I heard this was recommended for blackspot on roses so I decided to use it on roses and tomatoes. So far I have used regular milk but I believe powdered milk works also. It has something to with the antifungal compounds the mother cow produces for the calf. I live Florida, aka fungal disease heaven, and so far it works ok. It has not prevented all diesease but I think it has slowed it down some. Unlike many organic sprays it has not burned the foliage. It is a pleasant garden task because I don't really care if the spray gets in my hair or on my face since it is just milk! With the regular milk I use a 1 part milk to 2 parts water ratio.

Thanks for the info. I'm just a hop, skip from the Fla line -Jackson county, FL-so we probably are subjected to some of the same bad guys. Tobacco mosaic is the worst of all.

flatwood, how do you use the powdered milk? Should it be sprinkled in planting hole, around plant, or does it need to be in spray form?

I use it in a pump sprayer and spray it on the foliage.

I have used it before, last year i.e, and will use it again this year on my cukes, squash, melons..
Here is my mix:(Actually not mine.)
-- 1 part milk. skim is better because the fat has no function.
-- 3 parts water, non-chlorinted. Or leave city water in an open container for couple of days.
-- 1 tspn of baking soda per qrt. of mixture
you need to spray this more often, and after rain.
It is not a "cure-all" but can prevent and keep PM checked.
Good part of it is that it is harmless to plants, benefitial organisms, ... and humans.
So you can spray your cuke vines and pick fruit, wash it and eat it.

flatwood, it depends on which specific diseases you have there that you think can be controlled by spraying with milk. This suggestion has been known for a long time and I've not been convinced that it does anything to help based on feedback I've seen online since I started posting about tomatoes back in 1989.

It's based on the premise that the milk coats the leaves and acts as a competetive agent in preventing foliage diseases of which there are four main ones, two fungal and two bacterial.

Milk can do nothing for the systemic diseases such as Verticillium, Fusarium, root knot nematodes,TMV, which you mentioned above and many more systemic diseases.

Actually TMV is no longer much of a problem in the US and is usually only found in large commercial greenhouses where it's spread by mechanical means and not insect mediated.

if the foliage on your plants makes you think it's TMV you might want to consider CMV, also a systemic disease, which is far more common.

Carolyn

Thanks all for the feedback, Carolyn, I'll check into the cmv, but won't be surprised if it's the tmv carried by thrips since I'm in the midst of very large peanut producing area of Ga, Fl, % Ala. BTW, what's the recommendation for fungicide for control of the cmv. Thanks. gpc

I've done a lot of Googling and can't confirm that peanuts are a host for TMV which infects only members of the Solanaceae family while peanuts are in the bean family, which is Fabaceae.

Short term memory problem here but I think that CMV can infect peanuts, but CMV in infects lots of crops and many weeds are also a host, but you can check out CMV and peanuts in the link below.

CMV is a virus, as is TMV, so a fungicide is of no use. Fungicides are only sometimes helpful for certain fungal diseases. There are no treatments for viral diseases, rather, any control happens with possible control of the insect vectors which is not good at all.

Hope that helps

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Peanut diseases

Thanks Carolyn!