My Mid Summer Spraying Regiment for Blight, Powdery Mildew, and Pests

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi gardener channel it's a beautiful day in the garden today and so i figured i'd come outside today to talk about my mid-summer spring regiment now a lot of times a lot of you know that we grow organically and a lot of you that have pest problems or disease problems you come to me and say luke what do you use on your plants i'm starting to have an outbreak and i really need to take care of it asap i need to get rid of it now what can i use and so i figure to come outside today to talk about my spring regiment and just kind of talk about the the things that i use and how i use them because spraying regiments can be very effective even as an organic gardener and you don't have to go crazy you don't have to use anything harsh and it can be very very effective so i wanted to talk about that but first i want to give you a little psa about spraying so the first thing to note is any time you are spraying you want to go gentle you want to go gentle because when it's very hot and your plants are already stressed and it's high humidity anytime you're spraying a chemical no matter if it's organic or inorganic a chemical is really going to stress the surface of the leaves out and the entire plant as a whole and you can sometimes kill the plant entirely if it's not necessary or or if it's too strong and what i mean by not necessary is oftentimes the plants just going through a little bit of stress and it can heal itself if the weather's changed if the weather conditions change so let's say it's really dry and you get some rain well that's going to help that's actually going to help you out because the plant's no longer going to be in a drought like condition if it's very hot and the weather gets cooler it's no longer hot anymore so whatever was stressing the plant out sometimes can just fix itself when it comes to a pest problem a small amount of pests sometimes more often than not we find beneficial insects will come in and actually regulate the amount of bad pests or bad bugs we have in the garden and so that natural equilibrium we didn't have to do anything to control those pests nature just came in and did it for us the next thing from the psa as i kind of alluded to is make sure you need to spray in the first place if it's something that can ha that is going to handle itself if it's something that is going to kind of fix itself naturally you don't need to spray when we come in and spray is once it has gotten beyond that point as it's gotten beyond that point and we realize okay this is getting out of control i need to take control of this situation right now because it's not going to get any better any quicker and so where that would kind of come in is with something like powdery mildew if we have one leaf that has powdery mildew i'm going to come in i'm going to cut that leaf away i'm not going to worry about i'm just going to cut the leaf away and let the plant grow if it's like three or four leaves i'll keep an eye on it but i won't jump in right away as soon as it becomes about half the plant that's where i start to say okay half the plant there's no way this is going to get any better any quicker i'll come in and spray so that is my psa on spraying because i've seen so many people come in for a simple little problem like i don't know a hole in their leaf like i don't have any examples of holes in the leaves well either way you can trust me here this this is a good example so you see this tiny little hole in the leaf here this tiny little hole right here maybe you can see it see a tiny little hole a tiny little hole you'd be shocked at how many times people they come out to their garden and they look at their garden through like a microscope and they say oh my gosh i've got a tiny little hole but they're not looking at their entire garden and realizing that their entire garden is actually for the most part very healthy and it's not worth addressing that tiny little hole because it's not number one you can't identify which pest it is or if it's even a pest in the first place and since you can't identify it it's only one tiny little hole i say don't worry about it but sometimes they don't like to heed my advice and they'll go and spray it and then they come back in like a week and a half and say look my entire plant's wilted it's dying it's dead it's turning brown i think i've killed it so what'd you do well i sprayed it i didn't say it i said not to spray it i know but i thought i could spray i thought i could fix it and now it's dead what can i do i won't a little too late now so don't spray your plants if you don't need to and if you do go gentle all right so now that we've gotten that out of the way let's talk about the two sprays that i really like to use and then we'll get into some other ones that i've used in the past that do work i just don't like them as much so the two types of sprays that i really like to use is my first one is my go-to and that is baking soda everybody's got baking soda on hand or at least anyone that does any baking or has a smelly fridge you've probably got some baking soda or if you kind of scrub some pans baking soda is great for that too so i love baking soda baking