The Gardener's Guide to Plant Diseases [antikvár]

Introduction The purpose of this book is to provide gardeners with information on the common diseases that affect garden plants. You don't need a special vocabulary to manage garden diseases, or to read this book. In writing each entry, my primary mission has been to translate scientific information and data into ideas that can be easily understood by any reader who is faced with disease problems and seeks to know what to do about them. The scientific names of the organisms that cause common plant diseases are included for students who might use this book as a starting place for further scientific inquiry. Yet for most gardeners, it is much more important to understand the process at work when a disease outbreak occurs than the name or family affiliation of the fungus, bacteria, nematode, or virus responsible for the problem. As a longtime organic gardener living in a warm, humid climate where some disease is usually present in the garden, I have long been frustrated with the dearth of usable guidance for earth-safe disease control provided by many otherwise excellent garden reference books. Since we gardeners work on a very small scale compared to fruit and vegetable farmers, many standard remedies — like reapplying fungicides every time it rains — simply do not fit our needs. Throughout this book, I have sought to provide workable solutions for gardeners who keep home-sized vegetable plots along with a small, select collection of fruits. In situations where a farmer might spray fungicides once a week to prevent or control a disease, 1 have emphasized practical alternatives suitable for small-scale home