A few days ago, I noticed that my sage looked like it had some whitish spots on it, but didn't think much of it.
Today, it looked a lot worse, so I asked the internet. It looks like I've got a case of powdery mildew. Apparently, I have inadvertently provided it good conditions: warmish days with cool nights, most watering done from overhead, allowing humidity within the plant, and not a ton of air circulation (it's gotten quite bushy and thick).
The internet makes it clear that this will be difficult to take care of. First step was removing as many affected leaves as I could - roughly half the plant (that should help the air circulation within the plant!). It looks like powdery mildew is a species-specific problem, so I'm not going to move the pot since it's already in the sunniest spot of the balcony (though it doesn't have full sun all day, it does have good sun for half the day, and there isn't a better spot available in this apartment).
Unfortunately, I can't do a lot about the weather (among other things, the last few days have been overcast with a bit of rain), but hopefully it'll get back to being bright and sunny again soon; apparently the goal is to keep the plant well-watered while keeping the leaves and ambient humidity as low as possible. I can start watering from under the leaves (the pot it's in doesn't lend itself well to filling the (non-existent) saucer with water and letting it water from the bottom up), and when it's not raining, the spring and summer weather here is pretty dry so at least I have that going for me. I'll have to start being less lazy about how I water the beans and peas as well; apparently they have their own species of powdery mildews that can affect them.
I think I'll try a dilute sodium bicarbonate spray tomorrow morning to part of the plant if the weather doesn't look too overcast (it looks like one wants to apply in the morning and let the mixture dry well), and continue to remove spotty leaves as I find them. Hopefully we won't have to resort to "real" fungicides and drastic measures, but we shall see.
No photos of the sage, it looks just like what the internet says. Plus I chopped off all the affected parts before I decided to make a post about it (which I am doing since this blog is partly to help me remember stuff that happens and when it happened :P)
---
Second part of gyoza post coming as soon as I get around to emptying my camera card.
No comments:
Post a Comment