I am involved in writing web page material for the
Victorian Rose Garden at the Los Angeles County
Arboretum. The URL is http://victorian-rose.org
At the moment, I am writing material for a section on
the use of the various cultural practices for pest
management.
I'm having problems coming up with an article on preventing
and/or controlling garden pests and/or disease by keeping the
garden clean. We have some direct experience but I think we
need other references as well.
If we have a plant that comes down with an infestation or
an infection, we do a "spot cleaning" of the afflicted plant
and the surrounding area. We "spot clean" by cutting out
all of the foliage that we think might be infested or infected,
we rake up all of the plant debris and mulch in the area and
we put that material in the trash, we wash all of the plants
in the area with a good blast of water from the hose, and we
then put down a fresh layer of clean mulch. We pay particular
attention to the plants in this troubled area for several weeks
to see if we need to repeat or expand the "spot cleaning".
Does anyone else do anything like our "spot cleaning"? Is there
a better way? The real question, I think, is what's the best thing to
do when you find an infection or an infestation in your garden?