A few times a year I’ll see a meme float through social media telling gardeners they can die from soil borne diseases. The most recent of these was one for Legionnaires’ disease in New Zealand. I have also seen them for Tetanus, and I recently got my booster shot, just to be sure. For years I’ve been reading that sphagnum peat moss also carries a nasty bug.
As I write this, the news is saturated with information about the coronavirus and people are suiting up with masks and body armor. Should gardeners be doing the same thing when they head out into the garden? Should we wear masks and latex gloves to stay safe?
I decided to write a blog post about soil borne diseases that gardeners can get and try to uncover the myths about them. I expected to find 4 or 5 diseases and write a bit about each one so that I could try to understand this problem better.
You will be very surprised at what I found.