Tomato hornworms got on my 3 large tomatoes and were destroying them. I went to get a pesticide. When I got back home, there was a pair of Cardinals working the infestation. They took care of the problem in about a half day. No pesticide needed.
Birds are pretty awesome. I provide water and food for them in my garden and keep it a bit wild so there are always plenty of insects, and in return they pick off the caterpillars and potato beetles from my plants and leave my berries alone.
@Rick Blackmy solution... cats... My friend in the burbs struggles with birds in her berry patch. I live in farmland and have had rodent problems in the past, so I keep yard cats now. I am amazed at the rodents they nab!. As a side benefit, they keep the birds in check, so even though I have small blueberry bushes, I always get a harvest. To give credit though, the birds do help in bug control more than they take in berry consumption. My garden is fenced from chickens and cats but the birds do get in the garden. But from the evidence of what they take, the juicy bug burgers are more appetizing than just berries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Biodiversity is a good thing!
A friend of mine just asked what is the best RU-vid channel to learn how to garden. I showed him this guys channel. I said, this guy has taught me more then any other person how to make a good garden. Its perfect for making gardens in city yards, and out in the country. Is videos from many years back. Is so much info about gardens, it would take months to watch all the videos. It pretty much covers anything i ever wanted to know about gardening.
Don’t forget folks that the little guys pollinating and eating bad bugs need a home. I’ve let my grassy clover & other wild flowers grow under fruit trees and nature takes care of things. Learned this in very old books. Great info! Thank you
Thank you so much for this video. When my plants used to get a disease I used to feel overwhelmed and hopeless to stop it. With your advice, this year I am growing healthy all season long!
I have had good success using plain milk and water to control powdery mildew.A half cup to a whole cup in your sprayer with water works wonders.It can be whole or 1% or 2%milk.
The baking soda, soap and oil mix worked! BUT I applied it in the early evening so the sun was still too harsh and it burned a lot of the leaves. Make sure, when you apply it, that the sun is completely OFF the plants for the day!
Agree!!! Love this guy! I'm in Flint, quarter acre, growing lots thanks to Luke and also James from The Gardening Channel. By the way, JUST made pickles, omg yum! Happy Gardening, y'all!!!!
RE: Neem Oil. Now I know what killed my tomato plants and other vegetables. UGH! Wish I saw this a few years ago. Love your informative videos! Keep them coming.
As a cheap alternative to ph up for feeding plants, I use baking soda. For ph down, I use white vinegar. They are used because the baking soda is alkaline, and the vinegar is acidic.
yes he incorrectly said baking soda is acidic when it is anything but. its ph is around 8.3 and diseases need an acidic environment to thrive and baking soda raises the alkalinity of the surface of the leaves enough to keep blight at bay. the thing i don't like about baking soda is you have to reapply it if it rains and you have to reapply often, every week or two. i prefer to not have to deal with blight in the first place by mulching around my plants to avoid soil splashing on the underside of leaves. i also remove the lower leaves and especially on tomatoes. as they grow i prune them and after they have good height i remove all leaves at least a foot off the ground.
I am super happy this morning. We've had a lot of afternoon rain and started seeing a substantial amount of powdery mildew. We use the baking soda solution, and the next day the plant looks so much better!! Thank you for this great tip!
I'm glad you posted this. The rain has really done a number on my squash and they are covered in mildew. I just trimmed off the most affected leaves and yellow leaves and sprayed with the baking soda solution. I was amazed how much better they looked right away. How often can they be sprayed?
Thank you! I’ll be trying the baking soda, dish soap, veg oil spray tomorrow! Our pumpkin patch is bad now with powdery mildew... hoping it survives. It might be too far gone, but this is our first year so it’s a learning curve.
Just tried your baking soda mixture on my squash and pumpkin leaves and literally watched the powdery mildew disappear! I don’t think I’ve ever seen something work that fast!