soda is very gentle you can dilute it down or increase the the um the the concentration of it depending on how much you use so it's very uh it's very versatile in that um in that sense but it's also um it's also organic and it's also very inexpensive this is not very expensive at all this box cost us like it's like like a buck 25 or two bucks or something like that super super inexpensive and so what i will do is in a spray bottle like this i will actually take a gallon i'll take a one gallon container because it's very easy to work with gallons it's very complicated and confusing to work with spray bottle amounts because every spray bottle is different you know if i say if i say this bottle here is 750 milliliters well it's down 750 milliliters down here i've filled it up to here it's kind of half full just so it's so odd to go with this and and then say well i recommend like two tablespoons to a gallon of water and then someone says well how many gallons are in 620 milliliters because mine's not quite full and if i can mix it too much and you're just confusing yourself and you're over complicating the process and i do too i gotta put if i have to pull out a google uh if i have to pull out a google conversion unit conversion calculator it's already over my head so i like to keep things really simple i just pull out a one gallon container and in that one gallon container i will add one gallon of water two tablespoons of baking soda three drops of dish soap and three tablespoons of vegetable oil so again two tablespoons three drops of dish soap three tablespoons of vegetable oil now you might be asking why do you add the vegetable oil why the dish soap well it's because if you just spray something on your leaves oftentimes it'll just run right off the surface of the leaf because the leaf actually has kind of a waxy barrier that protects it and what you need to do is you need to get something to stick onto the surface of the leaf and so by adding a little bit of soap it's going to help the water and the oil mix together because if you ever made a salad dressing a vinaigrette you'll notice that the oil just kind of sits on top if you ever made like a lava lamp in high school science class or whatever the oil sits on top of the water and that's because oil and water don't mix but you need an emulsifier and an emulsifier is just something that helps aid the mixing of those two of those two mixtures and so are those two materials and so you just add a few drops of dish soap it only takes a couple drops and you can mix it in and that helps to actually have the baking soda solution stick to the surface of the leaf that's the only thing that the soap and the oil is actually used for but i will use this for things like blights powdery mildews i love it because this is slightly acidic and it actually creates an acidic environment for the leaf that the that the blight can't stick to or it can't colonize the next thing that i like to use is copper fungicide now copper fungicide works exactly the same way that the baking soda does the copper fungicide is just a pre-mixed concentrate it's very effective it's it's well it's a lot more expensive than a box of baking soda but it can be a little more effective because copper fungicide will stick to the surface of the leaf a little bit better so if you're looking for something that's just a quick spray down and forget about it this is going to be very effective this also stays on the surface of the leaf longer than the baking soda spray will so not only does it stick better but it stays longer so it's a little bit more effective in my opinion but copper can be harmful to the soil in large amounts now we're not using large amounts here but if i don't specify that i will have some of you and i know the people that will say this that will say well it's not great for worms it's not great for worms copper in large quantities is harmful in the soil just like any other you know any other metal which copper is a metal any other metal found in the soil can actually build up and can create some some issues for worms so you don't want to use large quantities you don't want to go just dumping a whole bottle on the soil but in small amounts it's fine and it's organic it's this is omri listed so you can't go wrong with a good copper fungicide so those are the two that i really like now you might be asking well i don't have any copper fungicide i don't have any baking soda what else can i use you can use apple cider vinegar apple cider vinegar is a very it's a very weak form of an acid what's it's very acidic but when you dilute it down it becomes a very weak acid very much like a baking soda it's going to be sprayed on the leaves but the trick here is that it does not stick to the leaves whatsoever but if you already have blight or you already have powdery mildew this is a wonderful solution because it just kills the existing spores there so i will use in a spray bottle like this because i'm not making up a gallon of that i can guarantee you that you're going to need about so in a spray bottle like this you're going to need about two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and that's a very simple spray that you can use to uh to wipe out all of the the blight spores and powdery