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| Powdery Mildew |
So our Winter Squash have yet another ailment! This time, the all-too-common powdery mildew. The signs and symptoms are pretty obvious. Powdery white stuff, which started off as spots but begin to infest the entire leaf, are seen on the tops and bottoms of leaves. I've also seen it spread to the stems as well, but not the actual fruit itself.
Cornell University says that the best conditions for powdery mildew to develop is when there is dense plant growth, low light intensity, and high relative humidity (1). I guess we are sort of guilty of the denseness of our plants, but we have a very sunny spot that gets dry rather easily. The drip irrigation system helps reduce the relative humidity, but maybe the sometimes disgusting amount of rain we get ruined it. Also, older plants are more susceptible - which makes sense because this is a fairly recent problem for our squash.
Besides looking super ugly, this fungus yellows and begins to kill the leaves. According to UC Davis, powdery mildew in severe cases decreased fruit yields, the harvest period of the plant, and makes for fruit that lacks flavor - possibly because they ripened immaturely or incompletely (2). Colorado State states that removing infected leaves and not composting them will help slow the spread of infection (3). Also, by selectively pruning some of the leaves from the plant, we can reduce the relative humidity so that less leaves get infected. In case we do get a ridiculous amount of Mildew, it is also suggested to use neem oil, or a solution of baking soda (4).
We haven't done anything to the plants, yet. We figured that the mildew won't affect the plant all that much. But I'm interested to see what the baking soda solution will do. It won't hurt to try. Especially since there's something far worse killing our plants at the moment...
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