Q&A- Should you remove dead leaves/stalks of a plant that's still producing?

The Beginner's Garden with Jill McSheehy

Jill McSheehy

Gardening, Garden, How To, Education, Organicgardening, Home & Garden, Leisure, Homegardening, Beginninggardener, Vegetablegardening

4.4 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Should you remove dead leaves/stalks of a plant that's still producing? Absolutely! We will talk about how and why on today's podcast.

Show Notes:

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's Q&A is one that probably applies to all of our gardens, and that is, should you cut out the dead leaves, stalks, and other parts of the plant, if the plant is still producing?
0:13.7	And the simple answer is, yes. Now, I can't say that I have been completely diligent in this area. Sometimes, especially this time of
0:22.3	year, it gets really busy. And that's not one of the priorities in my garden, especially when I'm
0:27.9	harvesting and working out other troubleshooting problems and things like that. But in general,
0:33.9	a healthy plant is one that is going to be trimmed of those dead leaves and dead stalks and
0:39.1	anything that is just not 100% healthy. The reasons for this are numerous, but a couple of ones that
0:47.0	come to mind are, number one, the more airflow that you can get, especially if you live in a humid
0:52.7	area like I do, the more you want to
0:54.9	take those non-producing leaves off of the plant that enables that airflow to come and that
1:01.7	will prevent or help prevent the proliferation of some of your fungal diseases that are so common,
1:07.5	especially in humid areas. Another thing is that pest insects will very often be attracted to that kind of plant debris.
1:17.7	And you don't want to cause a haven for those pest insects anymore than they already are
1:23.1	attracted to your plants.
1:25.0	And so that's something that you would want to take those out so that those
1:28.7	pest insects don't have a place to hide. Now all this may seem kind of common sense if you're
1:34.7	looking at a dead leaf where you can just snap off the leaf and it comes off because it's
1:39.4	completely dead and dried out. That may seem like a no-brainer to you. But what about the ones that are just
1:45.9	starting to show some signs of stress? What do you do about those? There's still some color,
1:51.7	there's still some life in it. And honestly, that's probably more like a judgment call. And that
1:57.3	probably depends on the plant as well. If I'm talking about tomatoes and the bottom parts of
2:02.7	the stems and the leaves are starting to turn yellow, I know for me, usually that is early blight,
2:08.8	and I need to get that off of the plant as soon as possible. But especially if it's on the bottom,
	...

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