I had decided to give my ailing cukes (leaves wilting) and other plants some aspirin.
http://www.plantea.com/plant-aspirin.htm
All my veggies are in containers. Upon stepping onto the back deck I discovered a good portion of the top half of my tomatoe plants on the ground. Part of the trellis holding them had snapped. I quickly administered aspirin to most of the container veggies. then it was off to home depot to purchase some metal fencing post for the tomatoes. Finally got the tomatoes stantanding erect ... just a bit shorter in height.
As soon as I cooled off I am going to spray my veggies and roses with the following solution and take pictures to post later.
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 teaspoon shampoo
1 quart of water
Make sure to spray underside of leaves and as much as stem as possible.
I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT
What is the concoction supposed to do?
kill fungus
It has done wonders for my roses. The leaves on the roses were really bad. I think if I had pulled all the bad leaves off last month they would have been bare. As new healtjy leave sprouted I continued to prun off the bad leaves a little at a time.
I am definitely going to try this on my dahlia and zinnia plants this comming summer. They have a tendency to get powdery mildew as is the case with my peas. Hope it works.
Using the aspirin is an interesting concept -- I think I've read a suggestion before to put an aspirin in a vase of flowers, as mentioned in the article in your link, but never heard about using it for perking up plants, or, even more interesting to me, increasing germination of seeds. I'm definitely going to give that a try, I had a lot of problems with germination this year for some reason so I'm up for trying anything!
merrymath
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 teaspoon shampoo
1 quart of water
That's a good recipe. The baking soda is good to prevent fungus. The cooking oil smothers fungus. The shampoo kills aphids, which cause the fungus.
Just be careful with the oil - if the weather is very hot, it will cook your leaves :(
Wow, great information. I will have to give this a shot and see how it works out. I have a couple plants that don't look too happy right now so it is worth a try, right?
Wonder if you could substitute Murphy Oil soap for the shampoo and cooking oil...
stephanietx - I've read so much good stuff about Murphys Oil soap, that if I were you, I'd give it a try.
My only caution would be the "oil" part - it will burn leaves very quickly in hot weather.
We spray late in the evening. Don't get up early in the morning to do it then! LOL
ugh, spray late in pm, water late in pm, increases tendencies to grow good fungus. Get er done before 2pm, love your plants, Mrs Addams Family
I figure that if God can water late at night, I can, too! Don't seem to be having any fungus problems or anything like that. Much better than scorching the leaves and killing the plants!
I've seen this recipe, but with dishwashing liquid instead of the shampoo. I'm trying out GreenCure right now, but this might be cheaper. Maybe I'll do half the garden with one and half with the other. I'm always up for a research/experiment! I really need to settle on one plan by next year!
I've got looooots of baking soda for the formula for the homemade cure for a skunked dog. Might as well get a multi use out of it! =)
I sprayed this morning .... only half tsp of oil to the homemade recipe this time.
I noticed one wilted leaf in the cuke container that previously had a significant number of wilted leaves on Monday. The cuke container that had only 2 wilted leaves had no wilted leaves. I decided to give each container an aspirin .... My containers are earthboxes ...I just dropped an aspirin into the watering tube.
This message was edited Jul 14, 2010 12:28 PM
Here is a picture of some wilted leaves on cukes on Monday.
I water in the evening without incident. Our very dry climate probably helps with that. It is just way too hot to water during the day - I'd have fried veggies - plus I work. And really can't see myself getting up at 4 am to water - lol... As long as you water the ground and not the leaves you'll be a-ok!
Phoenix floats the veggies at nite, I remember, definitely drier air than Houston or Cowtown, but, Ft Worth has issues with fungus. a memory of a quote from our beloved Aggies- horses thrive on-ugh, oh yeah, fescues but 90% of the fescue pastures in Tx have a fungus that is fatal to the horses, and apparently, this fungus is one you dont notice. granted your garden isnt fescue, but I remember trying to keep the black stuff off my squash, roses, grass... in Ft Worth area. and you dont water the leaves, u water the ground, so that when the condensation-dew- pulls off the plants, they have the strength to make the heat of the day. If your watering isnt causing you issues, GREAT! my speaking was part of the training I recieved while working a plant nursery and growing up on Blue River bottoms just north of Durant, and we sold our 4th cutting alfalfa to New Mexico when the 4 huge barns were full. Wistful, Phoenix is a damper area now than it was in the 80's. greener, too