Powdery Mildew on my squash

[OrangeSpear]

This is a link to my blog. [url=https://orangespear.blogspot.com/2011/07/again-with-powdery-mildew.html]Linky.[/url] Here I have talked about my battles with powdery mildew.

But I am lost for what to do. I keep reading so many conflicting things to do for prevention and for curing it. I have tried some things. Somethings I cant try because of living in a townhouse and I have limited space to plant things.

I was wondering what you have done that works and what experiences you have had with preventing it and killing it?

thanks

[SPierce]

I can't really offer much yet, but I'm having the same battle with my pumpkins and my squash, recently... I sprayed with a 50% milk solution this morning, and am hoping it helps! I already lost 6 leaves, but it's a long vine so I'm hoping that I can not loose the others... darn over head water mistakes at the beginning of the summer

[CharlieBear]

It is very hard to prevent if you have a lot of rain, water overhead or sometimes just days and days of extremely high temps and there it is, it is a fungal disease. If it occurs very late in the season you can just let it go and distroy the vines (don't put in compost). If it is much earlier usually organic people like myself treat it with baking soda solution about 3 T/ gallon of water sprayed on very early in the morning, other use milk, but that is much more expensive. In theory you could cover the plants with clear plastic, but then how do you get them pollinated unless you do it by hand and that raises the temps on the plants.

[Francis Barnswallow]

I got the same problem. And it's Orlando aka constant heat/humidity and rain.

[hendi_alex]

Powdered wettable sulfur works great on powdery mildew. I've used it two years on cucumber vines. Within a few days all signs of the mildew are gone. Those two years I simply dusted the plants. This year I'm trying to use less sulfur so am adding it to water and using it as a spray. That only calls for 1 tablespoon per gallon of water. I only started treating my squash vines yesterday, so no results yet. I'll give it three or four days, and if the mildew doesn't clear up, I'll dust again. This product is available at some garden stores but until this year have had a hard time finding it.

wettable sulphur is widely available on line:

[url]https://www.google.com/search?q=wettable+sulf&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=wettable+sulfur&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=uo1&pwst=1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnsfd&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=32QnTt2bDZC4tgeSzuC7Cg&ved=0CDsQrQQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=655262693fbb3d7c&biw=1273&bih=1320[/url]

If my link doesn't work, the search was for 'wettable sulfur' and gave lots of hits.

[SPierce]

Sorry for the thread hijack, but I've got a similar question... I've got powedery mildew on my pumpkins, it kinda snuck up on me and I was also a bit neglicent (oh, I'll make a milk spray tomorrow!) and it got out of hand. I've lost 4 leaves at the begining of the vine, and I might loose another 4. I sprayed once with a milk solution and was sure to coat the leaves and hope to stop the spread- however, with the first 8 sets of leaves gone, will the entire plant die? The new growth doesn't have any of the powedery mildew on it, and neither does the stems. I'm keeping an eye out and plan to apply the milk solution again 3-4 days after the initial spray.

[gardenvt]

I thought the formula for treating powdery mildew was 10% fat free milk - or 1 part milk and 9 parts water.

If this is too weak, I'll be back out tomorrow re-treating the cucumbers.