Liquid Sulpher for Powdery Mildew control

[junkyardcat]

Every year, my plum trees and peach trees get Powdery Mildew which ruins the fruit. I read that Liquid Sulphur is good to get rid of powdery mildew. Has anyone ever tried it...and if so, did it work?

Thanks! Angie

[Travis]

I don't know about Liquid Sulphur but Neem oil is supposed be good for prevention and control of Powdery Mildew.

[paghat]

A dilute milk spray works better than sulphur, baking soda, chemical fungicide, or any other method of powdery mildew control. The field studies show dilute milk not just slightly better but far & away the best treatment. For a while it was thought diluted WHOLE milk was necessary as the original field trials in Brazil used whole milk. But later trials in New Zealand found that dilute SKIM milk works just as well. Here's a typical article on the topic:

mildew does not like wet conditions & is at its worst when leaves are dry or plants underwatered. Powdery mildew is somewhat disrupted by just about ANYthing, including sprays of plain water, or sneezing on it -- so all kinds of lousy treatments have some positive effect, just not nearly positive enough. The fact that anything SORT OF works permits a lot of not-quite-entirely-worthless treatment methods to be recommended. Yet real control can REALLY be had from sprays of milk in a 1:9 ratio (10%), beginning before powdery mildew appears if you don't want to see any at all.

Vendors of gardening products have been chary of spreading the information that no control for powdery mildew works better than dilute milk, because if they don't sell the real fix, they'd rather you believe you need the stuff they do sell, up to & including about $600 or $800 worth of worthless equipment to make soil tea to spray on plants. Just remember milk is hands-down the best treatment -- whether on an orchard, a vineyard, a field of squash, a field of wheat, beebalms, shrubs...

The second-best (a distant second) treatment is with horticultural oil, which however can gum up the leaves. Neem or other horticultural oil can be used, however, as a soil-drench to bind the powdery mildew spoors to the ground before they can get up on the trees or other plants.

Dilute milk does not work for other types of fungus however.

-paghat the ratgirl

[figaro]

From: [e-mail] (paghat)

snip

Wow, thanks for the great tip. I just planted my first wine grapes a month ago and I'll try out the milk spray on them this year. Your extensive plant knowledge is very impressive and I always enjoy reading your posts. Thanks for sharing.

[Travis]

[Amazin]

Paghat, Many thanks from me too! I'm going to try it on my gooseberrie this year.

Amazin

-- Amazin

[pollyanna.rose]

Hi all,

I've only recently joined. This post on Powdery Mildew is wonderful. I'd like to add to it a bit.

This past summer, bemoaning the idea that I might lose a Meteor cherry to leaf spot, I used a Jerry Baker idea which combined powdered milk with sulphered molasses. Cheap, and it worked really well.. I confess I never thought to use it on the powdery mildew.

More food for thought! Thanks, folks.

Joan Taylor

[dr-solo]

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