* Hand pruners to remove dead or diseased wood

Viral leaf spot on hosta. Dig up and destroy

When a sick plant has been diagnosed with a viral or bacterial disease, your only option is to remove the diseased branch by pruning or destroy the entire plant. You should start out by practicing prevention.

Prevention is adopting good cultural and sanitation practices. Consider the following measures:

• Start with disease-free plants. Inspect plants before purchase for any kind of symptoms. This includes the roots as well.
• Use new or clean pots when planting pots and large containers.
• Minimize outdoor irrigation or reduce the time interval that foliage remains wet. Keep plant foliage as dry as possible.
• Don’t take cuttings from weak or sickly plants.
• Don’t crowd your plants. Increase air circulation between them. This is particularly true for disease organisms such as botrytis, and powdery and downy mildews.
• Routinely disinfect tools such as propagation knives and scissors with bleach, alcohol or disinfectant solutions. A 15% bleach solution (1 part bleach to 15 parts of water) will sterilize tools. Wash used pots in a mild disinfectant.
• Discard any plants showing symptoms — no questions ask.  At the garden center, if a flat of tomatoes or pansies contains a few weak or sickly plants, do not purchase. Don’t replace sickly plants in each cell with healthy looking ones from another flat. The tray cells could also be contaminated.
• If a friend gifts a cutting or plant from his/her garden, isolate a minimum of 2 weeks before adding it to your plant collection.  Daylily rust and hosta X disease frequently get started this way.
• Similar measures should be followed for insect prevention.