Hey SuperForest
As summer begins to wind down, back-to-school feelings surface and a slight crispness to the air in the mornings anticipates the build up to autumn, growth continues apace in my rooftop city garden – as if a reminder not to wish the summer away so fast:
My first sunflower!
The sunflowers are blooming – I find it almost impossible to look in the face of a sunflower and not smile at the condensed colour of the petals and abundance of tasty seeds.
And the chillies are bearing fruit:
I’ve been excited to see how many insects just a few containers are attracting: ladybugs, wasps, hoverflies and, most excitingly, bees -I like to think I may have contributed in some small way to some delicious London honey.
But gardening, as everything, poses challenges disguised as problems – most recently, in the form of powdery mildew on the zucchini:
white mildew on the leaves
Powdery mildew (the fungus Sphaerotheca fuliginea) is a pretty common infection in zucchini plants, starting with white spots on the leaves and – particularly in warm, humid conditions – developing to coat the leaves, eventually killing them – and without leaves, the photosynthesising powerhouses, the plants can’t flourish.
Sphaerotheca fulginea (So, I was somewhat dismayed to see the fungus rapidly spreading across the plants. But one thing I’ve learned from this whole hasty endeavour in growing has been that my (I’m ashamed to admit) all-too-frequent tactic of sitting back, seeing if the problem will resolve itself, leads more often to dead plants than to Darwinian triumphs – and I didn’t want to resort to chemical fungicides – so, naturally, I took to the internet! (Yep, I would’ve called my Mum, but sadly the Gardening Hotline is on summer vacation). And a little google-fu discovered something awesome: whilst nature provides challenges, it oftentimes also provides surprising solutions – and the solution to powdery mildew? MILK
milky zucchini
Weekly spraying of mildewed leaves with a simple solution of milk and water (approx. 30% milk is thought to be optimal) controls the mildew as well as synthetic fungicides – a faintly funky smell results, but this seems a pretty fair price for avoiding the use of synthetic fungicides. Who knew?
post-milk bath
As you can see, it seems to have been quite effective: the yellowed spots were fully mildewed before and the plants look much healthier now.
I love when we can find natural alternatives to using chemicals or pesticides – do you have any tips to share? I’d love to hear them.
Bathing in milk: good enough for Cleopatra, good enough for zucchini.
Love
P
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