I've lately been hit with powdery mildew on my pumpkins thanks to the last week of rain and insane humidity. Anyways the way I'm dealing with it is diluting skim milk with water (1 part skim to 9 parts water) then spraying all the leaves with that. The leaves that are goners I just clip off and throw away. For your tomatoes I would recommend doing the same. Spray them with the diluted skim milk, and clip off the infected leaves. Remove them and any dead leaves on the ground and put them in the garbage can to stop the spread of the disease. It also looks like you have some tomato branches/leaves touching the ground. I myself do not prune the suckers on my tomatoes but I do remove any foilage that is touching the ground. Also make sure to mulch around the stem of your tomatoes with straw or w/e you have laying around to prevent water from splashing from the ground onto your leaves. That's how most diseases infect tomato plants. Old zucchini leaves will yellow up and die, that's normal.

Thanks to everyone for the responses. Nandina, I've been doing some research on diseases of asters, including aster yellows, but nothing seems to fit exactly. My best guess is either aster yellows or botrytis blight. I'm leaning toward botrytis blight, since the plants went downhill so quickly and botrytis likes wet conditions. We've had a very wet summer here in central NC (almost 2x normal amounts of rain in July & August). I'll keep up the online research, but from my reading so far it seems like the best way to manage fungal diseases without harming pollinators is to encourage healthy bacteria through things like compost teas.

Actinovate? Oh what a beautiful mistress... Like many others I have used this product in awe. Because of my will to learn and my interest in Organics. I chose this evening and some in the past to do a bit of research on this product. My queries were from the idea of brewing this bacteria. I read through a lot of articles, threads, PDFs, research studies, etc. And I'm no microbiologist or scientist for that matter. Just a bright young man. Would you like to know what I found out? YES? Good! So this Microbe is found in soil and deep sea sand. First lets clarify that soil is different from dirt. Soil contains organic life of a varying degree where as dirt does not, only minerals. So there's the first kicker. So that means healthy soils, most likely have this bacteria in you soil. That is assuming there are plenty of beneficial micro-organisms in there. Streptomycin is the family this strain in. There are a lot of articles for where this stuff is found and I found a few showing the parent strains showing up in animal waste. Which leads me to believe that this bacteria is much like the ones in your stomach. Breaking food down so you can digest. And may be found in either common or uncommon livestock. Now what does S. Lydicus feed off of? I did the research and found that it converts all sorts of rotting compounds into other non harmful, bio-available compounds your soil or plants could use. Which makes it beneficial to you soil. It feeds off of sugars, yeasts and humates. Which are the aggregate breakdowns of organic material such as food and animal waste. Which is why in bagged soil you may find germinated spores from months prior living. It is important in compost, as well as in soil to maintain an active microbial colony. So give the sucker what it wants. I will let you read through the full studies to find out how to brew the strain. But I will let you know despite all the nay-Sayers it is possible. So is this a miracle product? Yes Do all gardens need this product? No BUT it could't hurt. soil must be maintained, as best as it can by nature. But we can help it along in the areas it has trouble with. If you have an issue with molds or root diseases they can be abated and even cured. But only with outstanding bio-remediation and diversification in your soil will one achieve a healthy garden. THANKS Dawn. REF:Characterization of Streptomyces lydicus WYEC108 as a Potential Biocontrol Agent against Fungal Root and Seed Rots [http://aem.asm.org/content/61/8/3119.full.pdf] Microbe Organics [http://microbeorganics.com/]

After defoliating a few too many roses with the supposed "Cornel" formual for PM posted on this forum and elsewhere many years ago, I purchased a product called "Remedy". It is a "baking soda" based product. For roses that have low/ to mildly moderate susceptibility to PM in my climate it worked without any side effects (such as defoliation). It required religious weekly sprayings until the conditions for P.M were gone and is not systemic, so heavy rain can wash it off. Roses that were very susceptible to P.M still succumbed dispite this regimen...Banner Maxx is more effective against B.S. with tests showing only marginal protection against P.M. One of the most readily available non-organic protections against PM that works is Ortho's Rose Pride which contains the active ingredient Triforene (it also works against B.S.)...If being organic is the most important feature to you about a rose, then try and find roses that are not susceptible or only mildly so. Here is a link that might be useful: Remedy