This year has been brutal for garden disease. Any organic methods available to treat powdery mildew?
It is showing up at my place also. I use neem/water, or dawn/water
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I added micronized sulfur powder to my spinosad spray when it showed up on my apple, and that worked. It has been a bad year for it.
Haven’t tried anything else.
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20-30 percent milk spray - it prevents development of the fungus.
Baking soda
Serenade
All have to be repeated once a week and after rain, which for this year is daily for me.
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I’ve used milk and water. I want to say it’s like a 1/4 cup milk to 3/4 cup water or something similar. I’ll look back, but I think if you go too heavy on the milk it’s not effective. I’ve used it and it works.
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Must have been typing at the same time. But that sounds about right I’d say.
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Neem oil (or any other oil) and baking soda spray works well. I use potassium bicarb instead of baking soda as it adds a small amount of fert (K) instead of sodium.
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Interesting. How exactly does Neem oil help on leaves that are already infected? I thought it was purely used for pest control? Thanks for the awesome feedback!
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Would that spray mix work with peonies?
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Never tried, don’t know. It works on cucurbit, currants, peppers. Though it defoliate peppers, if plant severe affected by mildew. Mildew on peppers penetrates leaf tissue, so destroying fungus cells also destroys affected leaves. I would try on couple leaves. If it would be negative affect it will be visible in 24 hours. in peppers it is just few hours. Though milk solution is best as prevention, not to treat the mildew.
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@Mickster, if that question was for me, I have to say I don’t know the mechanism by which neem is effective on bacteria/fungi. But it seems to be. They sell neem oil as both an insecticide and fungicide.
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I’ve never been proactive enough to get out in front of it, so the only times I’ve ever used it was after I saw powdery mildew on something. But it seemed to do a number on about anything I ever used it on. In fact I only recently had some on a graft that I am trying my hand at (Got some root stock from Turkey Creek) and I mixed up a little in a hand spray bottle and gave it a good dousing - seems to be gone for the last several days anyway.
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