Call It 'Herbal Distancing'
How container spacing can help reduce the impact of boxwood blight in nursery production.
It’s been a year and a half since the COVID-19 pandemic started. We have been hearing how social distancing prevents the spread of the virus and we see signs everywhere indicating we should stay at least 6 feet apart.
It turns out, social distancing may work to keep boxwood blight from spreading in your nursery too.
Wait a minute — boxwood plants can’t move, and they don’t reach out for hugs!
Well, they are often grown tightly packed together with branches overlapping each other, so let’s say they’re as close as holding hands.
In this study, we share results from a recent experiment where we grew boxwood plants either packed tightly together or spaced further apart under different irrigation frequencies to see how that impacted the spread of boxwood blight from infected plants to healthy plants.
Continue reading the article: http://www.diggermagazine.com/call-it-herbal-distancing/
Courtesy of the Oregon Association of Nurseries’ Digger Magazine.
By Mana Ohkura, Lloyd Nackley, Carolyn Scagel and Jerry E. Weiland
Dr. Lloyd Nackley is an assistant professor of horticulture and Extension agent at Oregon State University, specializing in nursery crop production. He can be reached at lloyd.nackley@oregonstate.edu.
Dr. Carolyn Scagel is a plant physiologist with the Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service in Corvallis, Oregon. She can be reached at Carolyn.Scagel@usda.gov.
Dr. Jerry E. Weiland is a research plant pathologist with the Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory, USDA Agricultural Research Service in Corvallis, Oregon. He can be reached at Jerry.Weiland@usda.gov.
Dr. Mana Ohkura is a postdoctoral scholar in Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR. She can be reached at ohkuram@oregonstate.edu.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Jesse Mitchell, Dalyn McCauley, and Bryan Beck for their assistance with this study.
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