People, get off Luke's back about his faux pas about acidic/alkaline, etc. This guy busts his rear end, does a video almost every day, chock full of extremely helpful information, completely without a script! I dare any one of you to do the same thing and not make the occasional mistake or slip of the tongue... sheesh! Give the poor guy a break! It's not like this is a science channel or he's a Nobel prize-winning scientist. Good Lordy Lou!
The problem with copper is that it is very remanent in the soil. In our vineyards, where I live in Bordeaux, the copper concentration in the soil is directly proportional to the age of the vineyard. For the ones that are more than 200 years old, the concentration of copper in the soil is high enough to be toxic to the soil biology and to the vines. Also, it is more toxic for humans than other non-organic sprays. For example, glyphosate, which is a controvertial herbicide, is less toxic and less remanent than copper.
That may be true but you are hardly going to treat fungal diseases with glyphosate. I use glyphosate on stubborn weeds but I paint it directly onto the weed with a small paintbrush so it cannot get onto my valued plants. I know many will attack me for this but if you can get rid of nut grass any other way I would like to know how.
@@iloverbk1 Thanks but the problem with nut grass is if you just leave one tiny corm unweeded the problem keeps persisting. I tried to bribe the kids but they just spread it around so it's glyphosate for me I am afraid. I paint it on at the start of the Spring when they are just poking their heads out of the ground and over a period of three years I have eliminated it. I even covered the bed in plastic to try and solarize it over winter but up it popped again. I got it in a load of contaminated compost. I now only use my own home made compost so I know what is in it.
Peter Turner well your not alone, there is a huge industry using the very same thing. My experience has been in order to kill that nutgrass you need use it like you say with a paintbrush and concentrated. It seems to be one of the plants Monsanto used for the roundup ready genes. The grass-b-gone kills it at a regular concentration and you don’t have to worry so much about overspray because it only kills grasses, monocots.
There are many other really good pesticides that are organic. Spinosad and Bauvaria Bassiana are both biologic pesticides like BT. Diatomaeceous Earth is another great one. Rosemary oil, linanlool, cinnamon oil, and mint oils are also great organic options. I also have never had issues with neem or pyrethrin burning leaves even in full sun and high temps at proper application rates. Additionally, sodium bicarbonate solution is basic, not acidic and milk is very neutral so its more likely a biologic interaction with sunlight and proteins found in milk to create an anti fungal agent as opposed to being effective due to pH.
Thank you for talking about changing the pH level of the surface area of the plant leaves. And how these methods you spoke about kills fungus. That makes total sense.
I spray neem oil heavily at night before bed once a week. The morning dew washes the leaves a little, I believe. Haven't had any issues yet. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for all the videos!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.... I live in zone 7B and it’s very hot and humid, I tried neem oil, rosemary oil and peppermint sprays and they all burned the leaves of my plants. I am so happy you did this video it has answered so many questions I had. I no longer use the sprays after almost losing my cucumber plants due to the sprays and it’s recovering fine. Now I use the caption jacks powder and it’s doing great I have been fighting Vine Bores, Cucumber Beatles and Thrip and the powder worked great. No damage and bugs under control.
What about 2 heads of garlic, 12 cups of water and 2 teaspoons of cayenne pepper . Bring to a boil let set over night to cool. Next day add 2 small squirts of biodegradable dishwashing liquid . Shake well before each use. Should help to get rid of pests but don't over use. REMEMBER ITS HOT PEPPER BE CAREFUL
Baking soda is actually alkaline with a ph of 8 and not acidic. Milk is acidic (because of the lactic acid) with a ph slightly below neutral of around 6.8
I just sprayed baking soda on my squash with powdery mildew following the proportions you mentioned about a week ago. Got rid of the powdery mildew but now the leaves are turning brown especially the edges. It looks like the leaves were sunburned, although I sprayed the leaves in early evening when the sun was almost down. My mistake, I should have test sprayed first and waited a couple of days before spraying the whole plant. Lesson learned!
