Can soil be diseased?

[Bodenbabe]

Can soil be diseased? Whatever I grow in my vegetable patch ends up diseased and, whilst I know that the plants could be getting airborne diseases, it just seems too much of a coincidence that nothing will ever grow in it but will grow fine in gro-bags. It all starts off fine but rots soon after. This has been the case for about 3 years now.

If soil can be diseased then is there anything I can buy to 'clean' it?

rotting could be bad drainage. Some diseases can sit in the soil - eg potato blight. Not sure you can do anything to clean it - but you can improve the drainage by adding grit and organic matter.

Soil can be diseased - and is hard to sort out. My DH says it could be a fungal disease which is hard to get rid of. Either by buying friendly bacteria, or sterilizing the soil (quite an undertaking and lots of cash and work) or dig the soil out and replace it with new.

The best advice is to send a few soil samples away to the RHS and ask for a soil analysis. Then you'll know what you're dealing with. Perhaps give them a ring first to talk about it - they're full of knowledge at Wisley.

yes it can be diseased, as daisydotandgertie said, it can be fungal, bacterial or viruses.
did you dig over your soil in the autumn?
Digging it over and leaving it in large clods will expose many diseases to a good hard frost which kills them off over the winter - and with the winter we have had it should be pretty effective.
Do you rotate your crops? For example you should never plants brasica's or potatoes in the same spot as you get a build up of dieseases (although legumes are fine to grow in the same position)
Also agree that bad drainage or 'damping off' may be the cause of rotting.
Do have a look on the RHS website though - there is loads of advice on there

Soil canot be diseased in a general sense unless it has some kind of chemical in it that litertally kills all plants. However, here are a lot of things that can be wrong with soil.

Build up of fungal, bacterial and viral pathogens can occur if the same soil is used year after year for the same crops. Crop rotation is essential as others say and or chemical treatment for things like clubroot as Riven rightly points out can persist for years.

Lack of specific nutriuents. Not putting manure or fertiliser on eventually depletes the soil if it is used to grow crops.

Chemical compositon maing it too acid r alkali to grow certain crops is hard to deal with except to put on things like lime or grow crops tat tolerate acid or alakali.

Soil structure is rarely talked about but very important. Deep double digging, thorough incorporation of vegetable matter such as compost and manure or even sand is the way to deal with this. owever, if the veg patch is just fundamentally water logged due to poor drainage then moving it to a better position in your garden may be the only way to deal with this as drainage is often expensive.

Lack of light or water can occur if it is overhng by trees. Again hard to deal wth without moving the veg patch to a better position or cutting down trees.

Thanks everybody, lots of useful advice there. Great idea about sending off a soil sample!

I don't dig it over in the autumn (didn't know you were supposed to, oops!). I've mainly grown tomatoes and runner beans - they get to a cerain height and then the tomatoes all go brown and shrivelled. This year we got about 2 beans per plant and then the plant also went brown and died.

Try using the 'no dig' raised bed system. Fill the bed with fresh topsoil and chicken pellets.

This year make up a massive compost heeeap to rotavate in next spring - horse poo, sawdust, shredded paper, grass, hedge trimmings - i make 1 cubic metre bins using 4 pallets nailed together, leave to hot compost.

Dig drainage ditches round the beds.