Don't think it was Late Blight

[b54red]

We had a good rain yesterday and got nearly an inch over about 5 or 6 hours. Went out to tie up some plants today and found my Franks Large Red plant devastated by something. All the new growth was brown and wilted and the main stem had huge lesions like it was rotten from the top for nearly 10 inches down the plant. It looked perfect day before yesterday and then bam. I feared it might be Late Blight but it didn't exactly look like it to me. What worried me were the huge lesions and the quickness with which the plant was taken down. Sorry I don't have a picture; I would have taken a photo but my camera battery was dead. I didn't want to leave it in the garden til tomorrow so I pulled it and put it in a trash bag. I have never seen anything quite like it but what it resembled most was Late Blight. We have had it before in early summer here a good while back and it took out everything so I didn't want to take any chances. If I see another plant with similar symptoms I will spray everything with a bleach solution and maybe the old battery will take another charge so I can get a picture. I hope I don't have to take one though.

[b54red]

Whew! Went out and checked this morning early and found no further incidence of whatever that was. A few more days and I will feel much better.

[Crandrew]

B54 you get hit hard! Between the wilt and this, it's a fearful existence. I really hope the disease chills out enough for you to have a decent season.

[b54red]

Thanks for the concern. I have learned to live with it or adapt to the conditions. Since I started staggered plantings, keeping plenty of replacement seedlings, and using the bleach solution to stop most foliage diseases I have had some very good crops. It means I usually plant more plants in a season than most hobby gardeners would in ten years in a garden this size but it seems to be the only way to keep a decent crop in the making. If I could wave a wand and get rid of just one problem it would be fusarium. It kills more plants by far than all other problems and I have found no really successful response to it. All these blights keep it interesting for sure. Today I dusted for army worms that are popping up by the hundreds for the second time this year. I also sprayed with Daconil only to have it rain hard this afternoon.

[Crandrew]

Well you provide us with plenty of knowledge. Keep up the good work, thanks.

What mixture and process of bleach do you use?

[b54red]

I add 8 ounces of regular strength bleach (Clorox) to a full gallon of water with a bit of dish washing soap. I spray a fine mist on all surfaces of the leaves and stems late in the afternoon as the sun is going down. This treatment is only to stop a disease once it has started as it has no residual preventative effect except for stopping the disease that is already present on the plant. This will have no effect on plants suffering from a systemic disease like TSWV or fusarium wilt. Usually the next day I will follow up with a spraying of Daconil as a preventative.

[venturabananas]

Do you find the bleach solution more effective than copper?

b54red-8oz-? of bleach- that is 1 cup ! That sounds like way too much.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by b54red

I add 8 ounces of regular strength bleach (Clorox) to a full gallon of water with a bit of dish washing soap. I spray a fine mist on all surfaces of the leaves and stems late in the afternoon as the sun is going down. This treatment is only to stop a disease once it has started as it has no residual preventative effect except for stopping the disease that is already present on the plant. This will have no effect on plants suffering from a systemic disease like TSWV or fusarium wilt. Usually the next day I will follow up with a spraying of Daconil as a preventative.

In the thread I put out about vinegar you said that you had problems with your soil being too alkali and asked about the vinegar.


That slick feeling you get when it gets on your skin is not the bleach itself but the bleach extracting the fats and oils from your skin.

Bleach is a base (alkali) the opposite of an acid.
This may be the reason for the high readings.

Worth

[b54red]

Worth my readings have come down in the past few years so I doubt the bleach would be the reason. A few years ago almost every bed was in the mid 8s and now some are down in the mid 7 range. What really pushed the alkaline level so high was the mushroom compost we were getting. After a couple of years of adding tons of the stuff to the garden we tested some and found the level around 9. We found large chunks of gypsum in it so there is no telling how much liming effect it had. The only upside to having soil that was that alkaline was my cucumbers were never bitter.

[Tracydr]

Gypsum has sulphur and should not have liming effects.

[b54red]

I was just assuming it was gypsum. It was clods of white lime like substance and the overall reading for the compost was around 9. For five years I added a couple of loads each spring and fall to my garden and as I did the ph kept getting higher. I quit putting out any form of lime and it still kept getting higher til I stopped using the mushroom compost. It has been coming down slowly over the past couple of years but is still higher than is recommended for good absorption of some of the minerals and trace elements needed by tomatoes.