@DR. Murdoch Nonsense. Milk has lactose, a sugar, and not lactic acid. When people get pepper sprayed, they use milk to neutralize the acid in the pepper spray. You don't neutralize acid with another acid. You're a doctor, huh? Wow. I hope you take more care when you prescribe meds.
1 tablespoons seventh generation soap, 1 oz copper fungicide, 3 oz horticultural oil. Per gallon. Bonide recommends that on organic apple orchards in fall and spring
White fly's just keep coming back into my garden, it's like they are living in my compost bins throughout winter and just explode and multiply rapidly when spring comes along.
Great info I will definitely be trying some of these in my garden, I also used Organic Neem Bliss early in the season Nd late season work really good for keeping pests away..... awesome video 👍🏾
We are experiencing tomato blight for the first time. I let it go too long before trying hard enough to identify the problem. We might lose two of our really nice tomato plants before any ripen 😔 Will try the baking soda spray tomorrow. We defoliated all the affected leaves today. They look skeletal ☠ Wish us luck! ☀️🌱
So I'm not sure what it was exactly. A combination of blight and some kind of black mold that I think we inherited from the straw we used to mulch... whatever it was, we lost our entire garden. Yes, our ENTIRE garden. Quite possibly the most disappointing life experience I've had. Started everything from seed almost 6 months ago, had almost every garden problem you could imagine and pushed through each one with time effort and money, just to lose it all right before ripening and huge harvests. Salvaged some stuff and have pounds of green tomatoes in bags hoping they ripen. What a year...
I spray a cultured lactic acid bacteria serum to prevent foliage fungal facilitation. Takes all the good stuff out of the milk for surface ph lowering minus the downside of milk sitting outside in the sun. Also great for a soil drench to break down organic material quicker.
Warning! I had some WPM on one of my pot plants. I bought organic "Safers" brand fungacide spray. Said you could could spray on vegetable and eat the next day. I sprayed over a month before I cropped it and I had to throw the whole thing out because it has this very unusual chemical, sulfur smell/taste. Lost over a pound on that plant. :(.
I’m in Maryland and every year I have to deal with high heat, humidity AND heavy rain which just decimate my plants. I’m at a point I don’t want to garden anymore! I have tried the mixture to no avail and really don’t have money to keep buying organic stuff if the basic doesn’t work.
Thank you. Like what I heard Luke! Im in Central Fl. My biggest headache ....... ants. Black and Red FIRE ANTS. Because if them I’ve never been able to grow big tomatoes of any kind! The only kind Ive succeeded in growing is grape tomatoes. The deer 🦌 on our land, help me keep overgrowth from happening HAHAHAHAHA. Ive actually communicated (hahahahaha) with them. “If you all will be kind and not destroy my tomato plants, I’ll share with you. Its worked for 3 years now. Soooo I like your more natural approach to gardening !
Baking soda at Costco for 13 lb bag is about $8. Think it is the same at Wal-Mart & Sam's Club. Walmart has those giant bags in garden area near pool supplies. I use for lots of stuff. Arm pit scrub! Laundry. Garbage disposal. And of course cooking. A pinch in ground beef helps it not dry out during cooking. I did not know about using in the garden though so thank you so much!
1 gallon of water, 2 Tablespoons of baking soda, 3 drops of dish soap, 3 Tablespoons of vegetable oil. Copper sulfate - more effective, organic Apple cider vinegar: 2 tablespoons in spray bottle of water Milk: smells, Neem: only early or late in season
Thanks for sharing this, Luke. I've stripped my cucumbers down due to powdery mildew and what leaves are left have a few showing signs of spots. I've got my sprayer ready to go for tomorrow morning!
Hey Luke, I think you made a mistake when you said that spraying baking soda on leaves with powdery mildew will create an acidic environment that will kill the blight. You mentioned it just after the 7 minute mark. I think you meant to say Alkaline instead of Acidic?
