I hate when we get a spot of hot, dry weather followed by deluges and warm nights. Always causes problems.

I agree with OKC1 that the weather is just encouraging the diseases right now. I so much prefer to have cooler spring weather and rain followed by summer weather, instead of what we've had this year....summer heat and drought in the spring and THEN the rain and diseases come.

There is a new organic treatment out there for all kinds of foliar diseases and it is a form of Bt. I found it at Wal-Mart. It is called Serenade and it is in a red bottle. It seems to work pretty well. I have tried it on the honeysuckle, which had powdery mildew after the rain of a few days ago, as well as on any tomato plant showing any foliar spotting or early blight. It seems to be working well, so far.

Sorry to hear that it is your year for disease problems. With all the rain you've had, I'm not really surprised though. My garden always looks great in May/June until the rains come, and then everything starts going haywired. This year we've had little rain and, therefore, little disease.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Serenade Info

Thanks for that link! So it has to be sprayed on with a garden hose, right? Ugh. With no running water at our place, that would be a tad difficult. We could set up a temporary gravity-fed water deal but don't know if there would be enough pressure for the mixing as it sprayed. Hmm... I'm sure there's some way to just premix and spray regularly, too, but I'm just not familiar with this type of thing.

I'm not into spraying or dusting anything most years but, dang, my zucchini will just not last long without it this year, I'm afraid.

Oh, how much $$ was it and how big of an area did the cover?

Well, it's been a couple of months since I bought it, so I'd have it handy "just in case", but I think the 20 oz. bottle of concentrate was either $8.97 or $9.97 at Wal-Mart. I mixed it up and applied it using a 2-gallon pressurized hand-held sprayer with no hose attached. (If I tried to drag a hose throughout the garden, I'd knock down and smash too much stuff!)

By the way, here is what the label on my bottle says it is supposed to "control" (or suppress, as indicated):

Anthracnose (Colletotrichum spp.)
Bacteria (Erwinia, Psuedomonas, Xanthomonas spp)
Bacterial Leaf Blight (Xanthomonas campestris)
Bacterial Speck (Psuedomonas syringae pv. Tomato)
Bacterial Spot (Xanthomonas spp)
Black Root Rot/Black Crown Rot (Alternaria spp.)
Black Spot of Rose (Diplocarbon rosea)
Botrytis (Botrytis spp.)
Downy Mildew--will control Rremia lactucae and Personospora spp. but will only suppress Plasmopara viticola)
Early Blight (Alternaria solani)
Fire Blight (Erwinia amylovora)--suppresses, does not control
Gray Mold (Botrytis cinerea)
Late Blight (Phytophpra infestans)
Leaf Spots and Rusts (Alternaria, Cercospora, Entomosporium, Helminthsporium, Myrothecium, Septoria, Puccinia and Phragmidium spp.)
Pin Rot (Alternaria/Xanthomonas)--suppresses, does not control
Powdery Mildew (Uncinula necator, Erysiphe spp., Sphaerotheca spp., Oidiopsis taurixa, Leveillula taurica, and Podosphaera leucotricha)
Scab (Venturia spp.)--suppresses, does not control
Target Spot (Corynespora cassiicola)
and
Walnut Blight (Xanthomonas campestris)

NOTE: It might work on other stuff, but these are the ones researched/evaluated/studied.

I mixed it at the rate recommended for Tomatoes, which is 4 oz. of Serenade per gallon of water, and I only mixed up 2 gallons worth, so I used 8 oz. of the bottle. I sprayed all the tomato plants that showed any sign of anything on the foliage, and a few zukes/cukes/summer squash which had just been rained on heavily, so I thought...why not be proactive and spray them "while I'm at it"? After spraying the veggies, and still having some mixture left in the sprayer, I released the pressure, opened up the sprayer and added water, so that what was left was at a rate of about 2 oz. per gallon. I used that mix on the honeysuckle which had powdery mildew following our 4 or 5 days of rain.

It says to repeat spraying at 7 day intervals (or as needed), but I don't know if I will. Might just take a wait-and-see approach, and only spray if more disease pops up. Like you, I hate spraying or dusting and usually don't do it, but this year it seems necessary.

Since I didn't spray all the plants, but only the sickly ones, I don't know how to quantify how large of an area it covered since I was jumping from here to there and only spraying selected plants. The label says 15 oz. of water/Serenade mix should cover 100 square feet.

I think it would cost more to use Daconil, and I don't like using chemicals, or a copper-based fungicide like Ko-cide, which I feel is too toxic for me to use in my garden, even though it is organic. However, I haven't purchased either one of those in years, so am not sure if my price comparison is correct.

