{"id":58632,"date":"2021-07-17T06:56:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-17T11:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58632"},"modified":"2021-07-17T06:56:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-17T11:56:52","slug":"water-garden-friend-and-foe-water-relative-humidity-and-plant-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58632","title":{"rendered":"Water: Garden Friend\u2026.and Foe? \u2013 Water, Relative Humidity, and Plant Diseases"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-thumbnail\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/gardenprofessors.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/the-cultivation-of-5455003_1280.jpg?resize=825%2C510&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"Watering can and vegetable garden\" width=\"825\" height=\"510\" \/><\/div>\n<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gardenprofessors.com\/water-garden-friend-and-foe-water-relative-humidity-and-plant-diseases\/\">Water: Garden Friend\u2026.and Foe? \u2013 Water, Relative Humidity, and Plant Diseases<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>We all know that water is essential for life and that we have to ensure our landscapes, gardens, and houseplants all have a sufficient supply of the stuff.\u00a0 Forget to water your garden during a hot, dry spell and it could mean disaster for your plants.\u00a0 But water can also create issues for plants, usually when it is in an overabundance \u2013 water helps spread and develop diseases on foliage and excess soil moisture can damage roots, creating opportunities for root rots and other diseases.\u00a0 How do you meet the water needs of the plant while also avoiding issues associated water?\u00a0 Understanding how water affects disease organisms will help, along with some tried and true Integrated Pest Management Strategies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Water and Pathogenic Microbes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Both bacteria and fungi require water to grow and reproduce.\u00a0 Most do not have a mechanism to actively take up and manage water, so they uptake water mainly through osmosis.\u00a0 This means there must be some form of water present for those microbes that are actively growing and especially for processes like reproduction which use not only a lot of energy but might also be required to carry spores in order to spread.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/7\/76\/Septoria_lycopersici_malagutii_leaf_spot_on_tomato_leaf.jpg\" alt=\"File:Septoria lycopersici malagutii leaf spot on tomato leaf.jpg -  Wikimedia Commons\" \/><figcaption><em>Septoria<\/em>\u00a0leaf spot, a common fungal disease of tomato that requires water for initiation and development.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Both pathogenic microbes and beneficial (or neutral) microbes require water to thrive.\u00a0 It is one side of what we refer to as the disease triangle.\u00a0 Water (along with temperature) are major components of the \u201cfavorable environment\u201d side of the triangle, with the other sides being a plant capable of being infected and a population of pathogens capable of infecting.\u00a0 Those last two sides meaning you have to have a population of the pathogen big enough to initiate or sustain an infection and a plant that can actually be infected by that pathogen.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Water: Garden Friend\u2026.and Foe? \u2013 Water, Relative Humidity, and Plant Diseases We all know that water is essential for life and that we have to ensure our landscapes, gardens, and houseplants all have a sufficient supply of the stuff.\u00a0 Forget to water your garden during a hot, dry spell and it could mean disaster for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[1912,31301,31425,866],"class_list":["post-58632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-food-production","tag-garden-professors","tag-plant-disease","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58633,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58632\/revisions\/58633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}