Powdery Mildew: to compost or not

[HollyWoozle]

I am in the UK but we also struggled with powdery mildew a bit on our courgettes (zucchini) and squashes this year. We have standard compost piles but just invested in a new hot composter bin and I have decided to go with hot composting for the plants with mildew.

It's our first year with a garden and has been a real learning curve - I read that plants showing mildew should have infected leaves cut off and disposed of right away, but I was too slow and it spread. I did have some small success using milk spray just to keep it somewhat under control but next year I will have to be more proactive about it!

My parents also gave us a wormery they don't use but we've not set it up yet. Looking forward to trying that out too.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

Welcome to gardening! It's fun, it's messy, and it can be so darn frustrating some times. And it's a slippery slope into crazy plant lady territory if you have "collector" mentality like I do... I gotta grow all the things.

I will try milk spray next year, I have never heard of it so I will look it up. I should have cut off the infected leaves and I knew better. I just didn't have time this year unfortunately. I was helping my elderly friend/honorary grandma, who broke her foot and bruised the bone in her knee. She could not walk at all. I ended up staying over at her house multiple weekends in a row. I was simply prioritizing giving her care and not taking care of my garden, haha. Like, at all.

I came home one Sunday and found I had a massive aphid infestation on most of my nasturtiums instead of trying to get rid of them I just sacrificed my nasturtiums to the insect horde. I figured if I pulled the infested plants, the bugs would move to my tomatoes or beans and I really wanted those more than the flowers. Now I have a ton of lady bugs that came to eat aphids, but only four nasturtium plants. I'm saving the seeds from the survivor nasturtiums.

At least my tomatoes have ladybug protectors now and are doing amazing. Also, my beans all made it to maturity. Made my first full pot of homegrown bean soup ever. I learned ya gotta have a lot of bean plants if you want to save enough dried beans to make a soup. I grew about thirty bean plants this year. Last year I grew four but saved all the beans for seed.

I really think the hot composting will help us both deal with the mildew, and I'm going to either not grow cucurbits next year, or plant strains known for PM resistance. I hope you'll try out the wormery, I hear you can get great results. I've never tried one but our soil is so alive with worms I bet I could just dig some up to start a wormery soon.

 

[Captain13]

On the ladybug protectors, I have found that they live turnips. Spring or fall, when I check on my turnips, they always have a lot of ladybugs on the underside of the leaves. This year, I actually planted some turnips among my peppers and tomatoes and sure enough, I had ladybugs on them that seemed to move over to the tomatoes when they would get aphids on them. Oddly, I’m not seeing aphids on my turnips. It’s as though the ladybugs use them for a nursery,

 

[HollyWoozle]

Welcome to gardening! It's fun, it's messy, and it can be so darn frustrating some times. And it's a slippery slope into crazy plant lady territory if you have "collector" mentality like I do... I gotta grow all the things.

I will try milk spray next year, I have never heard of it so I will look it up. I should have cut off the infected leaves and I knew better. I just didn't have time this year unfortunately. I was helping my elderly friend/honorary grandma, who broke her foot and bruised the bone in her knee. She could not walk at all. I ended up staying over at her house multiple weekends in a row. I was simply prioritizing giving her care and not taking care of my garden, haha. Like, at all.

I came home one Sunday and found I had a massive aphid infestation on most of my nasturtiums instead of trying to get rid of them I just sacrificed my nasturtiums to the insect horde. I figured if I pulled the infested plants, the bugs would move to my tomatoes or beans and I really wanted those more than the flowers. Now I have a ton of lady bugs that came to eat aphids, but only four nasturtium plants. I'm saving the seeds from the survivor nasturtiums.

At least my tomatoes have ladybug protectors now and are doing amazing. Also, my beans all made it to maturity. Made my first full pot of homegrown bean soup ever. I learned ya gotta have a lot of bean plants if you want to save enough dried beans to make a soup. I grew about thirty bean plants this year. Last year I grew four but saved all the beans for seed.

I really think the hot composting will help us both deal with the mildew, and I'm going to either not grow cucurbits next year, or plant strains known for PM resistance. I hope you'll try out the wormery, I hear you can get great results. I've never tried one but our soil is so alive with worms I bet I could just dig some up to start a wormery soon.

I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s injury but you sound so kind and helpful in looking after her!

Funny you should mention nasturtiums… I planted them and marigolds as natural pest control for our veg plants, intending to lure the bugs away, and boy did it work. Some of our nasturtiums got absolutely massacred weirdly enough, some of them are growing back now, even though it’s starting to get cold!

Beans have probably bean our most successful crop so far. Certainly not enough to dry and save any but we’ve had a steady little crop over the last few months and have been eating through them - very satisfying! I bet your soup was delicious.

Thanks for the warm welcome to the thread and I will let you know how I go with the wormery for sure.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s injury but you sound so kind and helpful in looking after her!

Funny you should mention nasturtiums… I planted them and marigolds as natural pest control for our veg plants, intending to lure the bugs away, and boy did it work. Some of our nasturtiums got absolutely massacred weirdly enough, some of them are growing back now, even though it’s starting to get cold!

Beans have probably bean our most successful crop so far. Certainly not enough to dry and save any but we’ve had a steady little crop over the last few months and have been eating through them - very satisfying! I bet your soup was delicious.

Thanks for the warm welcome to the thread and I will let you know how I go with the wormery for sure.

How funny that our nasturtiums and squash plants did the same thing! I guess it's not that surprising.
I am in Oregon in the US but the climate here is similar to the UK. We are in Willamette valley. It's a wide floodplain between the coastal mountain range and the Cascades, our tall volcanic mountains.
The coast range is mostly hills, and not very high, so a lot of seaside weather flows over them. Then the tall mountains on the other side act like a wall and all those clouds bunch up against them, and we have rain and fog and overcast skies most of the year.
This area is known for all the dairy products, grass seed and Christmas trees we farm around here, because of that constant moisture.
Good for plants, great for animals that eat grass, but also a breeding ground for the powdery mildew menace!