Foliar diseases in both vegetable and fruit plants can significantly impact our yield and the quality of that yield if left unmanaged. If you’ve ever had powdery mildew on your cucumbers or early blight in your tomatoes, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even though the disease is affecting the leaves, the interruption of photosynthesis by the fungus affects the fruit development, and then the disease will jump from the leaves to the fruit and then we’ve got a real mess on our hands. And sometimes we can get one disease under control only to have another one swoop in and take out our plants before we even get any kind of harvest. This is especially true if you live in an area that is very humid or you have spring weather that bounces from warm and humid during the day to cool overnight with very little air movement and lots of rain. Warm temperatures, high humidity, lots of moisture and prolonged leaf wetness are the ideal conditions for fungal growth.

Today on Just Grow Something we are going to cover the different ways we can prevent fungal diseases from taking hold in our garden plants, what signs and symptoms to watch out for, which plants are most susceptible to fungal diseases, and which ones don’t usually have much of a problem with them. There are lots of things we can do as gardeners to prevent and minimize the occurrence of foliar diseases so we get the best yield possible from our plants. Let’s dig in!

References and Resources:

The effect of milk-based foliar sprays on yield components of field pumpkins with powdery mildew - ScienceDirect

001_22856life1104s14_1_7.pdf (lifesciencesite.com)

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