how he wants to proceed. I can only express my own experience and those include several commercial friends like Charlie as well as many many home hobby growers and the latter since I started reading/posting online in about 1982 as well as being raised on a farm and being up close and personal with what we're talking about here since I was maybe 5-7 years old . But thinking back to those times there simply wasn't the tomato and other veggie and flower diseases we have today. My maternal grandparents had the largest nursery in the tri-city area of Albany/ Schenectady/Troy for many years and I worked there many summers and so learned a lot from those experiences as well.
OK, a wee confession. There were always plants left in the greenhouses and at the end of the planting season would be left there to die. But I'd go in there and try to revive them with water and my Aunt Pearl would just shake her head and laugh. Another memory was taking cuttings for new geraniums from the huge plants that were in a special all year greenhouse and then my grandfather was the first to raise Geraniums from seed in the area as well, and that was great fun when the public saw all the new colors and leaf forms that they'd never seen before.
Sorry for the trips back through memory lane but we older folks sometimes do that.
And for many years all my tomato seedlings were grown in Charlie's greenhouse #19 in front of the large exhaust fan,
, so I had a personal stake in disease free greenhouses.
But once tomato plants, the subject here, are planted outside it really is a different story as to the tomato pathogens they're exposed to and that differs from year to year and actually region to region with regard to both foliar as well as possible systemic soilborne diseases.
Summary? Commercial folks such as yourself do need to be more cautious about disease concerns, no doubt about it. But I think less so for those who are not commercial for the reasons I've outlined in several posts here, but again, it's up to each non-commercial person as to what they wish to do and why, with tomato plants, and also their ability to be able to ID tomato diseases when they appear so that they have a game plan for that season and future seasons.