Imagine: you planted seedlings, watered them, looked after them, and a month later you discover that the beds have been taken over by a strange plant with small yellow flowers.
It may seem like just a harmless weed, but within a week your tomatoes will dry out, your carrots will stop growing, and your cucumbers will become covered in spots.
Meet dodder, a parasite that sucks the juices out of plants and infects them with viruses. And if you don't destroy it now, your garden will turn into a desert by autumn.
Dodder has no roots - it twines around the stems of cultivated plants and feeds on their juices. Its seeds live in the soil for up to 10 years, and one branch produces hundreds of new shoots.
It is almost useless to fight it if you don’t know three rules.
First: never pull out dodder with your hands! Every piece of stem left on the ground will sprout again.
Second, burn all affected plants, even if they still have fruit on them.
Third: sow the area with mustard. Dodder hates its smell and does not take root nearby.
But there is a more radical way. Buy regular iodine at the pharmacy and dilute 10 drops in a liter of water.
Spray the soil and healthy plants - iodine will kill dodder spores and strengthen the immunity of vegetables.
And plant marigolds around the beds. Their roots secrete substances that repel the parasite.
The main thing is to act quickly, because dodder reproduces like fire.
Author: Igor Zur