Keen Tips for Green Fingertips

Protecting your Garden from Winter Mold & Mildew

Having a few weeks left of summer time is a bittersweet time of year. Enjoying every last minute sounds fantastic, but there’s no escaping some good-old garden graft in preparation for the coming months. The planting, cultivating and nitty-gritty, the real fun part of summer is essentially over. So as you reset your vegetable bed and plant your perennials one thing even the most responsible of gardeners may decide to defer are the few simple precautions that would otherwise prevent massive mold invasion over the next few months.

Many gardeners resort to cure rather than prevention in this regard. In addition to being more expensive, the bleaches used to tackle this are highly concentrated and can pollute your grass beds and top soils.

If you’re tempted to use a power washer, remember: power washers are expensive, use a lot of water and are generally inefficient. Power washing to merely rid mold amounts to serious over-kill and forcibly removing mold and fungi that is invested in external surfaces accelerates the erosive processes on your paint and woodwork.

The Answer is in the Solution

There are several products on the market that solve this with a simple soaking once every 12 months. Many household brands have mold and mildew removal products on the market and these are excellent for use in the home, however, they aren’t designed to be diluted and concentrations of this strength are not recommended for outside use.

The idea is to liberally apply the solution to your concrete, railings, decking and paneling with a garden sprayer, as it’s mild enough for any external surface and harmless to your garden.

Savvier gardeners might make their own solutions. If you’re tempted, make sure not to use any acidic or bleachy substances and try to balance the PH as close to neutral as possible. Once applied, these work naturally over time to breakdown mold and fungi and actively protect and cleanse with no hassle.

I like this solution a lot, because we do so much to battle nature sometimes, and yet this cooperates with it. For something as natural as a garden the best tip one can give is to work with it and to take your time – and not to rush your last few days of summer in a battle against the coming winter!

Al Ottment is a freelance writer for green magazines, interested in saving time and money in the home and garden – so he can spend more of it on his grand kids!