Hi slashy

Urgh! Mildew! Same thing happened to my cukes. (Yes I did the whole too crowded thing as well). DO NOT put the plants on the compost, it is pretty contagious, I found out the hard way!
I planted into fresh soil just to be on the safe side, but I didn't sterilize the pots. I don't know if you could get away with re-using the soil. So far the new ones are doing much better.
Also I am spraying the cucumbers with a milk solution as a preventative and it seems to be working. No mildew yet.

1 cup milk, 8 cups water, 1 teaspoon bi-carb soda. I spray twice a week in the morning, so they dry off before nighttime.
Hope this helps with your zukes!
Death to mildew!

Bunks

The soil is fine.

And some people go ahead and compost the leaves. After all, the spores are airborne. So, any that drift in on a breeze will still find your plants.

Bottom line -- to compost or not is your choice.

That said, here are several other bits of info worth knowing:
-- Water on the leaves doesn't promote powdery mildew.
-- Powdery mildew is caused by more than one fungus. Some are specialists and attack only one host while other less finicky kinds have multiple hosts.

Ditto what Jean said in regard to PM being a generic term for many fungi, most of which are host specific or attack related family members.

I don't worry about PM in the compost because it's airborne and will only affect susceptible plants. You literally can't keep it off the plants, all you can do is try to keep them as healthy as you can so they don't get it bad or die more slowly.

You can try various anti fungal methods as well from light oils to try and prevent the spores from attaching to baking soda and other agents to kill spores that have attached, but ultimately some plants are just very susceptible no matter what and will probably get it at some point.

Yeah I'm getting the impression that mildew is something that you 'manage' rather than 'avoid'- it WILL be around, and susceptible plants will get it, you just have to slow it down & give your plants a fighting chance at fighting it off.

I've just been reading about bi-carb soda bunks- I've been doing milk-waterings but have yet to add bi-carb. I'll definitely add that to the rotation. Do you use a watering can or a spray bottle?

I'm half-tempted to see if I can resuscitate my zukes that way but I think I need to give them up as a learning experience- given how overcrowded they are & how much they're overhanging the pots, I doubt they'll ever really thrive. And I have other zukes and squashes elsewhere in the garden, might just focus my energies on keeping the mildew off those ones!

I think I'll take the risk and compost my zuke plants, since as you guys say, the mildew spores are airborne & probably everywhere already. It seems a horrible waste to throw away all that plant matter.

I use a spray bottle and get both sides of the leaves. I mix a batch and keep it the bottle in the fridge.

g'day slashy,

manage is about the best way to treat it, that management can start with the planting conditions and position as well ie.,. in well drained medium and in full sune with plenty of aur movement breezes etc. it also starts with your watering regime wetting the foliage at watering time makes for ideal p/m conditions as does watering too later in the day so that any moisture on the plant can dry off before nightfall.

water on the root zones only. my zuce's and similar can get some p/m toward the end of their life when they are at a low ebb, suppose like us that is to be expected, so good healthy soil will mean a good healthy plant for as long as possible, the health of the soil comes from the trace elements and all we can do in that department is to feed the soil encourage earth worms (not desirable in pots/containers) and soil oraganisms.

as said it is an air borne thing that needs good moist conditions to thrive, try the milk spray (we have a recipe on our site), ther is a product out all organic that helps with the plants trace elements, you would need to e/mail me for the link (commercial links not allowed here), that could help a lot with container plants?

i compost all my plants p/m or not once it is covered (in our case we just break the plant up and mulch it right where it stood cover it well with mulch and it breaks down in a couple of weeks or so. we continually feed our soil by using green type mulches ie.,. sugar cane mulch and spoilt pasture grass/lucerne mulch, as well we feed all our rottable kitchen scraps to the gardens so the worms and bacteria can process it right where the plants need it. it amy help to remove affected leaves as they occur?

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

Daconil is a good preventative and approved for use on food crops. In this part of the country, mildew generally affects squash at the end of the season when the weather turns cool. I was using Daconil on tomatoes for early blight and found it helpful on squash as well.