Tired
of putting on the little white suits to spray fungicides?
by Craig Paskvan, Paskvan
Consulting
There is a new fungicide on the market that is not really new. It has been around for a long time, and in fact, I would be willing to bet that your wife actually has a box of it in her kitchen cabinet. This new product is actually baking soda. That's right, baking soda. For years, gardeners have known that baking soda can control the onslaught of fungal attacks for many crops. The bicarbonate ion, when teamed up with either potassium or sodium and combined with the proper surfactant, will control a number of serious fungal diseases.
Dr. Ken Horst, a plant pathologist from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has been working with this for a number of years. Dr. Horst discovered that a basic anionic spreader sticker would work together with the bicarbonate. Applied at a rate of about 2.0 to 5.0 lbs/100 gal of water, the combination gives results that surpassed the effectiveness of most commercial fungicides on the market today. This approach is being used on farms and in the horticultural industry, and I see no reason why it won't have the same effect in the golf industry. These are some of the successful control results that have been seen:
Powdery
mildew, (Leveilluella taurica) on tomato, roses, grapes, cuccurbits.
Powdery mildew, (Sphaerotheca pannosa var rosae) on roses and strawberries.
Erysiphe polygoni D.C., on tomatoes.
Gray Mold, (Botrytis cinerea) in vitro potato.
Alternaria brassicae, in vitro.
Fusarium graminearum, in vitro.
Black spot, (diplocarpon rosae) on roses.
Postharvest decay, (B. cinerea Pers. And A. alternata Fr.) on bell peppers
in storage.
Silver scurf, (Helminthosporium solani) on potatoes in storage.
Green mold, (Penicillium digitatum) on citrus fruit in storage.
Postharvest decay, (A. alternaria, Fusarium spp., and R. stolonifer)
on melons.
How does it work?
Apparently, what the bicarbonates are doing is developing a buffered high pH environment on the leaf surfaces, which creates an environment unfavorable to fungi and fungal spores. The germ tube development of spores is inhibited, and the elevated pH environment can disrupt the enzymes, which are required to solubilize and expand cell walls including the membranes of fungal spores. Membrane activities and cellular physiology are disrupted. It has been shown that the spores of powdery mildew spores collapse within one minute or less after application. The mycelia simply shrivel and dehydrate.
Non-toxic; plants don't develop resistance
What makes this approach so attractive is safety and target tolerance-- not only could your children safely spray a bicarbonate solution, but it appears that repeated applications of bicarbonates do not stimulate resistance by various fungal species.
If any of you are interested in this, please let me know. We have calls into two companies selling commercial bicarbonate products asking for technical bulletins. When this info is available, I will pass it on to whoever wants it. We are also checking the Internet for additional commercial suppliers. If you're not interested in commercial products, there are recipes using baking soda available on the Internet.
Craig
Paskvan
Paskvan Consulting
http://www.paskvanconsulting.com
craig@paskvanconsulting.com
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