powdery mildew

now that have grown a good case of pm on my catelopes and squash, i bought the stuff at the garden center for powdery mildew. question is, will this just control more mildew, cure the stuff on the leaves i have now, or both. will the plants make it thru? they are still bearing lots of squash, my neighbors will agree with me there, or will the pm eventually take over beyond help.
waaaaaaa:(

Most of the fungicides will keep powdery mildew from spreading, but will not rescue the infested leaves.

can i trim those bad leaves off with hopes of salvaging the remaining plant?

We had an outbreak of powdery mildew after the cucumber beetles appeared.
I've been using a milk and water spray. This seems to have stopped the spread and reduced the size of the powder spots on the affected leaves. I've trimmed off the most heavily affected leaves and gave an extra spray to the ones nearest.

Garden-mermaid
I used the milk and water spray and it worked !!!!!!! two days later no mildew ?? wow .
thansk for the info
best
sue

Happy to hear the milk spray is working for you. What ratio of milk to water are you using?

You may want to spray each week for a few weeks as a preventative measure.
We're gardening in a community garden where some of the other bed owners are just letting the mildew run its course and not treating it. I'm finding that we need to spray more often than we needed to when we had a separate garden, since there are more spores to blow around on the breeze.

I don't rember the ratio i think it was 2c to a gallon of water?
I ended up pulling the plant due to vine borer :(
but i m using it on my cucs
sue

The research scietist that wrote the paper on using milk as a control of powdery mildew recommends 1 part milk to 9 parts water.

Here's a link to the research paper: http://www.cib.espol.edu.ec/bivir/papers.asp?tco=5B5D595A5F4F4F4F4F4F4F4F4F

Wayne

Thanks Wayne!
In past gardens the weaker solutions were all that was needed. I started with a 1:9 ratio with reasonable, but short lived success this year. I have been experimenting with differing concentrations. I'm finding the PM a little more stubborn at my current site, so I increased the milk concentration, which is working better. It's nice to have the research paper supporting my observations.
:-)

so are you guys saying that you should start spraying to prevent spread, and more to arise but that the leaves that have it will all soon die off? will the plants quit producing and if they are still producing, is it ok to eat from? should i also spray the soil and the underside of the leaves?

You can eat the fruit from the affected plants if the fruit looks generally normal. Powdery mildew doesn't have to kill the plant, but it can do so if you don't treat it.

How often to spray depends on how much mildew you have, and the weather/garden conditions. For me, the mildew usually just dries up and goes away on the affected leaves if I spray when it first appears and the infection is light. This year I had another outbreak a week after I treated the first leaves. So now I'm spraying the milk solution 2x a week and cutting off any leaves that turn yellow, which have only been a few.
Some of my garden neighbors don't appear to be either treating their plants or removing affected leaves, so the mildew is quite advanced and the plants are slowly turning yellow, mushy and dying.

My experience last year was that there was a lot of leaf die-off, partly because I began spraying a bit late. But the spread slowed considerably as I began the milk treatment and the pumpkins and hubbard squash still produced well. The mildew doesn't seem to effect the quality of the fruit.

The late cucumbers were sprayed immediately from the first sign of mildew, right up until frost with little leaf die-off. I didn't do any preventative spraying. This year there hasn't been any signs yet of powdery mildew but I'm keeping a careful watch.

Wayne

This message was edited Aug 1, 2006 12:57 AM

What about the powder that sprinkles off the underside of the leaves.
Does it add more mildew to the soil when it drops onto it when I walk by and brush up aginst the plant? I started my first milk spraying today, have to make waffles in the morning for the kids because I used up their breakfast milk! :(

Treating powdery mildew as soon as it appears does seem to be the key to keeping it under control and only a minor nuisance.

Waffles? Yum!

You do need to spray both sides of the leaves. The mildew can be thicker on the underside. I have one of those Hudson presssure pump garden sprayers that I use to apply the milk. It makes it easier to get the undersides.