The following ten steps will maintain healthy plants and reduce the need for fungicides. You may be able to devise others which are especially suited to your garden. The easiest and most important way to manage plant diseases is to choose resistant or tolerant varieties.
Resistant varieties resist infection by a particular disease agent and show little or no disease.
Tolerant varieties may show symptoms but still yield the same as resistant varieties or susceptible ones protected with pesticides. When available, choose varieties that are resistant or tolerant to a disease that previously has been a problem. If seed rot or damping off have been problems in your garden, then treating the seed with a fungicide will prove helpful. Begin with healthy plant material to help plants become quickly established in the garden. Plant materials that are unhealthy at the start never yield as much as healthy ones or may die while still young.