I grow a few tomatoes in pots every year along with 4 or so pepper plants. I have been using EarthBoxes for the last 5 or 6 years. I replace the potting soil every 2 years.
Last year both my peppers and tomatoes got bacterial spot pretty bad.
Since EarthBoxes aren’t cheap, I’d like to keep using them.
Anyone ideas on how I might sanitize them before adding new potting soil? Bleach? Spray them down with copper? Hydrogen peroxide? Sodium percarbonate?
Bleach is cheap and kills everything. Just make sure to rinse well after you have sanitized them.
What do you do? Flush the pot with a 1:10 solution of bleach and then run water through multiple times?
BLS usually is associated with soil splash from heavy rain. Bell peppers can be had that are very resistant to BLS.
Yup, plenty of rain last year… I need to do a better job of covering the soil in the boxes this year too.
I’ll answer two questions here.
Yes, just flush/gently scrub the pot with a 1:10 bleach solution and then rinse it off with a hose.
There are a lot of effective and cheap ways to protect your nightshade plants from splash. My favorite is to cut a slit in a newspaper and slide it underneath the tomato/pepper plant. Then put a little compost or mulch on top of it and you’re good to go.