Easy, Inexpensive Powdery Mildew Spray for Squash & Cucumbers, Prune Leaves to Keep Production Going

hi everyone well I've been hearing a lot of comments on YouTube videos and in the livestream chat that a lot of you are battling powdery mildew on your squash and cucumber plants it's a very common disease that creeps into your garden at this time of the year and today I'm going to show you how to control powdery mildew in your garden with a very simple spray using ingredients you already have around your house and we're also going to talk about how to keep the production of your squash going just by pruning the leaves now in case you don't know what powdery mildew is not a problem I've got some to show you right here on this zucchini plant now powdery mildew is a really common disease that can creep into your garden most commonly affects squash and cucumber plants and usually it happens when it's very humid when it rains a lot when your plants get wet stay wet and don't dry off and basically it looks like someone dumped a bottle of baby powder all over your leaves spreads very easily so it is really important that you keep it under control before you have to battle it now if you have powdery mildew in your garden it doesn't necessarily mean that you've done something wrong it does creep into most Gardens at some point during the growing season even here in Southern California where it's very dry I almost always get powdery mildew on my squash here in August so the first thing I'm gonna do here before we talk about this spray is I'm gonna go ahead and harvest the zucchini that are in here so we get them all harvested ready for dinner and out of the way before we spray the plant now I don't know about you guys but the zucchini always tend to get away from me just a little bit this one looks a little oversized and makes zucchini lasagna atif so I'm just gonna gently twist it I think this one is one of those baseball bat sized and I spotted a couple more down in here oh my goodness talk about baseball bats I zucchini I thought the last one was big these two here I'd actually get made into some zucchini bread so try and pick your zucchini with her a little bit smaller I've got three really nice size ones here now the next step that we're gonna do is we're gonna prune off the leaves now I talked about production and pruning squash leaves now one way you can really keep the production of your squash plants going is to prune off all the old leaves and of course we're gonna prune off any leaves that have just one little spot of powdery mildew on it so let's do that first and then we'll talk about the spray so now what I'm gonna do is prune out all of the leaves that either have powdery mildew like this one right here or leaves that are just old and starting to yellow so we want to prune this leaf as close as I can to the main stem of the plant so I'm gonna snip it right in here and you definitely don't want that powdery mildew spreading to the rest of the plants so by removing the powdery mildew affected leaves you're gonna help stop the spread to this plant and other plants in your garden now you might notice on your squash zucchini plants even your cucumber plants they usually have some leaves that are kind of yellowing like this now it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the leaf it just means it's one of the older leaves and you can easily prune it out so that all the energy can go into producing new squash so now I'm just gonna go ahead and trim up the rest of the plant it's gonna look so much better you do want to wear gloves because the squash plants tend to be really pretty but you can see we've trimmed off a ton of branches here from the zucchini plant and you can imagine instead of the zucchini plants energy going into keeping powdery mildew and dead leaves alive now it can go into producing new squash plants so at this point if you've trimmed off a bunch of plants it's always a good idea to give it a nice dose of a fertilizer that's high in nitrogen so that brings back some good leafy growth another little tip here when you're going from plant to plant with your pruners or your scissors make sure that you're cleaning them with alcohol and a rag so that you're not spreading powdery mildew from plant to plant okay you guys ready for the spray here it's super super easy spray all you're gonna need is some milk which I'm sure everybody has in your refrigerator or some water now it doesn't really matter if it's whole milk or if it's nonfat milk it just needs to be milk that has protein in it so what you're gonna need is eight parts water to one part milk and I'm just gonna pour it here in my little hand pump sprayer if you don't have one of these you can just use a regular old spray bottle so let me get my water in here give it a good shake pump up my hand pump sprayer here now I usually tell you not to spray your garden in direct sunlight but this is an exception there's something about the protein in the milk when it mixes with the sunlight that is said to really have an antibacterial effect on the powdery mildew so you want to spray the bottom of your plants the tops of your plants until they're dripping wet they're gonna dry very quickly in the Sun and some people have said they're concerned about the smell in your garden but I really haven't noticed a big smell from this at all and in any case the smell is a minor problem to deal with as opposed to dealing with powdery mildew on your plants so it's definitely better to spray your plants as a preventative measure to keep it under control there's really no absolute cure for powdery mildew as far as I know it does almost always come into your garden at some point during the growing season you could even spray down at the stem it's not going to hurt the bees and using it on a regular basis maybe every week to ten days throughout the growing season to keep it under control and prevent the problem before you have to battle it the I peer plan is a little bit wilted like - here after pruning don't worry about it it's perfectly normal it'll perk up in no time start growing again and look really nice now if some of your cucumber and squash plants are completely taken over by powdery mildew I would suggest going ahead and pulling them out because you don't want that powdery mildew spreading to the rest of your garden and that's why it's always important to have backup plants going or to start a fresh new wave of vegetables here in the late summer so that you never run out of plants to harvest we've actually put together the late summer garden seed collection especially for this purpose there's seven varieties in there that are quick growing plants that are going to give you a harvest in about six to eight weeks so you could pick up one of those on my website and get yourself some new suits going well let me know if you're having any powdery mildew issues and your garden right now if you use this milk spray before I know a lot of you have mentioned that you've used it in the past and had a lot of success with it thanks so much for watching we'll see on the next video

Channel: CaliKim29 Garden & Home DIY

Views: 924,179

Keywords: how to control powdery mildew with milk, controlling powdery mildew with milk, preventing powdery with milk, powdery mildew, milk spray for powdery mildew, trimming to control powdery mildew, controlling powdery mildew on squash and cucumbers, pruning squash, pruning squash to control powdery mildew, organic gardening, inexpensive powdery mildew control, inexpensive powdery mildew milk spray, powdery mildew milk spray on squash and cucumbers, powdery mildew treatment organic

Id: _IRM4iGHGic

Length: 7min 16sec (436 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 10 2019