I like neem as well but I have to stay consistently spraying it to keep away aphids. I'm in southern Texas. Spraying at night I can't do cuz it's to humid as it is here
Last year I planted marigolds around my garden, no bugs other than ants, this year I didn’t. Pulled off 10-15 tomato worms within a week or two. Lol planted marigolds again, neem oil, and bimbo Bambo no tomato worms for month now.
I always planted marigolds until last year when I purchased my tomato plants (got started late after moving and forgot) and I got hit hard by horn worms. Had to pull everything out. Local co-op said to treat with Sevin and again in the Spring a few times since they were now in the soil. This year, I moved the tomatoes and planted lots of marigolds! Won’t forget again.
I wish I had watched this before I pulled one of my pumpkin plants that had growth….grrrrr….I still have squash growing so I’ll start my pumpkins over and add the baking soda regimen, THANK YOU!
There's absolutely nothing complicated with millilitres. It's soooo much easier than gallons and quarts and whatever you use. But I'll forgive you as you've given me loads of good tips along the way.
so decimal system is easier than fractions for you. it would probably be easier for me too if i spelled liter as litre. lol i can do fractions in my head and need no calculator. let's say 2 Tbs per gallon. a table spoon is 3 tea spoons. that is 6 tsp per gallon. a quart spray bottle uses a fourth of that or 1.5 tsp. now if you go with milliliters here in the US you often need to convert the gallons to that first as most garden measurements that i know of is in gallons. i guess since you are not from the USA (based on your spelling of liter, or litre if you prefer) then your instructions may in fact be in liters instead. that would mean a TBS is roughly 15 mL. since i am american i have no measuring instrument that says 15mL so is much easier for me not to have to deal with trying to convert all that over. so for you it is so much easier. for me it does not matter. a liter spray bottle will still get 1.5 tsp if it calls for 2 Tbs per gallon. most bottles i see here have both standard and metric anyway.
I would like to point out 3 years ago you said, 1gallon: 3drops:1 tablespoon oil: 2 tablespoons baking soda. Less oil. I’m using the new measurements with hopes you didn’t make a mistake.
I am battling spider mites too!! One of the things I’m using is water in a sprayer with a small amount of Castile soap and a couple drops of peppermint oil. Seems to work, but have to repeat as soon as you see them again. This combo seems to work well so far. Pesky little critters!
Thank you so much for your information you helped me immensely. Never new how to handle this situation, almost lost my whole crop. Thank you, Thank you...... I will be watching more of your videos. Very informative and easy to watch and do as well.
You would probably know in 24-48 hours. Just spray early morning or I prefer late evening after the bees have left the garden. Even though neem doesn't kill bees.( I just like to be doubly sure.) Good luck!😊🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋
Neem oil WILL kill bees! Don’t spray when they are active! It will also kill butterflies and ladybugs! It doesn’t discriminate! Spray late evening when there’s no activity
@@Littlesharky-h2s I agree with you. I very rarely spray anything because of the beneficial insects. When people say that it doesn't kill bees on their videos I get irritated. Even though the website says it doesn't kill. It also says spray when bees aren't active. Read between the lines right? Anyone with common sense😳should know NOT to spray directly on beneficial insects. More people need to be know. Thanks for that. Here's hoping for good gardening and bountiful harvests for you.🦋🦋🦋🐞🐞🐞
I'm from Michigan too. They do teach math here. Metric simplifies things also. We are going Metric - I read about it in the "Weekly Reader" in 1964 - LOL
I like using pheromone traps for Japanese beetles. If you have chickens you don't even need to use the traps. Just put the pheromone bait in the chicken coop and let your chickens have a feast on the bugs that show up.
I like to also make a nice organic mix of chili, oil and soap and spray down. Works well. I also like to use vinegar and soap mix as well. Also good to point out that organic soap is better to use in all these mixes.
