bleach spray

[beefyboy]

Very interesting article here Bill, I have tried your technique ages ago. Daconil I do like a lot but Heritage DF 50 is my top choice for a severe problem, especially on trees with high levels of anthracnose issues. I personally had a great year this year in my hydroponic outside garden. I absolutely did not use any fungicide the whole year making adjustments with my shade cloth for more airflow and pruning more heavily from the start. Of course a little luck may have played a part, but it is pretty good results considering where I live.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by beefyboy

Very interesting article here Bill, I have tried your technique ages ago. Daconil I do like a lot but Heritage DF 50 is my top choice for a severe problem, especially on trees with high levels of anthracnose issues. I personally had a great year this year in my hydroponic outside garden. I absolutely did not use any fungicide the whole year making adjustments with my shade cloth for more airflow and pruning more heavily from the start. Of course a little luck may have played a part, but it is pretty good results considering where I live.

Last year most of the summer was exceedingly dry with corresponding lower humidity. I had very few problems with diseases except some early blight early in the season and some gray mold on some of my black varieties. I did use sprays but not regularly and didn't need my bleach spray except for the gray mold. I find that the worst problems occur in wetter seasons with extremely high humidity and late in the summer if it starts that pattern of raining for a few minutes every afternoon.

Keeping the plants pruned will certainly help with the incidence of foliage problems especially in areas with high humidity. Another thing that helps with diseases is having the plants insulated with a good mulch from the soil and if you grew in containers that is a further plus; but don't count on it happening again this year. I can remember one summer that was cooler and far dryer than most years with fairly low humidity and I had almost no disease problems. The trouble with those years is they are too few and too far between down here. I also live in an area that has a lot of commercial tomato growers and that just increases all the problems that can plague tomatoes. I have heard that some of them are spraying with alternating fungicides every 5 days til harvest. That seems excessive to me but I will try to get mine sprayed every week to 10 days unless really low humidity moves in and then I may spread the spraying out a bit.

The biggest problem I faced last year was spider mites during the dry weather. I have never seen them as bad as they were last summer. I sure hope they don't return again like that.

Bill

[uzlaguzla]

Thank you for your time, Bill.

[Down_South]

All of my tomatoes have recovered. I did not pull any. The micro dwarfs suffered the most but somehow put on fruit with burnt leaves and they look like nuclear fallout mixed with Solent green. Life finds a way.

...I harvested a few of the micro dwarves cherries tonight for a fine shrimp pasta dish. Don't make me cry.

[Rockporter]

May I ask a question about misting?

I keep reading, "it only needs a light misting", or "only give it a mist, don't saturate it till runoff" and such things all over the forum regarding spraying.

So, the sprayer I have says it will "mist" and yet I don't get a mist from it, or from any other sprayer that says it will "mist".

So, how do you get a mist?

[pmcgrady]

Originally Posted by Rockporter

May I ask a question about misting?

I keep reading, "it only needs a light misting", or "only give it a mist, don't saturate it till runoff" and such things all over the forum regarding spraying.

So, the sprayer I have says it will "mist" and yet I don't get a mist from it, or from any other sprayer that says it will "mist".

So, how do you get a mist?

Usually there is an adjustable nozzle at the tip of sprayer.

[Rockporter]

Originally Posted by pmcgrady

Usually there is an adjustable nozzle at the tip of sprayer.

This is the one I have, although I have had others like the hand held chapin and the other chapin similar to this one. Neither of them actually give a mist, it's either a very wide spray or a heavy spray.

This one is the yellow attachement for vegetable spraying but it goes out into a fan, but it still saturates everything no matter how pumped I can get the sprayer. The tip is not adjustable to a fine mist. I haven't found any around here that are. It had far better reviews when I bought it than it does now though. The spray is good, it is just a spray, not a mist.

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Smith-2-Gal...prayer/4193785

[TexasTomat0]

I've been using the bleach spray on my plants for a few weeks, but as Bill warns against, I think is waited too late. They're all completely stripped of foliage and just have a few bare fruits hanging on trying to get ripe. It's pretty pathetic looking. I'm about to chop everything down and start over.

