North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Thomas Olenio <tolenio@sentex.net>]

Hello,

I believe this would be true of anything that changed the surface PH of the 
leaf.  Milk will
acidify as it decomposes.  Sulfur also acidifies.  But you can go the other 
way too and make it
too sweet for powdery mildew by spraying bicarbonate of soda.

I bet that if you could find the correct dilution, you could spray liquid 
fertilizer for acid
loving plants.  Then you could feed the leaves and prevent powdery mildew 
simultaneously.

It is changing the narrow PH range that powdery mildew lives in that can stop 
it.

There is also AQ10 ( http://www.pmac.net/aq.htm )which is a naturally 
occurring organism that
EATS powdery mildew, and will hang around for the season, just waiting for 
another food feast
when PM returns.

Later,
Tom

Joe Hecksel wrote:

> Forwarded from Viticulture list.
>
> Milk makes wine fine: Dairy sprays protect grapevines from powdery
> mildew.
> 18 September 2002
> CHARLOTTE WESTNEY
> http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-5.html
> Milk could be used to make organic wine. Sprayed on grapevines once a
> fortnight, milky water seems to control powdery mildew as effectively as
> sulphur and copper fungicides, without tainting the grapes' taste.
>
> Peter Crisp of the University of Adelaide in Australia made the
> discovery
> during his survey of traditional treatments for the fungus, which
> currently
> costs the Australian wine industry A$30 million (US$16 million) a year.
>
> "Most of them did not provide good control," he says, "but milk and whey
> stood out."
>
> The fungus can engulf whole grapes, rendering them unfit for
> wine-making.
> Sulphur sprays stop powdery mildew growing by interfering with its
> enzymes.
> How milk works is not clear, but full-fat seems to work best.
>
> Milk fat or whey protein may feed microorganisms on the vine surface
> that
> then compete for space or even consume the mildew spores, says Wayne
> Wilcox, a plant pathologist at Cornell University, New York.
>
> "There is definitely something in the treatment, but I would like to see
> more data," says Wilcox. He recently visited an Australian vineyard that
> was experimenting with milk treatment. "There was a level of disease
> that
> some growers would not find acceptable," he warns.
>
> Reducing sulphur treatment is important to organic wine-makers. "Having
> an
> organic farm spraying sulphur seems a bit odd," says Will Davenport,
> director of UK organic-wine producer Davenport Vineyards. Standard
> fungicides can harm the insects and soil bacteria that keep other pests
> down.
>
> However, vegans could not drink milk-treated wine. So Davenport makes
> 'compost tea' to control the powdery mildew on his farm. This liquid
> compost is full of soil bacteria, but contains no fungal spores. Sprayed
> on
> a vine, the bacteria cover the plant's leaves, competing with, and
> eating,
> the fungal spores.
>
> © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002
>
> -----Suzi Teghtmeyer
>
> Librarian, Paul Evans Library of Fruit Science
> Southwest Missouri State University Mtn. Grove Campus and Missouri Fruit
> Experiment Station
> 9740 Red Spring Rd, Mountain Grove, MO 65711
> Phone: 417-926-4105, Fax: 417-926-6646,  email: srt175f@smsu.edu
> URL: http://library.smsu.edu/paulevans/pelIndex.htm
> AgNIC Viticulture site:
> http://library.smsu.edu/paulevans/viticulture1.html
> Member: CBHL, USAIN, ALA, ACRL, IAALD
>
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