All gardens need enough moisture but heavy rain fall can be challenge especially for Terrace and Balcony Garden. Below are the some of the common issues that rain bring to your garden

Irrigation

Leaching of soil Nutrients

Pest and Disease problems

These are some of the must do in a garden to avoid these problems

Selection of Nutrients

Selection of proper and Balanced Nutrients in Rainy season plays very important role. As there will lot of nutrients loss from the containers through leaching (Draining out water may take out all applied nutrients).

Selecting Granular form of nutrients instead of liquid form of nutrients helps you to supply maximum food to your Green kids.

Example : One can select Plant meal , Multi Nutrients , Potassium , Calcium , Urea , DAP ,MOP etc…

As an Agriculture Graduate I (Kalyan Sr.Research Associate) Suggest Go for Multi Nutrients , as this nutrient has a special character of releasing the nutrients slowly and that to required by the plant growth stage .

This Multi Nutrients serves as complete plant food because it has all most 11 essential plant nutrients from Macro to Micro Nutrients..

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Pest and Disease Management:

In rainy season there will be pest and disease attack too!!!
One such example is Snails. During rainy season snails attacks in your garden and eat up all your leaves leaving gummy secrete where ever it crawls. And Also you will see Caterpillar attack in your garden where they chew the leaves, flowers and fruits within a night as they are heavy feeders, ultimately making your garden look ugly.

Management:

For Snails, you can go for Hand picking. Also you can use Beer trap. Place a saucer with beer in it at the corner of your garden and within a night most of the snails are trapped in it.

For Caterpillar problem you can use CAT PILLAR – IMMB which is effective in controlling these devastators of garden. You can even apply Neem powder to the soil as these caterpillars hide inside the soil during day time. Because of the smell of neem powder they  come out of soil and you can find them and hand pick them and destroy them.

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Diseases :-

If come to diseases  In rainy season Bacterial and Fungal diseases are more .

Following are the plant diseases caused in rainy season

1.Leaf Blight –

This is common disease in vegetables , It will caused by Fungal spores .

The symptoms first observed on the plants as small, black lesions mostly on the older leaves.

Symptoms are on leaves Brown spot surrounded with yellow colour.

Management-

Removal and destructing of plant waste

Practicing Crop Rotation helps to minimize the disease incidence

Spray Xylozeb Ls/B Medicine every 15 days once and if spray when disease incidence more .

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2.Powdery Mildew –

White powdery Growth on upper surface of the leaf and undersurface of the leaf develop Yellow spots.

Severely infected plants will reduce the yield .

Infected  leaves may gradually turn into yellow colour, die and fall.

Management –

Add a pinch of soap powder to 10-15 ml of  Neem oil and spray to the leaves.

Spray Mycodim 5gms in 1 liter of water

Remove the infected leaves

Spray POWMEL – CDM 1gm in 1 liter of water when the disease incidence more .

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3.Damping Off –

It’s a serious problem in seedlings .Damping off is a fungal disease , it will attack mainly on young plants.

Symptoms

The Fungus will mainly attack on Stem and Root portions

Seedling(plant) stems become water soaked and thin, almost thread like, where infected.

 Young leaves wilt and turn green-gray to brown.

 Roots are absent, stunted or have grayish-brown sunken spots.

 Fluffy white cobweb-like growth on infected plant parts under high humidity.

Management  –

Remove the effected plants

Avoid  over watering tender seedlings

Do soil solarization before seed sowing

Drench the soil with DAMP-OA  the plants are at 10 to 15 days age older after germinate.

 Wash the gardening tools before using.

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Key words –  Slow Releasing Nutrients , Pests, Diseases , Medicines, Management, Nutrients.