monarda -bee balm

[Susan W]

I have an unknown variety of monarda (bee balm). Has wonderful red blooms. Did well and spread for a couple of years. This year with a wet spring and a (growing) tree shading it too much, got a bad case of the powdery mildew. I took care of the tree (was a volunteer, not needed). After the few blooms the plant had faded, I cut it back to a few inches. Now little sprouts are poking up all around the base stems.

[applestar]

Sounds like you'll get another show of flowers. Try the 10% milk solution. It's a great non-toxic mildew protectant. You should see my peppermint and spearmint patchs this year -- no spotting or yellowing leaves at all! Bees and butterflies are loving it.

Funny you should post this now -- I just came home with two 3 gal pots of Monarda didyma 'Jacob Kline/Cline' and M. didyma 'Coral Reef' These pots are absolutely FILLED with stems and I suspect can be divided into three clumps each. I'm going to replace part of the peppermint patch -- which has spread quite enough -- with the red Jacob Kline and plant the Coral Reef in the lower/wetter part of my Sunny Meadow-to-be.

[rainbowgardener]

Hi applestar - I did do the milk routine in my garden recently. However, I ended up using yoghurt, because all the milk I could find was pasteurized. Even the organic milk was labelled super-pasteurized. I think it's a requirement for retail sold milk. I thought it was the lactobacillus that had the fungicidal action. Is there still active lactobacillus in pasteurized milk? Or what is it exactly we are recommending when we recommend this? Have you tried it with regular store milk? BTW the yoghurt solution worked beautifully, but for the first few days it smelled kind of nasty and drew flies...

[applestar]

I believe the principle is kind of like you can make home-made yogurt with pasteurized milk. The milk solution is favorable to the lactobacillus bacteria. That's why it's not necessary to use straight yogurt, in fact you don't HAVE to add the bacteria because they are naturally occurring/present. However, I like using whey - the liquid that pools in yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream to inoculate the milk solution -- or to use them by themselves in solution with water when I don't have any milk handy. I usually have store bought organic milk and cottage cheese but also have used whey from conventional sour cream and yogurt as well. A small amount of yogurt or whey added to conventional milk (maybe and allowed to sit at room temp for a while) would probably help too. Once, in desperation to treat an emergency case, I broke open a capsule of acidophilus.... Should've seen my DH's face.

I was reminded when I watched that Monsanto documentary videos, that conventional milk would inevitably have antibiotics present in the milk because the rBGH makes the dairy cows prone to mastitis. THAT would be the lactobacillus killer and an excellent argument against using conventional milk. (But remember that you *CAN* make yogurt with conventional milk or even powdered skim milk)

Milk, even expired milk, is much nicer smelling, rainbowgardener.