How To Spot White Mold In Your Garden & What To Do
See how to do soil solarization here.
White Mold. Timber Rot. Stem Rot. Sclerotinia Sclerotiorum.
It’s referred to in many ways, but the symptoms are a fluffy white fungus that grows on your plants and eventually develops black lesions, wilting, falling leaves, dried-out stems, rotting fruit, and not long after, death.
It’s a fast-acting fungus that sadly, isn’t really reversible once it takes hold of your plants. Unfortunately, some of our tomatoes got it… so they got the chop.
White mold (as we’ll call it for the rest of this writing) likes to form in wet, cool climates. While very early stages may be treatable, by the time you notice it, it’s usually too late. The safest bet it to remove any plants that have it and take steps to prevent/avoid it from coming back.
How To Prevent/Avoid White Mold In Your Garden
First, keep stems, foliage, and fruit dry. White mold can live in soil and spread in the air. It thrives in cool, wet conditions. Especially this time of year, with cooler weather, be sure to only water plants at their base, like the Garden Grid™ does. Keeping stems, foliage, and fruit dry helps reduce the chance of mold growing on them.
Second, fungicides. Everyone has their personal preference whether they want to use them or not, but there are a variety of options that can handle white mold and a variety of other fungi well.
Third, soil solarization. Remove your plants in your garden, cover the soil tightly with a plastic tarp, and let it bake in the sun for 8 weeks. This should kill off the fungus and even other ailments in your soil like plant parasitic nematodes (aka. bad nematodes).
Fourth, grow unaffected crops. Corn and grains aren’t very susceptible to white mold, so you can grow them in the area where you had white mold, without issue. You’ll have to do this for a few years though, since the fungi spores can live in your soil for years.
Fifth, garden design can significantly reduce the risk of white mold. Our Raised Garden Beds and Garden Grids™ provide:
- Great soil drainage
- Total soil quality control
- Precise watering only at the base of plants
- Proper spacing guidance for good airflow
- Elevated plants that are easier to check for issues.
All these factors make it harder or reduce the chance of white mold to start growing.
Why Did Our Tomatoes Get White Mold?
The perfect combo of heavy rain, followed by windy, cool weather. The two weeks before recording this, we received 4+ inches of rain in one day, followed by misty, windy weather in the low 60s for about a week.
It was perfect for white mold to thrive. Before it was noticed, the 6 tomato plants in the video were too far gone.
Had it been caught earlier, we would have tried a natural fungicide. However, with how much it had progressed, removal was best.
A few of the remaining tomato plants and the rest of the garden continued to thrive without issue. 🙂
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