Best Garden Tool Disinfectant – An excellent way to reduce waste in the garden is to reuse your seedling containers and nursery pots! This goes for those you’ve bought on purpose to start seeds, or any container you bring home plants from the local garden center – that you hope to keep and use again. If we are going to use these things again, properly sanitizing supplies and tools between uses or seasons is an important step in keeping your plants healthy and disease free! This article is about some non-toxic methods used to disinfect garden supplies.
At this house we use a variety of plastic nursery pots, 6-packs and 1020 trays with dome lids to start the seeds. The supplies we choose are high quality, heavy duty and durable. They are who they are
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Without breaking and breaking easily! We choose these over disposable products like peat pellets, although that’s just our personal preference. Even if you use peat pellets, you will probably have trays or cells in which they sit. These also need to be cleaned. For more information on seed starting tips and best practices, check out this post!
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Chore to do, and one that’s easy to skip, sanitizing your garden tools and pots is something you should make an effort to do! Is disinfection absolutely necessary?
On the other hand, starting the season with fresh clean supplies gives you a little extra (cheap!) assurance that your seedlings will be strong and healthy. It also helps eliminate that horrible feeling of “what if…” or “should I…” if you skip sanitizing, and something goes south.
When you start seeds and don’t sanitize the seed containers, trays and other pots between seasons, disease or fungal spores can be left behind and infect a new round of your plants. This is especially worrying if you had any problems with your seedlings the previous year. Or, if you reuse containers from a garden center, you may be introducing diseases or pests that weren’t previously present in your garden.
. They pull, look cute, perky and witty, and then Bam! Death. Finished. It is so tragic and frustrating to experience!
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One of the most obvious signs and symptoms is when the seedling stem becomes super thin and weak just above the soil line, and then droops or wilts. what happened Most likely a soil borne disease or fungus is to blame. Sanitizing can help prevent this, along with using sterile seedling mix in fresh bags when starting seed – not soil from your garden! Reusing old soil is another way to introduce pathogens to new seedlings.
Damping illustrated. Do you see how thin and sad the trunk section has become? There is no form of recovery for this. Photo courtesy of Marijuana Times
When gardening, you should also take care to disinfect supplies – like your pruning shears. This should be done regularly as a good habit, but it should definitely be done whenever you work around a plant
To disinfect your stock, I should note that it is important to try to start with fairly clean stocks in the beginning, before starting any of the methods below. I do not want to
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But at least gently rinse or remove any accumulated dirt before starting the sanitizing process. The reason is this: the agent you use, be it vinegar or peroxide, will first try to “clean” the dirt, with a lot of its power and energy.
So starting with less than dirty supplies will ensure that your sanitizer is actually cleaning your pots and trays, not dirt.
One way to kill some bad guys is to disinfect your supplies with plain white vinegar. Most household vinegar is 5% in strength. If you are working with a small collection of bowls and pots, this can easily be done with a spray bottle full of undiluted vinegar. S
To be effective, the vinegar needs at least 10 minutes of contact time on the object. 20 minutes is even better. Afterwards, wipe or rinse them off. You may not
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To rinse them off, but because it’s so acidic, I do. I am concerned about the vinegar breaking down the plastic and making it more brittle.
We reuse old cleaning bottles for vinegar spray, soap spray or other homemade mixtures. Always label your bottles clearly!
We use this method to disinfect our garden shears, pots, or when working with a small number of seedling containers. I also spray the interior walls of our greenhouse at least once a year. A spray bottle of vinegar is always within easy reach in this house! We actually use a homemade citrus and vinegar spray that we also use to clean our kitchen counters, sink, tub, and shower. Note: Due to its acidic nature, vinegar is not recommended for cleaning marble or granite countertops, and probably other types of sensitive stone. Do your homework before using it on yours! We only have the crumbly laminated ones for now.
Also, when I researched the different methods of disinfecting garden supplies, many sources said they use undiluted vinegar, or at least somewhere around 75% vinegar to water. If it is too diluted, vinegar does not have the same power to disinfect. This means that if you are working with a decent amount of containers to disinfect, you will need a fairly large amount of vinegar to fill a tub, soak, and effectively disinfect your stock. The same contact time as spraying also applies here. If you have less inventory to clean at once, soaking them can work well!
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Like vinegar, hydrogen peroxide is inexpensive, non-toxic, and effective at killing bacteria, viruses, mold, mildew, and fungus! Hydrogen peroxide is considered an environmentally safe alternative to chlorine bleach. It breaks down into water and oxygen. Follow the same steps as in option 1, fill a spray bottle with standard household hydrogen peroxide 3% (undiluted), spritz, and voila!
. Like vinegar, peroxide also needs at least 10 minutes of contact time. Follow the same steps to wipe or rinse afterwards.
If you are going to stick with a spray method or for vinegar or peroxide and you have a lot of supplies to disinfect, it may be easier on your hands and most efficient to use a pump pressure sprayer that can provide a constant flow. You know, unlike a regular spray bottle that you have to squeeze repeatedly.
Disclaimer: To be honest, I’ve been putting off writing and posting this because I feel like this section might raise a lot of eyebrows and a lot of questions. I considered leaving this part out entirely. But
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, I thought I’d just go ahead and share how we cleaned out our seedling containers this year. For the record, I’m not saying the third option is better than two or one! That was just what happened with work for us. If you’re not comfortable playing the mad scientist, stick with option 1 or 2.
Read this section carefully. Never mix straight undiluted hydrogen peroxide with straight undiluted vinegar. Especially in a closed container, like a spray bottle! Mixing these two creates an acid. However, it is not as scary as it sounds. It is only dangerous and unstable if you create a strong, undiluted solution and store it mixed in a closed container. Or if you work with it in strong amounts indoors and outdoors. Hear me out here though! I did my research.
By combining vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, they react to form peracetic acid. Peracetic acid is a very effective disinfectant that is generally considered very safe for the environment. It was first registered as a disinfectant by the US EPA in 1985. It is even more effective at killing germs than bleach, and is sometimes used instead of bleach in the medical industry. Some large chain grocery stores and restaurants use it as a disinfectant in their sink containers to clean dishes. Some cattle and cattle operation facilities use it too! That’s pretty cool, if you ask me.
Yes it is an acid, but so is vinegar. But you know that, right? The active ingredient in vinegar, acetic acid, is actually a stronger acid than peracetic acid! If you
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If you google “Can you mix vinegar and hydrogen peroxide” the obvious initial answer you will come across is “NO!”. Again, this is mostly due to the concern of mixing in a closed container. Warning bells also go off for some people when they see what peracetic acid does. They’re like no, you don’t create that stuff! Because in
, peracetic acid is highly corrosive, and a respiratory and skin irritant. It is made using industrial strength, highly concentrated vinegar and similar hydrogen peroxide mixed together. While I appreciate people erring on the side of caution,
The reason we even went down this path was somewhat by accident, and also out of necessity. I certainly didn’t start out thinking, “Ooh, I want to make a batch of homemade vinaigrette today!” It was more like: how can I get this task done that I’m not really looking forward to as quickly as possible,
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