Rust & Powdery mildew have both present in the patch for a while now but due to the growing size & variety of plants that can/have been affected in the patch I think it is time to get serious with the control of these diseases... To be honest I have been slack in my research to find control methods that will work against these diseases in the past...
Rust (Left) was only dealt with once became obvious... Infected leaves were picked off or if the plant was to infected, the whole plant was pulled... Plants infected with Powder mildew (Below) were sprayed with a 1:10 Full cream milk & water mix once the infection had set in with virtually no change in the infection or is spread... Others swear by its use & say it works great for them but I think our more humid conditions here create an environment where the mildew thrives once it has infected a host... The other spray I used was a commercial Neem oil spray that contains a wetting agent... I had searched & found that Neem was successful in controlling both the mildew & the rust so have sprayed both with a 1:10 solution of Neem oil to water with slightly better results of the milk but ended up resorting to pulling leaves that were infected the most in the hope of the plants bouncing back...
I have decided to read more than brief snippets gleaned from Google searches & came across "Neem: A tree for solving global problems"... It appears that I have been using Neem the wrong way.. After reading pages 53 & 56 I found that it should be used as a preventative on the plants... Neem works best when sprayed onto the plants before an outbreak occurs as it has little to no effect on the infections once they have settled in... As a result of this newly discovered information I cleaned out the beans & will be spraying the pruned back Lemongrass along with the rest of the patch to try to reduce the risk of these diseases reoccurring in the patch...The next lot of Beans going in are Snake Beans which are said to be very resistant to Rust so they will be planted directly into the beds this weekend...
Pests...
Another benefit to Neem is its insecticidal properties... In the past when we have had a regular spraying regime in the patch we noticed a dramatic drop in White butterfly caterpillars (Left) on the Brassicas, Thrips on the Eggplants & Colorado Potato beetle (Right) on the Cape Gooseberries after spraying the plants directly...We were slack over winter but will be spraying the patch every weekend for the next few weeks then fortnightly after that...Neem is a plant that has many useful properties & has been used in India & surrounding countries for thousands of years... A great site with useful information is Discover Neem.... We have made up our own Head lice hair conditioner for the kids & have used Neem based toiletries for a few years now & have found them to be great...
Have a great one all...
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