Disease or deficiency?

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Mike723

Hey Dave,

No, the plants are in the hoophouse (avatar).. I'm not getting the full benefit of it as I don't have any environmental controls set up just yet - so I have to keep the roll up sides up and both doors open. . The plants affected are on the outer most row and they do get an occasional wetting in a driving rain..

Because I caught it so early I figured I'd take the mildest root first .. I sprayed them all today (those not exhibiting symptoms as well) with serenade, and removed any other leaves that looked slightly suspect. I'm going to keep a close eye on them for now, and if something comes up I'll mix up a batch of the copper concentrate. Thanks for your time and advice with everything!



Hey Bill,
If all else fails I'll try the bleach route but I'm still skeptical haha.. Reason being: last year I had mixed up a batch of organic "water only" soil for an indoor grow.. By harvest time the soil was absolutely teaming with life, but unfortunately spring tails, fungus gnats (larvae) and a plethora of others I didn't bother identifying. Before tossing the soil in the basement hatchway (for the remainder of the winter) I wanted to "kill" it.. So I used a bleach solution of a ratio that I honestly don't remember.. Speculatively it was probably in the ball park of 1:10-15, as that is my usual for such treatments. I gave the soil a good drench and to my surprise an earthworm came crawling out of the surface squirming in what looked like discomfort lol poor thing - probably an egg in the castings I added to the soil.. I rinsed him off and put him in some fresh soil but he died about 10 minutes later.. Now of course this was a soil drench, much more concentrated than a foliar feed, but it just makes me uneasy.. Thanks so much for your time and advice, perhaps if the situation arises in the future I'll take it for a whirl

I think if I took a bath in a 10% solution of bleach I would probably be fairly uncomfortable also. I have used a soil drench with the same solution I recommend for plant foliage when planting back in a spot with bacterial wilt. I'm certain some of the worms drenched are killed because the very idea of the soil drench is to sterilize the soil. That is much different than a few drops hitting the ground or a fine mist hitting the surface of the soil. Before I started using grafting to fight my fusarium problem I would drench a spot where a plant died of fusarium and then replant in the spot a week later and it did give me an additional month or so to allow the plant to get big before the fusarium would start moving back into the area.

I doubt you have the severe disease pressure and high humidity that I have to deal with and under a hoop house should give you some good protection against some diseases carried in on the rain. Copper like I said is the next best readily available solution to Gray Mold and other similar maladies. If you do see the Gray Mold returning quickly after clipping out the diseased branches and spraying with copper don't wait too long to use the bleach spray. If you decide to use it read the thread discussing it first.

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.ph...t=bleach+spray

Bill

[Mike723]

So, to my great dismay neither the serenade nor copper seem to be slowing it down on a few of them; I must not have caught it as "early" as I thought. I'm thinking about testing the bleach spray out on one plant for now, and then reassessing ... I assume it's not completely necessary to first remove all affected foliage, as the bleach spray will simply destroy the infected leaves right? I'd rather not defoliate too much more if it isn't necessary. I'll let ya know how it works for me Bill, thanks!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Mike723

So, to my great dismay neither the serenade nor copper seem to be slowing it down on a few of them; I must not have caught it as "early" as I thought. I'm thinking about testing the bleach spray out on one plant for now, and then reassessing ... I assume it's not completely necessary to first remove all affected foliage, as the bleach spray will simply destroy the infected leaves right? I'd rather not defoliate too much more if it isn't necessary. I'll let ya know how it works for me Bill, thanks!

I usually wait til after I have applied a follow up of copper to remove the diseased leaves. I do go ahead and remove all the leaves that had gray mold but will sometimes leave a few with EB for fruit shade. It is best to remove them as soon as possible but sometimes that just leaves too many fruit exposed to sun scald damage.

I sprayed every plant in my garden with the bleach spray yesterday morning and just went out and checked everything. Looks like I had a little more gray mold than I thought but it is good to catch it early. It is just harder to see when the plants are always wet like they have been for the last two and half weeks. Other than the few plants with a little gray mold and a few showing some EB the plants look terrific for this time of the year especially considering the rain and heat we have had. It has been dry here for two days but it is forecast to start back raining again this weekend so I am going to apply a little TTF. My plants look a little pale, especially the oldest ones so they need a little boost right about now. I hope to spray with copper or Daconil this afternoon or tomorrow. I will probably go with copper since rain is forecast so soon again.

Bill

[Mike723]

Hey Bill,

So I treated with the 5oz/gal ratio (8.25 SH), and so far so good.. Initially none of the leaves responded but it seems they're dying back now (48 hours).. The Isis candy's are displaying some mottling on the stems now, I presume it's due to the bleach reacting with the mold...? I'm going to defoliate what's necessary tomorrow, and then follow up with some serenade and a compost tea to inoculate the phyllosphere with some good guys... Thanks for the help!

24 Hours after spraying:




Stems after 48 hours:

[Lindalana]

Mike, thanks for posting pics! I did bleach treatment to my potted plants too and am following. My potted plants around the house- few, not all, got Septoria.
Compost teas/ compost extracts/occasional LG excel/actinovate/ copper spray x 3 this summer/ aspirin water every 10 days seems to be making some difference at community gardens. I am not winning but also not loosing much either. If I can stay same till the end of the summer I will feel very lucky.
Am excited about new microbes in my life coming from Microbe Life.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by Mike723

Hey Bill,

So I treated with the 5oz/gal ratio (8.25 SH), and so far so good.. Initially none of the leaves responded but it seems they're dying back now (48 hours).. The Isis candy's are displaying some mottling on the stems now, I presume it's due to the bleach reacting with the mold...? I'm going to defoliate what's necessary tomorrow, and then follow up with some serenade and a compost tea to inoculate the phyllosphere with some good guys... Thanks for the help!

I wouldn't be too sure you have gotten it all yet. I almost always have to do a follow up treatment within a few days to finish it off for a while. I'm glad it is helping you but I think your follow up should be the copper spray as it is fairly effective at preventing gray mold.

Bill

[Mike723]

So a little update.. I sprayed all the gals with a compost tea on Saturday, except for the Isis.. I gave them a good strong copper treatment, after removing all the affected material. All together I'm not terribly impressed with the Isis'.. While the leaves have a beautiful, almost ornamental look to them, I find them to be spindly.. Perhaps they could have used some more N earlier on.. Here's a few before and afters..






After removing everything...Sunscald pictures to follow