Search site

Stoney Ground Herbs

Beautiful, strong herbs for NZ gardeners and herbalists of all levels

  • Home
  • About
  • Herb plants
    • Basil, Sacred/ Tulsi SOLD OUT
    • Bergamot, Scarlet SOLD OUT
    • Bergamot, Wild SOLD OUT
    • Borage
    • Catnip SOLD OUT
    • Chives
    • Chocolate Peppermint SOLD OUT
    • Clary Sage
    • Elder, Black SOLD OUT
    • Feverfew
    • French Tarragon SOLD OUT
    • German Chamomile
    • Honesty
    • Lemon Balm
    • Lemon Verbena SOLD OUT
    • Mint
    • Mint- Basil
    • Motherwort
    • Chinese Mugwort SOLD OUT
    • Oregano, Greek SOLD OUT
    • Peppermint SOLD OUT
    • Rose Geranium SOLD OUT
    • Rue
    • Sage, common
    • Sage, Purple SOLD OUT
    • Sage, White
    • Self Heal SOLD OUT
    • Silver Tansy SOLD OUT
    • Soapwort SOLD OUT
    • Southernwood SOLD OUT
    • St John’s Wort
    • Sweet Violet
    • Thyme, creeping
    • Thyme, English Winter SOLD OUT
    • Vietnamese Mint/Rau Ram SOLD OUT
  • Dried herbs
    • Catnip, Nepeta cataria
    • German Chamomile
    • Lemon Balm, Melissa officinalis
    • Lemon Verbena, Aloysia citriodora
    • Motherwort, Leonurus cardiaca
    • Nettle (Lesser), Urtica urens
    • Peppermint, Mentha x piperita
    • Sage, Salvia officinalis
    • Self Heal, Prunella vulgaris
    • Yarrow, Achillea millefolium
  • Products
    • Tinctures
  • Ordering Your Plants
  • Maramataka Māori
  • Blog

The Fun Guy You Don’t Want at Your Party

January 21, 2021 By SandRa Timmins Leave a Comment

So here we are in the middle of summer and there’s a few of us already dealing with fungal issues in the garden.

The higher rainfall we’re having but still relatively warm temperatures create the perfect humid storm for fungi like powdery mildew.

Powdery mildew shows as grey splodges on the topside of leaves and usually doesn’t rear it’s ugly head til the end of the season when plants are tired and there’s a bit more moisture (Autumn) in the air. Your cucurbits, ie. zucchini, pumpkin, cucumber etc are the most susceptible. Greenhouse/tunnel house plants can fall victim too if there’s not enough air flow.

SGH powdery mildew
Powdery mildew on some white sage plants 😮

I’ve been getting it on my potted white sage which is a horrifying first for me!

Let’s go through the battle plan together. Unfortunately once you have powdery mildew you can’t reverse its course, the best you can do is pick off the affected leaves and try to curb the spread. This is why it’s a worry to have PM now – if it’s the end of the season you have your main harvest already and the plants are going to be pulled out soon anyway.

Fungicides;

Are used to prevent fungus diseases in plants and animals. Chemical sulphur based products are widely used, but not on my watch here.

In the past, I have used watered down milk at a ratio of about 30% milk 70% water, sprayed on susceptible plants in the early evening.

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) is traditionally used in the food industry to inhibit mould but is also used with success in the horticulture industry and is one of the main ingredients in EM, which many of our beloved gardeners use; Kath Irvine of Edible Backyard (the Edible Backyard link will take you to how Kath is tackling rust, another fun guy you don’t want at your party), Kay Baxter of Koanga Gardens, Setha of Setha Seeds for example.

Getting a fungicide that is also going to give your plants a boost like EM is pretty much win win hey!

Another product you can use is a trichoderma based application which helps the plants turn on their defence mechanisms and helps from the roots up. Daltons has a product, “Organic Bioinoculant Powder” that is easily accessible from Bunnings.

Elder leaves
Elder leaves

Or you can try to make your own fungicide using botanicals like I have… Black elder (Sambucus nigra) leaves contain a weak hydrocyanic acid (that’s why we don’t eat any green part of the elder plant people!). Thyme and lavender also have anti-fungal and anti-bacterial actions. Peppermint, geranium, lemongrass and of course manuka/tea tree have antifungal properties also that can be utilised in a homemade spray.

Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis)
Soapwort

How I went about it; I grabbed a handful of elder leaves, chopped them up, I also chopped up a nice big comfrey leaf for some nutrition and soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) leaves and stems as a surfactant (a surfactant helps the goodies stick to the leaves, might nab some aphids while it’s at it too!). I then covered them with water and simmered for about 20 minutes, let cool, strained and watered it down in my 1 litre sprayer…

Making a botanical fungicide
All in a pot; a pot that never gets used for food

Now, learn from my mistakes!! You know how on hair dye packets or skin products they recommend that you test first on a patch of skin or a couple of strands of hair (who actually does that??) well I highly recommend that you do a similar thing before spraying a made up spray willy nilly. Because I actually ended up burning a lot of leaves with my concoction, I made it waaaay to strong, I watered it down with only 1 litre of water when I should’ve watered it down with at least 4 litres of water. Blimey!