Wish I’d seen this sooner. I sprayed Neem oil in the correct mixture(and late in the evening) but I think it burned a few older leaves. I’ve had little success with the BT, so I was trying to find something more potent for armyworms, cabbage worms, pickle worms.
He had s video on that too... if it’s just a little like one thread of lace I squish it. If it’s a lot on a leaf I remove the leaf and feed it to the chickens.
I think spinosad kills leaf miners. It is organic. I just pick the leaves off unless too much.. Are the leaf cutters bees? I've never seen them in Florida. Good luck!😊
Bicarbonate of Soda is basic; that is to say, it has an alkalizing effect. This is why bakers use buttermilk and baking soda to produce chemical leavening. Buttermilk is acidic, and baking soda is basic, forming the foamy aspect so useful in baking. I use bicarb to clean the battery top in my truck. It is basic, and so will neutralize all the battery cheese that forms on the terminals. Whole milk comes in at around 7 on the pH scale, which is considered neutral, depending on what the cows were eating. .
It's been a very bad bug summer in my zone 5b area. I'm using Safer's EndAll - soap + pyrethrin - breaks down in less than 24 hours - took a week or two, but saved my cucumbers from cucumber beetle and is helping me wage war on JB - Japanese Beetle. I spray in the evening because the bees are up before I am. I have never before had these nasty beetles and Safer's Endall is rocking. I don't use BT at this time - I know I had a reason, but forget. I now have cucumbers growing and hopefully won't lose all my fruit trees and bushes and vegetables to the nasty Japanese Beetle.
Hi Luke, love your channel. I live in Georgia and doing organic. Using BT and only works on certain caterpillars which eat lettuce based plants. What about caterpillars eating tomatoes?
Its best to use a basic dish soap like Ivory idish soap nstead of the ones with heavy de-greasers. They have chemicals that may not be good for your plants.
I only use Dr. Bronner's Pure-Castile Soap. It is pure soap. It can be found at stores like Target or organic food stores, as well as most garden centers.
The reason why the Volcano foams when you mix vinegar and baking soda together is because the acidic vinegar is being neutralized AKA attacking the baking soda which is alkaline
Any recommendations for keeping insects like and off of my peach tree. I've tried duct tape. And neem oil but they ate through all my fruit last year.thanks.
Wow you could bag a few ive seen that but I dont have a fruit tree so im really no help but I did see them use bags on some of their fruit to keep pest away. I just seen no one answered your question so I thought I'd give what I know im sure someone else will have a better answer. Good luck
Found out today that my main tomato bed is covered in late blight... I'm gonna try the acv spray but i think i should probably take all of the infected plant out before it spreads to my potatoes and other tomato plants
You mean: * Regimen- A plan, or course of action such as: a diet, exercise, or medical treatment. Conversely, a “regiment” is defined as a permanent unit of an army usually commanded by a colonel and divided into several companies, squadrons, or batteries and often into two battalions. Regiment can also mean: the rule, or government over a person, people, or country.
40/60 ratio of milk to water sprayed on plants like squash that tend to get powdery mildew this time of year and repeat every 10 to 14 days REALLY works!
I noticed you changed your blight mix slightly. The earlier recipes called for 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil per gallon. I see you've increased the amount to 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil per gallon, in this video. What did you discover that led to the increase? Thanks for all the great advice!!!!
i use this recipe however i add the liquid to my paint sprayer (never used for paint) and it is a very even spray and super fast to do the entire garden
reg·i·men /ˈrejəmən/ noun 1. a prescribed course of medical treatment, way of life, or diet for the promotion or restoration of health. regiment a permanent unit of an army typically commanded by a colonel and divided into several companies, squadrons, or batteries and often into two battalions. "two or three miles inland a highly experienced artillery regiment had established a defensive position" regimen is sometimes confused with regiment
I'm sure some has already addressed the "baking soda....is acidic...". Baking soda is a base and there for alkaline. Not saying it doesn't work, cause it does, you can go either direction from neutral and inhibit mold, that's why milk works too, it's is acidic.
