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Re: Late Blight Outbreak
Milk is a very effective fungicide diluted with water in a ration of
1:3. The original work was done in Brazil against powdery mildew but
at this stage there is anecdotal evidence that it works for many
foliar fungal diseases. I've heard of it being used effectively for
both black spot and rust on roses but haven't had cause to try it
since I've already cured those with compost - the wild roses in my
hedges were full of both when we moved here. Milk is actually a
licensed fungicide in the Netherlands.
There was work done back in the 30s that indicated that in fact we are
tackling late blight all wrong and that in fact we should be
encouraging the soil bacteria that attack late blight by composting
all the residues in situ and going on growing in the same place. More
work has been done on this recently, now that we have better soil
science, and it seems to support this viewpoint. A friend in West Cork
has been experimenting on this basis for the last 20 years or so and
now has no blight on his holding, which is in one of the areas in
which phytophthera was first recorded when it appeared in Ireland back
in the 1840s. I was down there a week and a half ago and whereas crops
in this area, which gets blight much later than the Cork area, were
affected as long ago as May, he has never a trace on his plants. While
he does grow his own strain bred from the Hungarian resistant
varieties, he is also growing twenty or so other kinds which are
traditionally regarded as blight prone. He selects from the "hazards"
which remain in the ground overwinter, and have therefore lived with
the blight in the previous season and survived. He has also grown on
from the random crosses which occur, selecting only for disease
resistance and flavour, not for yield. (His yields are enormous
anyway, largely because of the intensive mulching he has carried out
down the years in order to be able to grow anything at all on what was
originally a rocky hillside but is now temperate woodland with
cultivated clearings - ideal blight conditions
kathryn
On 7 Jul 2009, at 12:05, Miranda Smith wrote:
> I hadn't heard of milk--does it matter what sort and do you wash it
> off
> after you spray with it? It seems as if it would clog stomates badly
> if you
> left it there. I've used kelp and equistetum with good results. And
> I agree
> about the copper--once you have it, there's no choice but to use a
> copper if
> you want to keep the plants.
>
> For potatoes, I've sold small tubers at just about the same price as
> I would
> have gotten for the mature ones by calling them "new potatoes" and
> pricing
> them higher by the pound. That's satisfying. Tomatoes are another
> story,
> though. And that's where I've had the most trouble with late blight.
> This is
> one instance where you want to rotate away from the area for at
> least four
> years.
>
> Miranda
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 8:55 AM, Kathryn Marsh <kmarsh@iol.ie> wrote:
>
>> I've found compost tea, milk, kelp solution and equistetum tea will
>> each stave off blight if you start before the blight does - but if
>> you
>> already have the first signs on your plants then you need a copper
>> based spray or one of the less acceptable chemical mixes
>>
>> Or if the tubers are already formed one can simply remove the
>> foliage,
>> especially if the soil is reasonably dry
>>
>> kathryn
>>
>>
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