Re: powdery mildew on crepe myrtle

Marge, if personal experience is what impresses you most, I'll add mine with
milk.  I have numerous miniature roses planted in containers around my
breezeway and beside the driveway.  Each week when we shop, we get
a gallon of milk, but usually have about a quarter of it left by the next 
week.  We fill the container of leftover milk with water - this will be 
roughly
a 1 to 4 ratio - maybe 1 to 5.  We just pour the watered-down solution over
the roses.  Haven't had a speck of mildew or black spot since we began
to do this several years ago.  Slugs are about the only problem we have
with the roses.  
Auralie

In a message dated 10/12/2005 12:49:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mtalt@hort.net writes:
"Milk's fungicidal powers were discovered by Wagner Bettiol of the
environmental laboratory of Embrapa, the Brazilian Agricultural
Research Corporation, n Jaguariuna, north of Sao Paulo. Bettiol, who
was looking for cheap ways to control plant pests, observed that
byproducts from milk-processing factories killed powdery mildew on
courgettes. So he decided to simply spray fresh milk on the plants to
see if it had the same effect. To his surprise, he found that it did.
In fact, spraying heavily infected plants twice a week with a mixture
of one part cow's milk to nine parts water was at least as good at
stopping mildew as the chemical fungicides fenarimol and benomyl,
Bettiol discovered."

another saved post:

Some people have compared different dilutions and found that
the 1:9 often necessitated a second or third treatment, but the 1:3
or 1:4
took care of the fungus first time around.  

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