Week Nine

I did not think that preventing diseases in my plants would be so easy. One important thing that I took away from the videos this week is that using chemicals on plants to prevent disease is actually a last resort method, and diseases can be kept from reaching your plants through the careful manipulation of variables that you can control. Because it doesn't get very cold where I live and this is the first time planting vegetables in the potting soil that I bought, it's already a fairly safe bet that my plants will not be catching any diseases. However, because my situation may change in the future, I'm glad I learned the process of creating and utilizing a fungicide. Before this week, I was under the impression that fungicide was a very specialized chemical that you have to buy at a store that probably costs a lot of money. I was pleasantly surprised to find out this week that you can make a simple fungicide at home using baking soda, dish soap, and water. After mixing all of my ingredients and putting them in a spray bottle, I thoroughly sprayed all of the leaves of my plants, coating them with a layer of fungicide which will hopefully fight off any pathogens or diseases that may come their way.