I was wiping my secateurs

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Stephen
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so that I might run a steel over the blade and I remembered that on-line sites talk about making sure you don't transmit diseases.

Now, I would simply use an oily rag but someone went into much more detail...
https://rachel-the-gardener.blogspot.com/2017/05/garden-hygiene-iii-first-sterilise-your.html?m=1
I'm sorry it is quite long.
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Shallot Man
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Stephen wrote:so that I might run a steel over the blade and I remembered that on-line sites talk about making sure you don't transmit diseases.

Now, I would simply use an oily rag but someone went into much more detail...
https://rachel-the-gardener.blogspot.com/2017/05/garden-hygiene-iii-first-sterilise-your.html?m=1
I'm sorry it is quite long.


Stephen. Went to this web-sight. Bloke must have spent a life time researching. Almost put me of using my my pruning gear. :?
robo
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That's the problem with the internet ,there is a lot of crap written that one should not bother reading
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Primrose
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Interesting article. Thank you. I must confess that my seccateurs rarely get sterilised apart from if I,m chopping up the stems of tomato plants which might have been blighted, before putting them in a disposal bag or bin. And even then I tend to use whatever disinfectant sprays might be handy on the kitchen window ledge at the time, so probably not terribly effective anyway.

In this household we tend to follow' my grandmother's advice "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die"and likewise foods dropped on the kitchen floor are given a quick splash under the tap and then proceeded with as normal rather than being disposed of.

I suppose dropping your seccateurs In boiling water for a couple of minutes would kill bugs but soon leave you with a rusty piece of unusable equipment.

How many of us religiously wash out all our pots at the end of every growing season?
I,m not going to raise my hand to that one either although if the hose is handy I might put a batch of them in a big plastic trug and give them a quick splash !



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Last edited by Primrose on Thu Aug 22, 2019 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
robo
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We always said you have to eat a ton of muck before you die ,with my mother's cooking I think I'm well past one ton she could not boil an egg properly
Stephen
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My attitude is much the same as Primrose's. Visually clean will have to do in the garden. As Rachel the gardener says, no one is going to sterilise their wheelbarrow. Even closer to the plants, how does one sterilise gardening gloves?
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The most startling thing is us gardeners have the opportunity to make the natural bugs into super bugs by being OTT with the cleaning. Deffo agree with Primrose that if there is an obvious problem then take precautions when pruning but if the plant you are pruning is OK then just prune it & the next that is not affected - in fact you maybe passing on some specific gene from plant to plant to help them self combat diseases in the future & build up their own protection which is a slower process than the bacteria's but when it's there it is longer lasting & will deal with it! (Hopefully but the process is ongoing)!
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Geoff
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Can't comment - I haven't got the attention span I once had. All my secateurs get is WD40.
Colin2016
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What worries me is all those adverts that kill 99% of all known germs…but what about the 1% germ lurking about?
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Many years ago, we lived in India and I was keen to grow my own herbs, etc. I did manage to create a thriving herb garden in containers in our back garden. It was easy and the climate was favourable for most of the year. I also had a part-time gardener to help so that made it all easier still. (Labour was very cheap and it created work for someone.)

However, always keen to learn more, I bought a book (in English) in a local bookstore about gardening in India. I think it must've been written by an American because one piece of advice given in the book was to microwave the soil. :lol: Well, it seemed funny to me anyway.

The book then went on to explain that, even though microwaving the soil might seem like a daunting prospect, it's not so difficult. All you have to do is tackle the job one kilo at a time. Has anyone here ever thought about microwaving soil? If so, maybe it's not so daft as I'd thought. But I sure as heck thought it was pretty strange advice. You'll not be surprised to hear I didn't follow the advice. Yet no one was ever poisoned or made ill from eating my plants.

In my long experience of living overseas, invariably it's the people who are most scared of germs who get ill most. I'm a great believer in building up some immunity to local germs. Sure, I'm rigorous about hygiene in the kitchen but I've met people who are so obsessed about foreign germs that they've been afraid of condensation on a glass because it's not sterilised water. You can guarantee that they're the first ones to get sick.
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Geoff
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I half heartedly played with soil sterilisation once, not using a microwave but by putting it in an Aga oven. I didn't know how long to 'cook' it for so I tried several different times that I can't now remember. What I do remember is that sterilisation did reduce the number of weeds that germinated but long sterilisation times also reduced the sown seeds germination rate and increased the time. I concluded there must be some good bugs that aid germination, perhaps they help break down the seed coating, no scientific basis just a hunch.
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Primrose
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I only once a microwaved of compost but only because it was the last scrapings of an old bag which was the only compost I had at the time to pot on something and I found the mixture was full of tiny little insects. The microwaving process certainly killed them but in retrospect I suspect this material didn't have much goodness left in it.

I think Geoff possibly has a point about some bugs and fungi in soil and compost aiding germination. - the problem is we can't differentiate between good and bad so any sterilisation process is probably a step in the dark. Nature does seem to find a way of returning some elements to the soil eventually which can trigger the growth process, whether of weeds or "deliberate" plants.
Colin2016
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Filling my latest raised bed number 8 yesterday with homemade compost I noticed the different bugs/worms/spiders etc in & around the compost. Would have thought this is what is needed for good harvest not sterilised lifeless soil?

No major issues with weed seeds as they temp gauge goes in to the red during it's process.
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