Moral of the story, as Bill has said many times, its better to be on top of the bleach spray when you see symptoms than wait too long.


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[jtjmartin]

We've had quite a bit of rain. Knowing that Daconil won't stick I used Bill's Bleach spray tonight. I took his advice and used a weaker solution on the bottom leaves of my tomatoes and squash.

It's raining again tonight so there should be no residue by tomorrow.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

[jmsieglaff]

It's been cloudy and wet for many days with more clouds and rain (thankfully not a lot, just frequent light showers). All my tomatoes got bleach spray this morning, there are probably things my eyes can't see and I figure it is better to dose them before any symptoms show up.

[jtjmartin]

A couple nights ago I used a dilute 3 0z / gallon spray of the 8.25% bleach with good results on my tomatoes and squash. Tonight, after two more days of rain, and a lot of pruning I upped it to 4 oz.

If everything looks good I'll use Bill's full strength 5 oz spray the next time and hereafter.

So far, it's amazing that something so simple is working so well!

[b54red]

Originally Posted by jtjmartin

A couple nights ago I used a dilute 3 0z / gallon spray of the 8.25% bleach with good results on my tomatoes and squash. Tonight, after two more days of rain, and a lot of pruning I upped it to 4 oz.

If everything looks good I'll use Bill's full strength 5 oz spray the next time and hereafter.

So far, it's amazing that something so simple is working so well!

The 4 oz mix is usually adequate for squash as a preventive spray as long as you don't let a mildew get bad. During rainy weather when the tomato plants are wet the 5 oz is necessary because of the dilution from the wet leaves. I even mix it stronger if I am applying it between showers to keep diseases at least slowed down during prolonged rainy spells; but I don't recommend you try that until you are more experienced with using it.

Bill

[jtjmartin]

I'll stick with the 4 oz/8.25%/gallon for a while then.

Thank you!

[jmsieglaff]

This wet and cloudy weather sucks. Despite a bleach spray treatment, nearly overnight I've had an explosion of gray leaf spot. I'll be removing leaves and hitting the plants with copper spray today. Some days of sunshine would sure helps things a great deal too.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by jmsieglaff

This wet and cloudy weather sucks. Despite a bleach spray treatment, nearly overnight I've had an explosion of gray leaf spot. I'll be removing leaves and hitting the plants with copper spray today. Some days of sunshine would sure helps things a great deal too.

If you are fighting gray mold in wet and cloudy conditions it is a very hard thing to do. It requires more treatments more often. If you have let the gray mold get too far advanced there is actually no way to stop it completely. I have only lost one plant to gray mold in the past 5 years though I have had well over a hundred get gray mold during that time. During a season I will usually plant between 20 and 40 black tomatoes some of which are very susceptible to gray mold and almost all of them get infected by it to one degree or another.

I have found that there are a couple of steps that will insure success in fighting gray mold. The first is recognizing it immediately when it first shows up on a plant and treating that plant and all near it with the bleach spray that very evening. I take it a step further and spray all my tomatoes, squash, melons and cucumbers as soon as I see the first sign of it showing up. I then follow up with a copper spray and remove the shriveled limbs and leaves caused by the bleach spray within 36 to 48 hours of the initial spraying. I then watch the plants closely for the slightest sign that it is returning and if I see a sign of it I repeat the process again. Second thing is to keep the plants sprayed with a fungicide from plant out and keep using the fungicide to help prevent the start of gray mold. The third thing is to keep the plants pruned to allow better air flow and sunlight which under normal circumstances will reduce the incidence of gray mold. Finally if we are having an extended rainy period of over 3 or 4 days I will go out and spray the plants with the diluted bleach spray in between showers every two days or so depending on the rain. I also use a slightly stronger solution than I recommend if the plants are going to be wet when they are sprayed.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to react quickly to gray mold in order to stop it. Whatever amount of gray mold you can see with the naked eye there is a whole lot more of it on the plant. The symptoms you see are usually just like the tip of an ice berg. Once the symptoms get half way up the plant then there is very little uninfected foliage left on the plant and if it is still possible to stop it there will be very little foliage left. I check my plants daily for any sign of gray mold because unlike Early Blight just removing a few leaves will not help.

Bill