Captan Usage for Strawberries

General Fruit Growing
#1

I bought a small package of Captan WP 50% and reading through instructions. I noticed that most application call to 1-2 tablespoon per gallon of water. However, for Strawberries (grey mold and leaf spots) it is 4-8(!!!) tablespoons per gallon. Is it some kind of error?

#2

No error, use 4! . It won’t work unless you mix it in acidic water.Add a tablespoon of vinegar to tap water.

2 Likes
#3

Thanks!

#4

Yeah I had problems with gray mold, and it didn’t work, but found out about the acidic water, tried it, and it worked very well. I actually have not sprayed in 2 years. I started seeing it at the end of last year, so I’ll be spraying this year.

1 Like
#5

Ho often did you spray in the season to fix the problem?

#6

is the grey mold you speak of on the fruit itself or the plant? im asking because i had some berries get moldy last year.

#7

Yes on the berries.

Well I wanted to avoid spraying actual berries, so I sprayed before the flowers opened. I sprayed twice. You could probably apply to small berries too, but I wanted to avoid spraying while bees are around, or with fruit on the plant. It seemed to work well to spray very early in the season and continue spraying according to label directions until the buds open. The first year I saw some mold on late forming berries. But by the 2nd season all were clean. As long as you can spray the plants before the mold appears, you will defeat it. So as a preventative it worked well. Of course you could have different strains, and other factors where you may need to spray more, and berries themselves. It is the best product available to the home owner.

It seems strawberry leaves tolerate captan well, you won’t see burn holes like you see on stone fruit. It should get rid of any leaf spot problems too. Which to me I don’t care about. It seems to clear when the weather becomes drier in mid-summer by itself.

#8

My leaf spot issues didn’t bother me until I planted Mara de bois. Leaf spot on it particularly bad, to the point plants loose vigor and dry. Grey mold is there too but it was not the main reason I looked at captan. I was debating between captan and immunox for leaf spot. But if captan also solves grey mold issue, I guess I know the winner))

2 Likes