Mildew and Blight!
It is to be expected this time of year in most veggie gardens that you will experience powdery mildew on many of your plants. I find it most common on the curcurbit family, courgettes, cucumbers and pumpkins.
It is not nice to look at but it doesn't usually effect the vegetables which are coming to the end of their season anyway. Early in the season you can inhibit the start of powdery mildew by making your own home made spray from 1tsp baking soda, 1 quart water, few drops of liquid soap.
We've also had such a wretched Summer here in England, the wettest, gloomiest August in living memory. I suppose it is to be expected that my tomatoes have been effected by blight. Nothing you can do about it. Salvage what you can and under no circumstances should you put the green stuff in your compost. Throw it away or send it to the council green waste where their hot heap compost heap will destroy the pathogens. Your own small heap will not get hot enough.
Stand by for a mammoth cooking session for green tomato chutney!!
posted by Matron @ 5:29 PM
10 Comments:
Isn't tomato blight the most depressing sight. I've just filled my council recycling bin. My windowsills are filled with green tomatoes. I've made green tomato chutney. This is not the pleasure I expect from tomato growing.
Your pictures show the full horror!
Too bad about the blight. I guess there's always next year... I haven't seen it this year, but the season isn't over yet!
As far as the powdery mildew, have you tried milk?
You have to search the Internet for all the details, but a few years ago a farmer tried spraying some of the milk from his cows on his curcurbits, and the powdery mildew went away!
No one is really quite sure how or why it works, but apparently nonfat milk diluted 1/10 with water (10% milk) works best.
Søren of In the Toad's Garden tried it on his garlic against rust this year, and it too seemed to help for this.
The pictures of the tomatoes look sadly familiar. This is what happened to my Sub Artic Plenty, didn't get anything off them before it hit either ;>(
Let us know how the green tomato chutney turns out. I just made some green tomato marmalade for the first time from unripe tomatoes I had from a branch that broke off in a recent storm. It's something I'd never tried before, but it turned out well. I'd like to see what tomato chutney is like.
Bummer! Such a pity that blight in your tomatoes. I had it last year but not this (see my blog). So far no powdery mildew either which is surprising considering all the rain we'd been having.
I'm glad you mentioned compost because my local authority are leaving outside their recycling depot compost for collection - Free. I was concerned about the weeds that it may contain but you have covered that. Is it any good for gardens? I understand that it is poor for seeds but very good for mature plants. Do you have any comment to make about this matter.
I've had lots of problems with powdery mildew this year too. Ah well ... bet the chutney will be yummy.
Those poor plants...sorry to hear about your bad summer.
You might like California - we haven't had rain since February.
This reminds me I need to spray the baking soda mix on my pumpkins. As mine still have some maturing to do, I want them to hold on a little longer. I saw the first little bits of fuzz this weekend.
My issue this summer has been rust on the chives and onions. I see, above, I should go see what Toad's Garden had to say about this.
I've never seen blight like that, good to know what it looks like and I hope that I don't see it any time soon!
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