I'm being greedy by posting twice for different reasons. Hope this is ok.

My camelia caught a disease and died. Following advice I recevied from my garden centre, I cleansed the soil with diluted Jeyes fluid. A while later I moved a pot containing a handsome acer to that very spot. Then that died within a very short period of time. I am now thinking the soil in the pot is infected also.

I would like to re-use the pot but would I need to cleanse the soil? Get rid of the soil and cleanse the pot? Throw the pot away and buy a new one?

Here is more about the disease and my poor camelia:

The beautiful pink flowering camelia was healthy in its pot for years. Then I transplanted it to the garden in between a lilac tree and a four foot high bike shed. Soon it got badly infected by sooty mould. It was so bad that it looked almost fire damaged. For four years I spent hours cleaning the leaves and wiping off the sooty mould. I seemed to be on top of it. Then suddenly all the leaves dropped off and it died. By this point it had developed these strange 'berries' - brown sacks that emitted a grey dust if squeezed.

I dug the plant up and cleansed the soil. A few months later I moved my potted acer on top of the infected spot (in hindsight that was a dumb thing to do).

So back to my question, will this pot continue to kill whatever I put in it even if I clean it really well? Suggestions on how to clean it would be very useful.

I feel I am out of my depth with this one!

Jackie D