Aargh clubroot

[darrenc]

whilst i was cleaning the old dead leaves from my purple sprouting bed i noticed what looks like clubroot on three plants. the plants themselves were poorly looking anyway so i pulled them and discovered clubroot so i burnt them. upon inspection of the other plants i found further infection in half of the bed the other half looks ok. can anyone suggest strategies to cope it. i do not know where it came from as my hygeine regarding composting and cleaning tools is rigorous .

[Monika]

Hello, darrenc, my condolences on your discovery. Did you buy any plants in? Or were you given some from other gardeners? Maybe the clubroot came in through these plants? Or did you use your tools on a plot with clubroot?

I hope you have enough space to keep your future brassicas away from the infected part.

[Colin_M]

can anyone suggest strategies to cope it.

I'm sure there are various treatments, plus the option of not growing any Brassicas in that land for "x" years.

We started getting a few cabbages etc with clubroot on my plot 2 years ago. We switched to starting our Brassicas off in pots (up to 6" wide) and letting the plants grow to around 6-8" high before transferring them to the main allotment. In addition, we mix a small quantity of lime into the potting soil at the start and also dust the final planting hole in the allotment with a little more lime.

I don't know if this will solve the problem for you, but we've successfully grown Red & Green Cabbages, Sprouting broccoli, Kohl Rabi etc since then using this method.

Others have also discussed using it. One theory is that if you let the your plant develop a reasonably good root system before it meets the infected soil, you give it a better chance of surviving. Also clubroot dislikes an alkaline soil, and the lime may help prevent it spreading into the soil amongst your the roots.


Colin

[darrenc]

monika, colin,thanks for the advice i dont know where the infection has come from as i always clean my tools and never accept plants from other gardeners. luckily my whole plot is bedded out with paths in between to enable me to keep track of crop rotation i can only hope that this is an isolated incident.

[Chantal]

I have heard (it may be urban myth) that clubroot can sometimes be contracted from a rogue batch of potting compost, the sort bought in bags from garden centres etc.

[GIULIA]

We have terrible clubroot all over our plot so we've learned to work round it. You never know where it comes from, like a summer cold, you just get it and that's it. We find brassicas with a brief growing season (calabrese for instance) manage OK when we take all the precautions (choppped rhubarb and hydrated lime in the planting hole help a lot)but the long term/over-wintering things always succumb. One nice cheat if you REALLY want a row of purple sprouting or whatever is to use those ring-culture fibre things sold for using with tomatoes in growbags. They work find outdoors and lift most of the rootball out of the soil and into your own compost. You need a stout stick to keep the whole edifice from blowing over. Fiddly and only for the determined but there are chaps on our site who have rows of bottomless chicken-muck buckets for this purpose and in spring it looks like they're growing buckets. Not pretty and heavy on the compost but reasonably effective. I presume they have suffered from clubroot for donkeys'years to have acquired so very many chicken muck buckets!

[Johnboy]

Hi Giulia,
What I fail to understand is the use of Rhubarb Leaves and Hydrate of Lime because you are mixing Acid with Alkaline and to a degree they must cancel themselves out.
In this district there is an area of Club Root and it is counteracted by the use of lime only and that seems to work quite well. I have a suspicion that the use of Rhubarb leaves is a bit of an urban myth.
It is said that Club Root doesn't like alkaline soil but all the soil hereabouts is PH 7 or slightly above
and certainly acid loving plants do not survive long.
The Club root emanated from a group of New Age Travellers who invaded the area about 15 years ago.
They brought plants into the district and one presumes that they were affected. They were also caught stealing produce from vegetable patches throughout the vicinity of their camp and the infection probably came off their boots.
JB.

[darrenc]

thanks for all the help guys.

[GIULIA]

I didn't really believe the rhubarb thing until I tried it, but it's not the leaves its the chopped up stalks. I was using just the lime at first but for the last two years I've gone down the rhubarb road and seen a definite improvement. Maybe I'll try just rhubarb as a test this yearwith no lime and see what happens. I don't grow many brassicas apart from calabrese so it's not crucial. Prefer kale to cabbage any day, and that never seems to get clubroot as i think its a different plant family. The Portugese Kale (from Seeds of Italy) is a brilliant performer. We've been cropping it all through summer, autumn and winter and I only pulled it up last week.. massive by then, but no clubroot!

[Johnboy]

Hi Giulia,
That is more than interesting. In previous postings about club root Rhubarb leaves have been mentioned which is probably why I assumed that is what you used.
You are no doubt aware that the leaves carry a very strong concentration of Oxalic Acid and that was the basis of my thinking. The stalks carry the acid but to nowhere near the same concentration.
Perhaps it is me that should not be so suspicious of such tried remedies!
I will, however, pass on your information to the sufferers in this district.
Sincerely,
JB.

[Mike Vogel]

Hi darrenc,

My immediate idea on reading your first post was to suggest limeing the soil where you wnt your next crop of brassicas to go. A simple ph test will show you if you need it. I know some growers who sprinkle the stuff on the ground every year. I wouldn't do that, but the more you manure ground the more acid, I believe, you are putting into it. I wouldn't bother to add lime if your test shows 6.5 or higher. One word of caution: spuds like soil to be slightly on the acid side, so if you do lime for brassicas I would grow something other than spuds the following year.

mike

[GIULIA]

I had heard about the rhubarb thing but read a detailed description of how to do it in a very old (pre world war1) gardening book. About 4 chunks of stalk an inch long, prefereable from the base end of the stem buried about 2" below the planting hole was recommended and that's what I do. It's supposed to give ten weeks protection or thereabouts by generating a bacteria that consumes the clubroot bacteria. (That's what the old book claimed anyway). After ten weeks your precious plant has to take its chances. I have pushed a few extra cubes in for good luck later but I don't think it makes a lot of difference - the clubroot lurks quite a way down in the soil. I've also read claims that in field culture, growing leeks for two years on the trot followed by a fallow year will greatly diminish the clubroot, but I don't have a handy field to try that one in! The problem with a little mixed veg plot is that diseases soon spread right over your patch no matter what you do. All that hoeing, digging, raking and walking about just carries everything with it. It's useless to imagine you'll only have something like onion white rot across the foot wide strip where the onions grew.. you know its crept all over don't you?

[Johnboy]

Hi Giulia,
I've got the field and no club root!
JB.