As some of you may know, I have very acidic water and soil. I've amended with lime each year, but it doesn't help because my water is so acidic. So, this year, I've been treating my water with oyster shells before I put it on the plants. It is a tedious task, but I'm going to try something else with a hose end sprayer and see how that goes next. So, my property is riddled with blight on everything, strawberries have it, perennials have it, so far the tomatoes don't have it yet (has to be because I've been spraying them with neem regularly) Well, I wanted to tinker around with a spray that I could use that I wouldn't need the neem.
So, I put in a 32oz spray bottle, my water with a pH of 5.2 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of epsom salt, 1 capsule of probiotic, and 1 capsule of oil of oregano. I had a really hard time mixing the OOO in. next time I"ll try and premix it in a carrier oil first and then try and add it to the water.
Experiment 1: Sprayed it on one of the perennials that has leaf blight. Sprayed on a volunteer tomato plant that isn't effected with anything. 2 days later, no sign of damage to the plants.
Experiment 2: Sprayed down 2 strawberry plants infected with leaf blight. Sprayed 2 tomato plants that are larger and had something weird going on, I had pulled all effected stems off the plant and sprayed with neem (over a week ago I did that) I just sprayed these plants this morning 6/25 I will post results in another day or two.
If it doesn't kill the plants, I will next experiment with some plants being sprayed with neem and some with this spray.
I thought it would be good for me to have a place to journal my experimenting, and I thought you all might find it interesting.
Some of you might find this to be overkill, but in the last 7 years, I haven't had a year that I didn't get early blight on my tomato plants. All my plants on my property have some sort of fungal disease of some kind. Including my fruit trees.
Testing out my home made antifungal spray :)
Sheila, gardening on the zone 4b/5a line.
ya know, perhaps I should be doing this on my strawberry plants that HAVE leaf blight already. that might be a better experiment!
I'll do the others too for kicks. sounds good to me. I'm just glad whatever I'm doing thus far is helping, normally by this time everything would be riddled with blight! If I make it the entire summer without blight or septoria on my tomatoes? I might do a happy dance LOL!
I'll do the others too for kicks. sounds good to me. I'm just glad whatever I'm doing thus far is helping, normally by this time everything would be riddled with blight! If I make it the entire summer without blight or septoria on my tomatoes? I might do a happy dance LOL!
Sheila, gardening on the zone 4b/5a line.