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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Plant disease

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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Plant disease
  • Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 00:51:37 -0700 (PDT)

I think once you get botrytis its probably not going to make it (the gray stemrot in your tomatos). I've never seen the stuff spread myself, but once one plant shows it its time to make sure they all get dryer by evening. This particular fungus occurs naturally, but seems to get more active when you have a cool evening and the plants go to bed too wet.

There are soil ammendments like soil guard which can help with both it and fusarium, and verticillium but they are prophalactics not cures. With some plants I had some success fending off botrytis and verticillium by adding some ground seashell mix to the soil (the extra calcium seems to inhibit fungal growth) - but once either got too far it not much you could do. For mildew, if your weather is cool we did have a lot of luck spraying elemental sulphur, but if you have really hot days I'd be wary of it because it can stress the plants by upsetting potassium balance in the leaves.

Liz is probably right though, about just removing them, me I find it harder to give up them up since I don't grow as many.

--- On Sun, 7/5/09, Liz <liz@allslash.org> wrote:

From: Liz <liz@allslash.org>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Plant disease
To: birdwalk@frontiernet.net, "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2009, 3:31 PM

> my squash gets this major mildew thing every year
>
> WHAT can I treat it with?
>

Is it white? That's probably powdery mildew. Black or dark-colored spots are
likely downy mildew. The standard recommendation is to treat with a
fungicide. If you don't want to do that, make sure you completely clear out
the diseased plants at the end of each season and destroy them, because the
fungus spores will hang around otherwise and infect next year's crop. You
can also try several plantings in succession, so as each planting becames
infected, you can get your squash from it and then destroy the plants
themselves. You're removing the host plants, so hopefully that may result in
less source of infection in subsequent years.

Also you might want to look at where you're planting any cucurbit. A full
day of sun will help to keep the leaves dried off and less friendly to
mildew spores. If you can let them grow up a trellis, you'll keep them more
open and provide fewer damp places.

> and this year the tomatoes are rotting at the stem as they turn ripe...
> whats up with that?

The tomato rot sounds like botrytis. Did you have a lot of rain as the
tomatoes were developing? Botrytis is another of the fungal diseases that's
worse in years with late cool rainy springs.

I think there are some organic fungicides (look for something by Safer) that
you could use, and I've been told that neem oil will also work. Lucky here
so far--I was so late getting my garden started that this year's late spring
monsoon was over with by the time I got anything in the ground.

Liz
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com

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