There is some history behind this topic of greenhouse sanitation and it’s importance. When I started working as a greenhouse crops specialist in Alberta in 1980, most of the vegetable crops were grown in soil. Two crops of cucumbers were grown and the season ended around the end of October or early November. The primary focus was fumigating the soil with chemicals and washing the greenhouse surfaces with a bleach solution. Root knot nematodes and fusarium and verticillium wilt causing fungi were affecting crops so much that production was down to less than 50 cucumbers per square-metre and industry sustainability was threatened. Growers switched to steam pasteurization of soils, however a few weeks after cucumbers were planted, nematodes attacked the plants near the greenhouse poles. So, steam was not effective in completely eliminating these nematodes. They moved to areas where steaming was difficult that is where the poles were.
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