Milk...It does a Broccoli Good!

 Well Whoooo knew!  I do now.  

We've had a lot of rain lately.  I mean a lot.  Like "I think I see Noah's ark floating down my street" type rain.  That ended a week or so ago with winters last gasp.  Due to winter's heavy breathing and my need to plant 10 tomato plants early, the night time low of 30-32 was a problem.  I spent three days in wet, covering my tomato plants to hopefully protect them.  I can say I was about 50% successful.  5 out of 10 ain't bad.   Doesn't it look so cozy?  I used these lighted boxes my dad made years ago for seed starting.  I have used these things for seeds, plants, a brooder, and soon to be an incubator.  Talk about versatile!  It's a simple wooden box with light bulbs on a dimmer switch on either end.  The bottom is metal that warms up for use in seed starting, but with 100 watt bulbs, these boxes generated enough heat to protect my plants.

The focus on tomato plants, took my focus off the cabbages and broccoli.  As I was removing the tomato coverings, I noticed all of my cabbage family plants were looking less than stellar.   That seemed weird to me.  I never thought they would have a problem.  They're cold weather crops.  They should have been fine!  Upon closer inspection, I noticed white spots on the leaves.  I looked up the problem and it seems in cold damp weather, cabbage plants are susceptible to White Spot.  It's a fungus, and if left untreated, will kill the plant.  Throwing my desire to a totally organic garden out the window, I hurried to order a fungicide to fight this before It wiped out all my cabbage plants.  My order won't be here til the 15th of April, so I continued to research something to fight it now and at least give them a chance until the fungicide arrived.  

Enter...Milk.

Yes...Milk.

Apparently diluted milk has a protein which, combined with sunlight, makes an inhospitable environment for this fungus.  FYI, this also works on Squash plants with Powdery Mildew.  I sprayed my plants for a couple of days, and they perked right up!  

The after:

The spots have started to disappear.  There was a break from spraying since the weather was still sunny and dry.  They seemed to  be recovering well.  It rained yesterday.  With the sun's arrival today I was out reapplying the diluted milk.  

While getting some pics, I had to include my prettiest Apple tree (shh!  Don't let the other trees know).  This poor tree has been pulled out of the ground and replanted twice; once from hurricane Irma, and once from Kudzu!  But look at it!  It has come thru with flying colors!  Beauty despite adversity.  There's a lesson in there somewhere!