Cure for early blight.

[Whwoz]

Looking at this from a purely microbiological point of view, the use of the compost tea is aiming to supply enough fungal spores to out compete the EB spores. Never going to be enough to cure EB but would certainly slow down its rate of growth and establishment if used early enough. Don't know if you can buy preparations of the fungus Trichoderma over there, but if you can, it would be well worth following up with a good spray of that. If I had a problem with EB, and fortunately I don't here, I would look at the doing the following: prune, bleach spary to reduce infection where I cannot see any, then the compost tea and a Trichoderma spray.

Don't know enough about the aspirin effect to comment on.

[Labradors2]

Aqua cones: http://www.amazon.com/Gardeners-Supp.../dp/B007ROW0P0

I don't know why Gardeners Supply don't sell them any more. My first ones came from them, then I found some knock-off ones at Amazon. I don't do soda, but raid my neighbours blue boxes for 1L soda bottles.

Linda

[bower]

Aqua cones: cool! Easy to diy too.
@whwoz, I've read that Trichoderma has a worldwide distribution and can be found in any healthy compost pile.. So my thought was, no need to buy the thing you have already and didn't know it.. Also thought that adding a few shrimp or crab shells to the pile would help to encourage Trichoderma by supplying some chitin for them to feed/colonize.
What do you think?
I know that what is sold is a proprietary strain, picked out from the others as "best" for ag, but ultimately they all (local strains) would be doing the same service while already being well adapted to the region... TIA for sharing your thoughts on that.

[Whwoz]

Local strains that are adapted to your environment would certainly be the way to go. Have not looked into Trichoderma to deeply yet, but as the best way to "cure" EB would be out compete it, anything that you can do to enhance the growth of beneficial organism's over EB has to help

[Guavatone]

Please share your compost tea process. Saying compost tea is like saying you ate carbs. So many different techniques. I did find my leaves really like aspirin folliar feedings. But totally unscientific.

[slugworth]

Salicylic acid is not the same thing as aspirin. The two medicines are related, and have similar-sounding chemical names. Aspirin is also known as acetylsalicylic acid, which is created by a chemical reaction between salicylic acid and acetic acid.

A closer choice would be over the counter skin related stuff like psoriasis creams which
are 2% acid.The trick is converting that into some sort of spray.

[bower]

Hmmm... I would think that ASA is hydrolyzed in the "dissolve it in water" process. Heat or acidic conditions would make it faster, but stirring and crushing probably helps too? If not, breakdown in soil environment would be expected although how fast I couldn't guess.



"Aspirin can undergo hydrolysis, making it not as effective if it's exposed to water for extended periods of time. The technical name of the active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. When it reacts with water, we end up with two products, salicylic acid and acetic acid."
https://study.com/academy/lesson/hyd...-reaction.html

[slugworth]

that's why they say old aspirin smells like vinegar

[jtjmartin]

Originally Posted by bower

Hmmm... I would think that ASA is hydrolyzed in the "dissolve it in water" process. Heat or acidic conditions would make it faster, but stirring and crushing probably helps too? If not, breakdown in soil environment would be expected although how fast I couldn't guess.



"Aspirin can undergo hydrolysis, making it not as effective if it's exposed to water for extended periods of time. The technical name of the active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. When it reacts with water, we end up with two products, salicylic acid and acetic acid."
https://study.com/academy/lesson/hyd...-reaction.html

I will dissolve them in water! Cannot wait to try.

Thanks

[PdxMatos]

Originally Posted by jtjmartin

So you used about 325 mg aspirin per gallon (you) or two (paper) of water?

I used one 325mg of aspirin per gallon. The paper used one 325mg per every two gallons.

[PdxMatos]

update it's been a week since I posted, and the original infection does not seem to have spread further.

Following some light rain and a second humid day I did see more early blight on the other end of the garden where I let a volunteer tomato grow along the ground. (Kindof asking for it really)

So I repeated the treatment today.

In general though this has been a major change compared to last year. Normally by this time my plants would have lost a good third of their leaves, as it used to be a race to get all the tomatoes to ripen before the blight completely takes over.

A few people asked about other diseases, the only other disease my plants usually get is powdery mildew, which I haven't seen on any of them this year. However several of the varieties I planted were chosen for their resistance to it, so I can't attribute that to this treatment.

I do have a goji berry plant that has powdery mildew. I didn't want to remove the infected leaves because that is all the leaves on the plant. So I tried putting the tea on its leaves and giving it some aspirin, but I saw no visible change. This is not surprising as the original paper noted that compost tea was not very effective against PM.

[PdxMatos]

Originally Posted by bower

@pdxmato, I notice that you have some beautiful tomatoes just starting to blush there, so I wanted to mention - I found that even in the greenhouse with optimal conditions for health (dry leaves, sunny weather) my plants were routinely getting EB on the lower leaves exactly when they just started to ripen the fruit. On the reasoning that they were drawing extra nutrients from those oldest leaves for the ripening process, I decided to try boosting them with ferts at that point in the season. This pretty much eliminated the EB and loss of lower leaves, in greenhouse conditions. So I wondered if the foliar feed of compost tea might mainly have a nutritional benefit? If so, you could as well apply it to the roots if you want to avoid spraying stuff on your fruit. OTOH maybe foliar feeding is a bonus for fighting the blight?

That's a very good point. I was tracking their progress by their continued vertical growth, but you are right they may be getting plenty of nitrogen and still be running low on something else due to fruit production and be more susceptible to diseases at this stage.

[PdxMatos]

Originally Posted by Guavatone

Please share your compost tea process. Saying compost tea is like saying you ate carbs. So many different techniques. I did find my leaves really like aspirin folliar feedings. But totally unscientific.

True. Interestingly the paper tested sever different mixtures and they all seemed to work. The non-airated ones just worked better.

In terms of what I did, it should be easy to reproduce. Because I don't have enough space to make my own compost, I just buy Xtreme Gardening compost tea mix and brew it per the instructions. I've used it before and it seems fairly consistent. I can't compare it qualitatively to making your own.

[bower]

Nice to hear your update. If you find anything for powdery mildew please share. It is a killer in my greenhouse when the conditions are right. I have removed ( or I should say I keep removing) all the weeds that host mildew from the area that blows into greenhouse vents and that is the only effective aid I've found to protect the tomatoes. Deadly stuff. Defoliant.

[Labradors2]

Bower, have you tried spraying milk on the leaves?

Linda