Sanitation thread

[bower]

After a very sporey season with humid heat, I am getting down to the cleanup of seed starting gear, lights and area, before starting my seeds for winter greens.

In seasons some years ago, I was pretty conscientious about sanitation. I washed out the pots using bleach and likewise, bleachy wipe for the cages, the light housing and bench etc.
But I stopped using bleach for a couple of reasons. One is that bleach rots your plastics, makes them brittle. Plastic pots and cell packs are really ideal for garden uses due to being flexible and also washable but their lifespan gets short in a hurry if you bleach them. The other reason is that I wanted to limit my use of bleach not wanting to put much of it down the drain. And third I was a bit influenced by the idea that when breeding tomatoes we shouldn't be too careful about disease because we should be using it as a selection pressure.

So I defaulted to soap and water cleanup or even leaving the mix that clung to the pots. I didn't wipe down the lights last season and I kept them going all winter long. This definitely contributed to the bad season for spotty leaves.
I also switched to soap and vinegar wipedown for spores, but it's no good for metal of course, and I read that my pest Alternaria can grow at pH down to 2.7, optimal 4-5, and up to 8. So for that resident I may better push the pH up instead of down.

I've been doing some reading about spores in the environment, and it's obvious you could only ever keep it to a dull roar - there's no prospect of a 'sanitized' environment altogether. We can only try to push the balance towards friendly organisms.
So for starters I have cleaned lights and surfaces with Dawn and borax this time. I added cinnamon for washing down wooden surfaces and the lower seal area of the window where condensation makes things grow.
I also put cinnamon in with the Dawn to wash out some pots and cell packs. No idea if that helped or will help.
One takeaway of some of the reading was that efforts at sanitation are good for up to 24 hours, after which you might as well not have done anything. So it's only worth washing the pots the day before using them.

So, fellow gardeners and tomato growers: what do you do? What cleanup routines and sanitizer substances work for you?

[Cole_Robbie]

Indoors, Physan 20 disinfectant and an ozone generator (both can be dangerous if not used appropriately)

Outdoors, it is mostly a matter of killing everything off for the winter. Johnson grass will overwinter diseases well north of where they are supposed to be. Scrub trees can transmit septoria. Wild briars and berries can also carry diseases.

[karstopography]

Nothing really, at least for the garden. Encourage through environmental manipulation beneficial organisms to outcompete or predate on detrimental organisms. Detrimental Fungal and bacterial pathogens have not been much of an issue in the garden thus far and whatever outbreaks that have happened seem to be very limited.

I add a lot of hardwood leaves, southern yellow pine and bald cypress needles, plus some limited amounts of camphor tree leaves, and other organic material to garden annually. Pine and camphor extracts for certain both have some disinfectant properties. This material is free for me and I simply have to rake it up from my lot and then transport via foot or cart to garden.

Plant mustard and brassicas with the idea those plant’s foliage add substances to the garden that fight detrimental organisms.

Use crab shell meal to encourage chitin eating organisms to inhabit the soil in greater numbers so that their activity might extend to the consumption of detrimental RKN eggs. Use other crops to trap or repel RKN.

Use foliar kelp treatments with kelp’s natural copper content to ward off detrimental fungal infections of foliage.

[pepperhead212]

I use very little bleach, to sterilize things, or to wash clothes with. To give you an idea of how little I use, when I cleaned out my parent's house in '95, to help my Mom move, when Dad passed away, there were 15 gallons of bleach on a shelf in the laundry room! He was obsessed with buying bleach on sale, and using it on many things, and Mom didn't want any of it. I took 12 gallons of it, and still have 2 of those left to this day! Most of the sterilizing I do is with H2O2, and for the indoor, off-season plants, they get totally taken apart, for the hydro, and the large perennial plants trimmed, and taken out, before cleaning the area and equipment thoroughly, and putting it away, until next season. As for kitchen pans, I don't worry about it - I just use Dawn for hand cleaning, and Finish, in the DW, and never get any problems from them.

[GoDawgs]

I don't do a whole lot. Cell packs from growing seedlings and the trays holding them get rinsed out with a hard hose spray right after the plants they held go into the garden. I've never had any funk problems with my seedlings. No leaf spot, damping off or anything else. Perhaps judicious watering helps with that. I run seedlings just a tad on the dry side.

Tomato cages used to be sprayed with 10% bleach solution but I found it's easier to use a cheap paint roller dipped in bleach solution to wipe the outside and inside of the cages. To be honest, I've never seen much of a difference in funk on tomatoes between years where the cages were cleaned and years when they've not been cleaned. My guess is that cleaning the cages doesn't matter but appropriate application of fungicide to the plants does.

Light fixtures get wiped down mainly to get off any dust so that they're as bright as they can be.

Problem plants in the garden get yanked and tossed quickly and I "groom" brassicas regularly, removing yellowed bottom leaves before they develop funk.

[Cole_Robbie]

Fwiw, bleach doesn't last. I found an old bottle in a shed once and thought for sure that I had put water in a bleach bottle and forgotten about it. There wasn't even a slight chlorine smell.

[bower]

Now I'm thinking that the problems this season may be because the same area where I start seeds is also the place where garlic, grains and other seeds are dried or cured and seed cleaned at the other end of the year. It was chaffy enough after cleaning my seeds this year, that I knew it needed a big washdown anyway.

I usually leave the straw in my perennial herb meadow standing, so that birds can peck at the seeds during winter, but I'm thinking it should be properly mowed and composted to reduce troubles next season. One thing I noticed this year is that the Lovage has spots that look like Alternaria, and a few other plants do too. I'll be cutting the lovage as soon as it bolts next season because it's huge in flower and probably the biggest source of spores.

It is heartening to hear that simple methods are working for you'all.

[pepperhead212]

That bleach I have from way back, still smells strong to me, but it is indoors, in the laundry room. Maybe freezing and heating does something to decay the bleach, or whatever does it.

[Kurt]

We nuke all our starting trays,plug trays,with a light douse of some chlorine.The issue we have is the imported fungus,horn worms,mites,etc in the store bought mediums.We implement the sun soil sterilization system,clear plastic,bake for off season beds.This is reconditioned medium for the next season.We do not have the freezing winter killing method for the critters in ground.We do have our local zoo that you can buy Zoo Doo,sterile poop from the animals at pick up.So it’s the medium that invites the crud down here.

[bower]

I have a small, screw top container of bleach for dipping my pruners in, which has been in the greenhouse for a couple of seasons now and was still good the last time I checked. So I think the problem with bleach decaying is where the seal is broken. In that case the chlorine will start to evaporate and over a long time I guess it's gone completely!

I do think my seed starting medium was less than optimum last season. Not at all impossible that some unfriendly organisms came with the bagged compost. That being said, I know the big culprits are present in the environment here and more or less rioted in response to abnormal heat and humidity.
I did invest in a fresh bag of seed starting mix from Fafard. $10 for 1.5 kilos, it will drive up my costs some but worth it for clean healthy starts, if that's how it goes. The first greens seeds are in, so I'll be watching for any sign of seedborne trouble.
I read about and considered a few different seed treatment options, but decided to look at untreated first. Just about all the seeds I have started first are home saved or at least locally, either this year or previous.