Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everybody, tracked down what the white spots on my tomato leaves are caused by, powdery mildew. I have been treating it with hydrogen peroxide and it keeps re-occuring. Faye suggests milk to 10 parts of water anyone tried that?
Also getting a lot of brown algae in the pipes any suggestions about how to deal with that?

Spray a whole milk concentrate all over the leaves during the hottest (when there is the most sun) part of the day. It is a very common method.

Or foliar spray with Potassium BiCarbonate....

The white spots of your leaves... are probably burn marks from the Hydrogen Peroxide...

Sorry... but I don't really see evidence of powdery mildew anyway...

well whatever it was Fayes' remedy worked

Yep... a milk solution will work just fine...

Indeed, powdery mildew rapidly covers whole leaves, it doesn't occur as "spots". Diluted milk has minimal effect in my experience- best to remove the affected leaves and keep the new leaves as dry as possible.

Oh i have had plenty of powdery mildew on my zuchini and pumpkins at the end of season that has started out as white spots and pursisted like that for awhile.

Yep powdery mildew does show up as white spots on the leaves, as does downy mildew. Both easily treatable

I would never suggest spraying in the hottest part of the day as I would expect the sun would burn any residue on the leaves. I would call 10 parts water 1 part milk a solution not a concentrate. It is critical to use whole milk, not skim or powdered.

I just got a pm from Anthony and he said he had treated his plants and it worked.
Thanks for the feedback Anthony.

We used diluted full cream milk on the peas and zucchini in the in-ground garden in autumn last year, but it just kept on spreading and covered most of the plant eventually.
I had a couple of leaves of chard affected in the GBs about 2 weeks after planting, and just removed the leaves - and no further signs of it so far. I supose it must start out as a small spot, but it sure spreads fast to cover most or all of a leaf.

I've tried the milk + water method which didn't work for me when i had some really bad mildew on my zucchinis.

eco-fungicide as well as pulling off the badly affected leaves is the best solution for me.

Whatever you choose it's critical to attack the problem early rather than late.

And repeat if necessary.
Of course if a certain plant is succeptible you may always be fighting a losing battle.

Years ago we have about 6 varieties of peas growing in the greenhouse. We later discovered that the snowpea variety "oregon" is resistant to mildew and so that is certainly what we recommend to grow and has become one of my personal favourties.

Is that variety the same as Oregon Giant Faye? If so that is good news as I planted a heap of them this year.

Don't know Marc but they are a bigger snowpea. Melting mammoth is another nice variety.

faye I avoid foliar feeding during peak light hours for that reason but I've always read the milk method is most effective at that time.