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Getting rid of soil diseases

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Leftynick

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Last weekend, during Christmas I visited my step brother chili pepper commercial garden. He used fertigation system for his plants, using 18 liter (4.75 gallon) polybag and cocopeat as soil. As he is currently in between season, I have the chance to see how he start the seed using 104 tray and had the chance to talk about growing chili. I remember that chili and tobacco share the same diseases so I used this chance to ask him on regular diseases infecting chili plant. He says that the usual diseases infected the plant is the mosaic virus. I do have issues with mosaic virus so I ask him how do they get rid of it.

This is the part where it get interesting, he says that if the plant infected with mosaic virus, they just threw it away. But they still used the same bag, and the same soil for the next season. He has been using the same bag and soil for 2 years now, and only adding the cocopeat to top up. I was surprised because before this I thought the virus can live in the soil for up to 20 years!

He add that, after getting rid of the infected plant, he sterilize the soil with bleach (Clorox) 1 ml per 5 liter of water. After soaking the soil with the solution for one night, he rinse the soil using swamp water to get rid of the bleach, and replenish the soil with micro organism. It was really easy, and he said that he have been using this technique with no problem.

Now I know this solution might not be useful for growing in the garden, but I did have some plant that I grow in the pot. I used the same soil from my last grow, but it have been growing something else for the past season. I used the soil again, adding only compost, and manure and I plant tobacco again. This is the soil where all of my tobacco plant infected with mosaic virus last time I grow tobacco in it. But this year it seems like the virus have gone. My potted plant is definitely bigger than my garden plant, currently, but it still give me a massive leaves. I have 20 plants in the container, and only 1 so far being infected with mosaic virus. I will update the picture here later after work.

I think, the soil I used might be dead of virus because of my climates. The degradation of organic particle in soil are much faster. Just like my compost heap, if I turned it regularly, I can get mature compost in just about 2 months. Maybe someone with problem in their soil, such as Charly who struggle with PVY can consider sterilizing the soil to get rid of it. I searched online there are plenty of way to sterilize soil, from torching the soil to using hydrogen peroxide. All that's left after sterilizing the soil is to add microorganism to the soil afterwards.
 

Smokin Harley

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I used to live by and at times hunt the land that a friend of mine had a family greenhouse business. They would sterilize their potting soil using a steam heated system . Kind of looked like a series of piping ,much like a rough looking radiator and basically the same concept of mechanics about it. The soil steamer was an offshoot of their greenhouse steam heat system so they would do this in the winter ,to both provide greenhouse heat and get the soil ready to start the bedding annuals and add humidity as well. They had quite the operation. This contraption was placed on a large sided table where the soil was heaped up on top of it and steam pumped through it ,superheating the soil and killing what I assume was weed seeds but possibly viruses too. I dont know how long but had to be an extended period of time.
 

Leftynick

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I used to live by and at times hunt the land that a friend of mine had a family greenhouse business. They would sterilize their potting soil using a steam heated system . Kind of looked like a series of piping ,much like a rough looking radiator and basically the same concept of mechanics about it. The soil steamer was an offshoot of their greenhouse steam heat system so they would do this in the winter ,to both provide greenhouse heat and get the soil ready to start the bedding annuals and add humidity as well. They had quite the operation. This contraption was placed on a large sided table where the soil was heaped up on top of it and steam pumped through it ,superheating the soil and killing what I assume was weed seeds but possibly viruses too. I dont know how long but had to be an extended period of time.

Wow, super heat steam sterilization. It is very advanced but I think it will be super expensive to run here. In tropical country, I think we can use the energy of sun to replicate this method.

Here are the pictures of my potted plant. Usually I put this in my grow log but for the sake of this thread;
P_20171229_071047.jpg
It got so big now that the space is too crowded. It amazing how the plant create solution for this;
P_20171229_071105.jpg
Now, my first curly plant for the season
P_20171229_071129.jpg
The same leaf from past week
P_20171229_071157.jpg
 

Charly

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Thank you Leftynick for your advices about treating the soil to get rid of viruses.
I don't know if I can do much to fight the PVY (Potato Virus Y), since it seems to come from aphyds and others creatures...
For now, I am wainting to try my tobacco and see if it's good (I finally built my kiln, more pictures to come in my blog). If my PVY infected tobacco is good, maybe the virus is not a real problem :)
Time will tell.
And I will continue to try new strains each year to find the resistant ones.

If I can, I might try to burn a spot of my soil and see if it's different from the rest.

P.S. Your plants are looking very good !
 
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