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Maine

Everyone's heard of that goofy story of injecting milk in a pumpkin's vine to enhance growth, but what about using milk to fight mildew? Check out this article: http://www.gardenguides.com/articles/powderymildew2.htm

I found this after discovering powdery mildew just destroyed my zucchini plants. They literally died overnight and I'm totally freaked out about how quickly they died and that my pumpkins could suffer the same fate. I've been spraying daconil but it's so expensive. I'm going to try milk on my zucchini plants and let you know how it works.

7/25/2003 3:51:24 PM

Utah

I don't think powdery mildew normally acts that fast...
maybe you have/had something else ?

7/25/2003 4:11:34 PM

New Brunswick

Thanks for the milk idea. I will remember that!

7/25/2003 9:22:58 PM

Montoursville, PA

Nope....In fact it may even be a tad early for powdery mildew. It is early yet here in Northcentral Pa. No powdery here...at all...at this time.

7/25/2003 9:26:15 PM

North Ga

Where are you kilr!!??

7/25/2003 9:28:25 PM

Long Island,New York

Powdery mildew has been down here for over a month....Lilacs covered with it....G

7/25/2003 9:51:41 PM

Caceres, mid west of Spain

I've heard that the milk have to be fresh, not sterilized.

7/26/2003 2:00:25 AM

Montoursville, PA

Last year, on squash and cukes, I used a Gardens Alive copper based so called natural product to clean up and save the season. It worked nicely with perhaps 95% control. I should think any copper based product would be a good way to go.

After doing so much work and investment into a growing plan I sure do not want to try any good old time hear say applications. If milk ever was good for this it would have had to be right out of the cow not cooked and messed with like all milk today must be treated. It would have had to adjust the PH outside of the milldew comfort zone. If we worked to have good a pumpkin PH adjusting to outside that PH would seem counter productive. Perhaps this could be said of all fungicides. This I do not know.

7/26/2003 7:48:27 AM

Brazil

Remember: mildew is an invasive classe of fungus. Any product that control fungus on the surface will be effective if applieed in the beggining of disease. When the fungus was infected for long time, you will need systemic products.

7/27/2003 9:29:25 PM