KeyWee's Blog

Oh boy howdy, this was (and I am being polite here) dull.

To give credit where it is due, the instructor is famous for his work in plant pathology ~ one of the nation's best in fact.  But that doesn't make every brown spot on every piece of fruit an exciting adventure.  Poor man ~ he was SO enthusiastic.  At many points, it was all he could do to move on to the next slide because the one at hand was just so chock-full of dazzling potential.  As much as I hate to say that if you've seen one brown spot, you've seen them all, that's what it was beginning to feel like after three solid hours of brown spots.

Given the mind-numbing white noise of this topic, this girl is determined to learn at least the basics.  How else will I be able to help those poor pest-ridden gardeners of Marshall County?  They are depending on me to get them through the worst of it.  Unfortunately, the answer and cure to many, many icky-looking diseases with urpy-sounding names like gall, blight and rot, is to simply get rid of the infected plant and start anew.  Not what the home gardener wants to hear.  Another deeply held secret is to not buy sickly looking plants in the first place (guilty). 

Of some interest to all you gardeners will be the world-famous "disease triangle".  The more I thought about this neat little object, the more I can see the sense in it.  In short, you cannot and will not have disease on plants without the three "legs" of the triangle:  1) a susceptible host, 2) a pathogen, 3) the proper environment.  If you have all three of these, someone's going down.  But if even one is missing, you are winning the war.  There now, don't you feel all smart and stuff?!

So despite my drooping eyelids and a class that exceeded its 3-hour limit, I feel like a stray thread of information may have worked its way into my already-crammed mind.  Like I mentioned to a fellow student, at this stage of the game, I adhere to selective learning (as in only what I have an interest in), almost as if my mind knows that it doesn't have a whole heck of a lot of time to deal with knowledge it doesn't want and won't use. 

Oh ~ I did learn one thing that I absolutely refuse to agree with and probably won't practice.  Don't save and/or swap seeds ~ NOT!!!  According to the pros, they can spread disease far and wide.  That's like saying don't go to Walmart in case you get a cold.  Saving seeds, swapping and trading both plants and seeds is one of my greatest joys and I refuse to give that up.  It's a risk I'm willing to take ~ sue me.