mildew spores it's very very effective now the next thing that you can use is milk now milk unlike acid is alkaline it's a base it's very basic and you can actually use milk to work exactly the same way the leaf surface needs to be a certain ph if the ph is around seven funguses can colonize very well but if you take an acid it becomes more like a ph of 6 or 6.5 slightly acidic but just as thick enough that it can't colonize likewise if you take some milk you spray some milk on your leaves it's going to create an inhospitable environment when it's a little too alkaline it might be a ph of 6.5 or a ph of 7. or sorry a ph of a 7.5 or a ph of 8. and that gets you further away from the ph of seven which is right in the middle and that does not allow the the the uh the fungus to colonize now this is great for things like powdery mildew it's not so great for things like blight which can be a little heartier so if you're spraying down your cucumbers or your zucchini you can do it now the downside of this is milk does stink when it gets hot and it gets warm even diluting down milk will give you that kind of sour milk smell throughout the air i've tried a couple years that's why it's not included in my preferred list but a lot of people have milk on hand and so you can use milk too it's very effective and it does work now i do caution you guys because milk um like i said milk can also attract some flies and other things like that into your garden so it can bring in some nasty unwanted stuff so just keep that in mind now you might be asking yourself well i don't have a disease i have a pest what do i do i only go with one spray there's only one i don't use neem oil neem oil is very potent i'll use it in the early season i'll use it in the late season when it's cooler it's less humid it's less hot the sun is less direct in the sky i'll use neem oil i'll use things like pyrethrin but i do not use them during mid-summer and the reason why is because it's so potent that it will burn your plants and it will kill them it's very very effective at doing its job which is killing and it will and even though it's organic and it's completely fine and completely safe to use during normal season during mid season when it's really hot do not use it i use bt that's the only time i will ever attack a pest that is in my garden and that is something like a cabbage worm a tomato horn worm tent caterpillars and things like that so i will use bt i've got some tent caterpillars over there i just sprayed them the other day and i use bt on them and that's because bt is not a chemical it's a biological spray it actually has bacillus thurigensis and that is a beneficial bacteria that when you spray it on the leaves the the caterpillars actually ingest it and the bacteria gets inside of them and causes them to uh bad things happen to them there's kids watching bad things happen to them so that is the only spray i use and i'll repeat that for those that doubt me that's the only spray i use from jan or from july until august those two months i will not do any other spray and that's because they're all very they're very potent and that's because pests are hardier than diseases just remember that pests are hardier than diseases the amount of concentration that you have to spray on them in order to control them is much more than a thing like a disease like powdery mildew or blight so that's why it's just always better to use physical removal if you have japanese beetles take a butterfly net soup them up and and then drop them in a little jar of vegetable oil and they're done they smother out and they're dead no sprays needed things like aphids i'll use a hose i'll spray them down really heavily or i'll take my finger with um with some uh some duct tape on the back i'll just rub my plants down really gently and i'll collect the aphids like that or i'll let uh let mother nature come in and i'll let her bring in all of the i'll let the you know the natural controls like ladybugs come in ladybugs are a wonderful control for aphids i don't need to spray anything on them and so i have a lot of other things at my disposal for pest control that are not chemicals so there you go i really hope you enjoyed i really hope that you learned something new and again this is something that i just use so there's a lot of other options out there and there are a lot of other people that will will tell you other things as well so it's just one of those cases where this is what i use this is what works for me but by all means if you if you uh if you've heard something else do your research do your due diligence and all of your organic sprays are going to work very similar so just make sure you dilute them down make sure you don't use them at full strength make sure you don't use them during the heat of the day and you should be fine so i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and i'll see you very soon all right see you guys bye

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Views: 91,931

Rating: 4.9259424 out of 5

Keywords: pest, organic, organic gardening, powdery mildew, migardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, pests, disease, Spray, gardening, garden tip, plants

Id: fOtzxT5sqg8

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2020