How to Use Hydrogen Peroxide to Treat Powdery Mildew on Squash & Zucchini: Fungus Identification

welcome to the rest of garden today is August 20th and I'm gonna show you how to identify powdery mildew other mildews on your zucchini and squash leaves and how to treat them effectively using hydrogen peroxide first thing you want to do is know what you're looking for so here might well actually two of my zucchini and squash plants and looking at the leaves not so bad small white dot maybe that's something to worry about maybe it's not and you're kind of looking for like this cotton like growth on your plant sometimes it doesn't look like baby powder sprinkled on it and then you see a couple of dots there and you keep inspecting and dot right there that doesn't look so bad but now we come over here and you can see the pattern on the leaves that's powdery mildew or some sort of mildew in that family they're all treated the same comes on the undersides of your leaves too so when we spray we're going to spray the tops in the bottom and we keep inspecting and we can see it all throughout the plant upon closer inspection coming over to the larger plant I want to show you this is a different this is a darker green zucchini and the one I just left was a coccozello I believe it's a squash but they're all in the same family the leaf patterns are different so when you look at this leaf you can see this pattern on there that is perfectly normal that is part of the leaf so as your plants are developing check out the leaves alone what they look like so I'll link to the video well one I'm gonna have to take that zucchini out before I spray I'm gonna make zucchini parm with that and I'll link the video that showed you how I buried the stem to grow more roots and why that white powder is on it that's how I treat vine bores and squash bugs so as we inspect this plant again we're looking for the white dots see a little white dot right there one right there a couple more there as soon as you see it in some places it's on your plant so all these leaves are going to be sprayed you can see the pattern on there and as we come down further you can see it's really down there so they both have mildew on them somewhere there probably if we look on the undersides we can see some more so we've identified that the squash and zucchini plants both have the powdery mildew we know what to look for now I'm gonna spray them with hydrogen peroxide I'm using 12 tablespoons of 3% hydrogen peroxide in the gallon of water I recommend you test spray I've been test spraying I worked my spray concentrations up from 6 tablespoons per gallon to 10 tablespoons and I feel comfortable with 12 tablespoons per gallon but testing any spray even if you've been watching you for a while is really on you so you could start with 8 tablespoons 10 tablespoons per gallon spray a couple of leaves wait 48 hours look for damage but I'm going to show you how I'm going to treat these with the 12 tablespoons per gallon and again it's three percent hydrogen peroxide that I got at the grocery store we're going to spray the top of the leaves in the bottom of the leaves all right let me make up the spray and I'll talk about how you want to take care of this problem so the first thing you want to do is to remove the leaves that are most infected or have died don't remove more than a quarter of the leaves they will actually grow new leaves and actually pruning them back helps them a little bit but only take off about a quarter of the leaves I removed the most damaged leaves and the leaves that had the most powdery mildew on there and again I just want to show you what it looks like is identifying it's identifying the problem is really important and you can see it on there and on the backs of the leaves all right let's get to spraying I'm going to show you the whole process so you get an understanding on how to do it and I'm gonna recommend spraying this day one spraying it again on day two and spraying it again on day three I have found that the hydrogen peroxide doesn't damage the zucchini leaves you want to spray in the morning or spray in the evening don't spray in direct sunlight harvest any of your squash or zucchini before you start putting down any sprays and again we're gonna do this spray day one day two and day three and I was recommending skip a day you know Spray day one skip day to spray days kiss braid a three skip day four spray day five you could do that but I found with the different fungi and because hydrogen peroxide really does its thing and it's gone within 24 hours the best thing to do is to spray on consecutive day so we're going to really soak in the leaves on the tops first every leaf make sure we just completely wet it down you contact the surface if you see powdery mildew it also means it's in other places and then sometimes you can rotate your vines over and you can just soak them down the undersides by rotating the plant around and then you would rotate it the other way and sprayed them you want to get all the stems get around the plant too and it's really what taking the time to spray every leaf if you think you got it all that's great if not lift them up I just got home from work and this is what I usually do I inspect my garden take care of any problems and I pick something for dinner we would do this for three days after three days and be careful not to break the plants I broke that branch that's all right just leave it there the leaves will all turn and go towards the Sun after three days inspect it see how it looks if it looks good to you you could go ahead and put down your preventative spray let me explain what I mean baking soda wettable sulfur serenade you put it on leaves it makes it harder for the diseases to establish hydrogen peroxide actually kills the fungus on there so once you spray this 24 hours hydrogen peroxide is gone so right now we're killing off any of the spores and either fungi that's on there and then we're gonna go back to our baking soda Spray sulfur spray and what I recommend for an outbreak is once you put the baking soda down or whatever you want to use wait seven days spray the plant again put down does the wettable sulfur or the baking soda and you can adjust that every seven to fourteen days depending on how bad the diseases are in your area or depending on how much rain you get but that would be the general the general plan all right let's get to the bigger one I'll do a portion of this plant talk about a couple of those things so I cut the leaves off and when you cut a leaf you expose pheromones the odor of the plant basically how the plant smells when a plant is damaged either by cutting or naturally the bed insects can smell the plant they will fly there I'll be doing a video on how to use peppermint spray rosemary spray to mask the sense of your plants and that helps keep some of the bed insects away but I just want to mention that so after I spray this I'm gonna put down my peppermint spray a rosemary spray mask the sense and then because we took off about a quarter of the leaves give them a gallon full of any water-soluble fertilizer you use something higher in nitrogen would be great so again we get in here and we start just soaking down the tops of the leaves we want to get the undersides when the plants get bigger like this it's a little bit harder to move the vine around so you're gonna have to pick up each leaf spray the top sides the bottom sides and make sure you work your way down and get all the plants you also want to get in and get the stems and just really soak it down spray around the area hydrogen peroxide will take care of any fungi spores on the ground I also think it does irritate and kill off the smaller insects and that's generally how I would take care of this all right let me finish this one up and we'll get to the conclusion so to recap harvest any vegetables cut back the leaves only about a quarter of them for any leaves that are damaged or have the most mildew on there then you want to spray the tops the bottoms the stems and around the area with the hydrogen peroxide you want to do this every day for three days if things look good go ahead and put down your baking soda spray and this is how I'm treating my cucumbers zucchini and squash for powdery mildews and different fungal diseases and bacterial diseases I'm not ready to release information on the cucumber plants yet I'll make a video when that's ready to go but 12 tablespoons per gallon of water for your squash and zucchini plans hope you enjoyed the video please check out my seed chop at WWE rustic garden calm and thanks for watching

Channel: Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden)

Views: 241,423

Keywords: Vegetable, Gardening, Organic, Container, Hydrogen Peroxide

Id: fSEiUJYF7Lo

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 20 2018