Making a botanical fungicide
Ready to spray, oh if only I could reverse time!

So if you go the way of making your own, general recipe is;

  • 1 cup of fresh herb chopped or 1/4 C of dried herb
  • Simmered in water that covers the herb
  • Strain and water down with 4-5litres of water

Alternatively you can use the same quantity of herbs but instead of simmering you can blend the herbs together (I would only do this if you have a blender for non-food purposes) then soak it all in 4-5litres of water.

So I can’t show you before and after photos- because remember, no fungicide is a fixer – just a preventer. There are also other pro-active things to do if you’re tackling fungi, taking off the bottom leaves of plants or any other leaves that you see that might restrict airflow, if you’re dealing with potted plants, spread them out so no leaves are touching, eliminate any areas that will create humidity.

Now credit where credit is due, an Instagram friend https://www.instagram.com/the_bro_cam/ gave me heaps of inspiration and information about fungicides and integrated pest and fungal management, this guy is super passionate about it and super knowledgeable about it too, this article I’ve written here has merely skimmed the surface of what he knows and what he shared with me!

So go people, this weather is demanding us to be pro-active in the garden, go while there’s a break in this damn rain!

If you have your own recipe that you’ve used with success let us all know in the comments~

Filed Under: Care and Maintenance Tagged With: bioinoculant, botanical sprays, diseases in the garden, diy fungicide, EM, fungi, fungicides, powdery mildew, trichoderma, vegetable gardening, what are these grey splodges, what to do if you have powdery mildew

Harvesting in the Red, Green and Greener

March 11, 2018 By HMN Leave a Comment

It’s harvest season for tomatoes and I have a lot of fruit on my plants but they are taking their sweet time in ripening up and I fear Autumn is fast approaching us here.  I know, I know, green tomato chutney, but we still have some from two years ago!

What to do with unripe tomatoes

Albenga Oxheart, looking good…just not the right colour!

If I do end up missing the ripening boat I’m going to uproot them and hang upside down in our (warm) shed to slowly ripen over Autumn/Winter.  This is an idea I read in Lifestyle Block magazine (April 2017).  Another suggestion they made was to pick the fruit and put in a paper bag and place in a warm spot to ripen.  Now, I’ve always put my unripe fruit on a sunny window sill to finish their ripening – and of course this works, but it’s actually the warmth from the sun not the light that ripens them up and if they’re really green and you leave them to ripen in the sun (off the plant)  you might end up with overly dry fruit.  Well I never!

Black beautys beautiful foliage

Black Beautys beautiful foliage

My Black Beauty zucchini has been giving and giving and my Rampicante has wanted to but its been having issues with either a lack of calcium or my erratic watering (the fruit has been getting soft ends).  we might be coming right now…just as the mildew is setting in…

Curly zucchini (Rampicante)! But it's really more of a squash

Curly zucchini (Rampicante)! But it’s really more of a squash

We are still having warm days but with misty mornings and drizzly rain as well, it’s like an open invitation for mildew and other fungal diseases.  If you’re getting powdery mildew on your curcubits (and you still have an appetite for zucchini or your pumpkins/squashes need more development time) you can spray your plants with milk which is said to help.

Tomatillo lanterns

Lanterns of green goodness

Tomatillos, wonderful things, so hardy, are looking beautiful.  I almost don’t mind if they don’t ripen up in time~ they make for nice eye candy whilst the rest of my vege patch goes to tatters.

Because we moved here in November and my veg seedlings (tomatoes, zucchinis and tomatillos) had to recover from the spray drift they copped in Foxton, everything got in a bit later than I like.  Que sera sera;  I’ve been getting enough toms to of not needed to open a can of tomatoes in the last month or so and that’s good enough for me!  (Though I will miss our tomato sauce)

Tigerella tomatoes

Tigerella toms were one of the first of my tomatoes to ripen

So enjoy your harvest whatever it may be; it’s your very edible reward for all that hard graft/loving you’ve given your garden!

Filed Under: Gardening Styles, Tomatoes Tagged With: early autumn, harvest time, how to ripen green tomatoes, powdery mildew, tomatillos

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Stay up to date with blog posts and announcements here!

You can also follow me on…

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Beautiful, strong herbs
for gardeners
and herbalists
of all levels.

Grown
with passion
and persistence.

Categories

  • Animals (4)
  • Care and Maintenance (40)
  • Gardening Styles (37)
  • Herbal Lore (18)
  • Herbs in Use (22)
  • Indoor Plants (1)
  • Kokedama (2)
  • Maramataka Māori (4)
  • Moving Gardens/New Gardens (12)
  • Pretty Pictures (15)
  • Recipes (8)
  • SGH updates (37)
  • Tomatoes (11)
  • Uncategorized (28)
  • White sage (9)

Contact/Inquiries

    Your Name (required)

    Your Email (required)

    Your Message

    Friends

    Industrial Furniture Design NZ
    Becoming Healthy Ltd NZ

    Supporting Busy People Becoming Healthy

    · Copyright © 2021 · Great websites for great ideas - Help Me Net NZ ·