So far, so good. The diseases have not progressed any since I sprayed. This product has gotten a lot of good buzz, esp. on the tomato forum, and I've been happy with it, but then I've only used it that one time.

Does the disease on your zukes look more like a bacterial wilt of the type spread by cucumber beetles? Or is is more like the botrytis blight spread by rain? Either way, I think Serenade will help. If you have cucumber beetles, though, you'll have to hit them with insecticidal soap or something or they'll just keep reinfecting the plants.

Hope this info helps, and hope you can save your zukes!

Dawn

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to type all of that out, Dawn! I'll do some reading and thinking on it and we'll see if I get around to actually doing it. LOL

Owie,

Anything for you, you know that! I'm thinking that somewhere in the next 18 to 20 years all your kids will grow up and leave home and then you'll have time to do all these time-consuming things. Until then, though, I don't know where you're gonna find the time!

Maybe you could turn the kids loose in the garden with one of the safe organic remedies like baking soda spray or milk spray. Just fill up the kids' water guns and tell them the zuke plants are the targets. How's that for creative parenting and creative gardening all at the same time?

Maybe one of your gardening neighbors will be happy to unload all their excess zukes on you if your plants don't make it, and theirs do? I will say, though, that once disease hits one garden in an area, it just seems to move through all the others too.

Dawn

Speaking of baking soda spray, does it really help with powdery mildew on crepemyrtles? Like many others, I don't like to use chemicals, but have had to on a large pink one that has gotten mildew so bad the last couple of years that I'm thinking about taking it out. Don't really want to though, cause that's alot of work! Fortunately, my other crepemyrtles have high resistance to powdery mildew. Thanks, Linda

Linda,

They say it helps, but I've never really seen good results with it, which is the reason I've tried the Serenade Bt product this year. I feel like I've been waiting my whole adult life for an organic fungicide that REALLY works well, and maybe Serenade will be it.

Some people say they have better success with the baking soda spray if they use Potassium bicarbonate purchased at a store that sells organic gardening supplies, instead of using everyday baking soda. I don't know if it is more effective because I've never tried it.

The recipe I have in my organic file box is:

4 teaspoons baking soda OR potassium bicarbonate
1 tablespoon horticultural oil (preferably the lighterweight summer type horticultural oil, sometimes sold as "superfine")
1 gallon water

Combine ingredients and apply to plant(s) with a pump-up pressurized sprayer.

Hope it helps your crape myrtle!

Dawn

I am relatively new to gardening so forgive any statements that may sound ignorant. I have found this post and since I am in the same climate zone, I am guessing the problems / solutions can be similar.

I have, what I believe I have correctly identified as Early blight on my poor tomatoes. I think I caught it too late... trying to convince myself it was just natural defoliation... I used daconil to try and prevent further spread but I have seen online that daconil is only helpful at first signs. I would say 45% of my tomato plants are yellowed now. :(

Since these posts about SERENADE were put up a month ago, I was wondering if anyone had any feedback on how well it worked? I hate using any chemicals on my garden and this sounds to be the safest one... it also seems that it could be better at preventing a variety of problems.

Thanks in advance!

Hi Newyawka!

I answered you via e-mail, but thought I'd briefly repeat the info here for my fellow Okies.

Serenade has worked quite well in my garden--I've used it to treat tomatoes for Early Blight and other foliar diseases, and on pumpkins and winter squash for their foliar diseases. I have also used it on 'Pink Lemonade' honeysuckle for powdery mildew. It seems to work well enough to greatly slow down the disease problems, but does not completely eliminate them. I can't say it is "as effective" as Daconil because I have not used them side by side on identical problems in a sort-of-scientific comparison....but it is effective enough for me, and I like it because it is organic!

Dawn

OkieDawn, I'm confused. I thought the Serenade in the red bottle that Walmart sells was different from the link you posted. Are they one in the same?

Here is a link that might be useful: Serenade Garden

I believe they are the same active ingredient. You know, in the same way that you can buy Bt caterpillar killer in different formulations from different manufacturers, for example. The Serenade in the red bottles at Wal-Mart is the only one I've found locally. The other formulations I've seen available in catalogs and on-line are by other manufacturers, but are the same active ingredient.

On the issue of baking soda, there were some USDA studies last year finding that baking soda was more effective than chemical fungicides....on roses. Now, I don't know about any other plants. But I would certainly try organic before I trotted off to the store to purchase chemicals.

How can you eat those veggies knowing you've used chemicals on them? Does it degrade after a certain amount of time and prior to harvest? Ugh....gives me the shivers. I know they do it commercially, but if I were growing my own, which I'm not BTW, I can't imagine running the organic gamut before choosing chemmies.

Susan