Milk Experiment

Jaymie

okay, as you said, there are other methods more effective against powdery mildew. Here is some information from Lyn Bagnall, an organic specialist who spends a lot of time at Aussies Living Simply

Quote:

milk spray and carb soda work best on Downy mildew where they solve the problem by changing the pH of the leaf surface to a level not suitable for the fungi's growth.

However, powdery mildew is caused by a different group of fungi that love humid weather and medium temperatures, and continue to reproduce when the weather dries out. Attack by powdery mildew is a sign your plants are low in potassium. A drink of seaweed tea will supply this. To get rid of the fungi on the leaves, spray them with chamomile tea - which is a natural fungicide. Use a tea bag, and steep the tea for 15 minutes. Strain into a spray bottle, and dilute to one litre per tea bag used. You can make it a bit stronger than this if the infestation is severe.

TCLynx

Cool thanks for that tip Jaymie,

Can you copy that info into the fish safe plant treatments thread!!!!!

I'll have to try that tea method out on the cantaloupe in the AP system that is showing some powdery signs on lower leaves.

I did not know that attack by powdery mildew could be a sign of potassium deficiency, that is good to know.

I do know that powdery mildew does tend to do in certain types of plants around here. We go from very humid to hot and dry as a part of the diurnal cycle around here.

TCLynx

Jaymie
Never mind that bit about posting into the other thread, I've already quoted you into there.

I have done the final spraying with milk. Will post final results over the next couple days.

I did also spray a few other plants with the dilute chamomile tea. I will post the results of that as well.

Here are a couple pics of the affected plants to be sprayed with the dilute chamomile tea.

TCLynx

Here are some final pics of the experiment plants.

The North Plants look better after all is done but they didn't seem to have the powdery mildew as bad in the first place.

My conclusion about the nonfat dry milk, it seems to make an ok spreader/sticker. It might be an option to use in a food safe plant treatment mixture for that purpose so long as the milk wouldn't render any of the other ingredients dangerous or inoperable.

I don't have any downy mildew to test milk against which I understand is the appropriate place to use milk.

TCLynx

The south plants got the whole fresh milk.

I don't see any improvement to them at all from the milk. This makes sense after I found out that powdery mildew isn't really affected by the milk.

I did not notice any other affects from using fresh whole milk that might suggest other uses. I don't have any downy mildew to test it against.

Here are a couple pics.

TCLynx

I did spray a little chamomile tea once but I only had the chance to do it once. There doesn't seem to be improvement after only one spray.

I expect the sprays would be more effective if I were to first address the potassium deficiency.

DanDMan

Perhaps the cheap antibiotic laden milk is what works..

EffigyOfFaith

I wonder if a dilute wood ash spay might supply the missing potassium and also change the pH on the lead surface.

TCLynx

I expect it might work thought you would probably have to be quite careful to make it dilute enough not to burn your plants or yourself.

The trick with the changing the pH is for use against downey mildew though and the powdery mildew is supposed to be common with potassium def. It might not be appropriate to use both approaches unless you are being attacked by both problems.

Gilly

Milk spray at 1 part milk to 10 parts water is used as a preventative and poor for getting rid of the problem.
Sulphur is an excellent cure for powdery mildew but may affect the PH of the soil.
putting something (newspaper) under the plant leaf when dusting would minimise this.
Don't know what this would do in a AP system.

TCLynx

I'm tending to agree with the take on it that milk was never really meant to help with powdery mildew and that potassium might help my problem. Unfortunately, no one around here carries maxicrop or greensand so we have to order it.

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Milk Experiment

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A place to discuss aquaponics