Am I goindg to lose my cantaloupes and honeydews that are large, done growing, and just ripenning?
When nearly every leaf has it, can I save the plants?
Does it cause younger fruits to stop growing?
Am I screwed or am I ok?
-
engineeredgarden
- Green Thumb
- Posts: 426
- Joined: Thu May 13, 2010 11:51 am
- Location: NW Alabama
There are many suggestions on this forum for combating powdery mildew with a 10% solution of milk/90% water. For a case of PM on all leaves, you might want to step up the milk to 30% or even 1/3 milk 2/3 water. Use any milk except skim; there's something about the fat present that is critical to the function of the lactobacillus (Scott had a good, detailed post about it maybe a year ago...).
For additional help, if you have plain yogurt in the house, put a tablespoon of the yogurt into this milk/water mix and let it stand for about an hour for the additional lactobacillus organisms present in yogurt (as well as those naturally present in milk) to propagate.
Now take this solution, put it into a spray bottle, and spray the affected leaves, top and bottom.
Hope for NO RAIN. If it does rain, just do the milk thing again tomorrow. Elsewhere on the forum are more specific recommendations about time intervals, etc. I'm lucky to get it done once a week, so time intervals aren't as critical for me....
HTH.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
For additional help, if you have plain yogurt in the house, put a tablespoon of the yogurt into this milk/water mix and let it stand for about an hour for the additional lactobacillus organisms present in yogurt (as well as those naturally present in milk) to propagate.
Now take this solution, put it into a spray bottle, and spray the affected leaves, top and bottom.
Hope for NO RAIN. If it does rain, just do the milk thing again tomorrow. Elsewhere on the forum are more specific recommendations about time intervals, etc. I'm lucky to get it done once a week, so time intervals aren't as critical for me....
HTH.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
Thanks, I'll try the milk thing. I read somewhere about crushed fresh garlic in a spray bottle and tried it on 2 plants and saw no difference. It's only been a couple days though.
I've studied up enough to know not to get the leaves wet. I have my melon plants on a trellis and water with a soaker hose, but the weather we've had here in Michigan has made it difficult. 3 inches of rain in one storm flooded the raised bed and had the bottom leaves submerged for awhile. As soon as that dried some we got more, plus humidity at 90% for awhile. Finally today we have a high of 85, full sun, and lower humidity. It's very frustrating as a rookie gardener to do everything right and have mother nature mess it up. My watermelon plants had the blossoms drying and falling off the day they opened, but finally I see a few doing ok.
Thanks again.
I've studied up enough to know not to get the leaves wet. I have my melon plants on a trellis and water with a soaker hose, but the weather we've had here in Michigan has made it difficult. 3 inches of rain in one storm flooded the raised bed and had the bottom leaves submerged for awhile. As soon as that dried some we got more, plus humidity at 90% for awhile. Finally today we have a high of 85, full sun, and lower humidity. It's very frustrating as a rookie gardener to do everything right and have mother nature mess it up. My watermelon plants had the blossoms drying and falling off the day they opened, but finally I see a few doing ok.
Thanks again.