M&M........ would this work on roses that have mildew too ???
I have a problem with it and the darn black spot too.
Just pruned my roses today .... its winter here.
Hi Pekey!
Well, I got rid of the book I thought I had....I can't find it anywhere. My husband is pretty sure I threw it away because the guy who wrote it is a kook (his words, not mine)! The author is Jerry Baker, and he was really a character, had all sorts of recipes for things you could do to fight off certain garden issues. My husband was really into it when we first moved into our house, mixing up all these different potions for the lawn out of common household products that, in the end, he felt did no better or worse than buying fertilizer and applying it at the proper time. My husband said that at least it got him interested in taking care of the lawn and taught him about things at a granular level. In the end, because he got too busy and didn't want to deal with it, he hired an organic lawn service that comes 5 times a year to care for our little postage stamp of lawn that's left, after I put all the garden beds in!
If you Google Jerry Baker (may he RIP) you'll find different sites with discussions from the late 90's/early 2000's, some of them downright argumentative between the members, where half the people think he's the bomb with the other half thinking he is a literal bomb! I'm somewhere in the middle - I use two of his recipes and they've worked for me. Would I grind up onions and beer, and whatever else he says to use, together and spray it on my plants? Heck no! Would I make a deer deterrent of raw eggs and spray it all over my plant - no - I buy Deer Off and call it a day! I'm not an organic gardener, but I try to not use heavy duty chemicals and I always try and go for the least destructive option - Neem or Pyrethrin are about the most toxic I will get as far as commercial products are concerned. A lot of times, I do things manually, like flicking Japanese beetles into soapy water (which I did late this evening). There's not much that doesn't grow back if something's chewed on it! I like Jerry Baker's insecticidal soap recipe with the tobacco because it works for me, but there is always more than one way to take care of a gardening issue, as you well know!
Jerry Baker DOES have a slightly different recipe for black spot than the one I use for powdery mildew. Personally, I think roses are so labor intensive yet so rewarding.......
if what you are doing today is working, I would not change that up. However, I do know that roses are tricky when it comes to black spot, so if whatever fungicide spray you're using doesn't work all the time, you could supplement with this. Obviously, if you aren't using anything, try this and see if it helps.
Here is the recipe:
Before you spray this liberally, make sure you get rid of leaves that already have black spot and dispose of them. You can also use this as a preventative.
To one gallon (convert to liters) of water, add:
1 Tablespoon of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1 Tablespoon of light vegetable oil/canola oil
1 Tablespoon dishwashing liquid
I'm reading that converting a tablespoon and a gallon to metric is different in Australia than it is to here in the US and the UK....I would go with the US conversion, whereby 15 ml = Tablespoon. The same with gallons to liters, go with the US conversion, 3.75 liters = 1 gallon. I hope I got that right!
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& daughter trip for a couple of days.
