Growing gooseberries in your garden, you may have noticed that a strange white coating appears on some leaves and berries. Especially often it appears on old bushes that were grown by your parents or their parents. This raid has a name – powdery mildew. This is a fungal disease that affects not only gooseberries, but almost all vegetable and fruit crops. In this article, you will learn how to deal with powdery mildew, what other symptoms this disease has, and what can be done to prevent it.
What is white plaque
Powdery mildew or spheroteca is a fungal disease that develops at high humidity with the onset of spring heat. The main difficulty in the fight against this disease is that the fungus easily tolerates low temperatures and overwinters in plant debris, upper soil layers, and also on infected bushes.
Spores of the fungus spread throughout the aerial part of the gooseberry. At first, it is a simple white coating that is easily erased. Over time, it darkens, acquiring a brown color and a denser structure. Leaves and shoots are deformed, twisting, and then wither and fall off.
However, in addition to powdery mildew, white spots on gooseberry leaves can be a symptom of septoria. The first signs of the disease appear at the end of May on gooseberry leaves. At first, these are gray spots with a brown or yellow rim, which eventually turn into a white coating with a dark rim. Already by August, the leaves affected by the bloom fall off, the growth of young shoots is inhibited, and the berries grow deformed and with a changed taste.
How to warn
Disease prevention is the best way to deal with it. With fungal diseases, this method works very well. The risk group includes adult plants that have been growing on the site for more than a year, as well as bushes that are weakened, for example, by transplanting. Young seedlings, especially hybrid varieties, are more disease resistant.
First of all, gooseberries should be pruned. It is carried out in the spring, before the first buds appear, and in the fall, after harvesting and leaf fall. Dead, broken or diseased branches take a lot of resources and micronutrients from the bush, significantly weakening. The branches must be burned so as not to contribute to the cultivation and reproduction of the fungus, and the cuts on the bush should be covered with lime to protect the plant from infections.
In autumn, when the leaves fall from the gooseberries, they need to be raked and burned. Fungus spores may remain on them, which will grow with the first spring rays of the sun. During the growing season, all withered leaves and shoots affected by plaque or other pathological neoplasms must also be removed and burned.
In the spring, as soon as the last frosts have passed, but before the buds appear, you need to pour gooseberry bushes with water heated to 80 ºC. This will help not only increase the immunity of the plant, but also save it from some insect pests.
In order not to burn yourself, pour water into watering cans and carefully water each bush, as well as the tree trunk. For greater efficiency, you can add 2 tablespoons of potassium permanganate to the water.
Fertilizers play an important role in increasing the immunity of the gooseberry and improving its vegetation. If you add a mixture of potassium and phosphorus to the soil in the spring, you will significantly reduce the likelihood of disease. Whereas nitrogen fertilizers are more likely to harm the gooseberry, since it will go into an active set of green mass, while delaying fruiting, so that the berries will not have time to ripen in time. This will noticeably weaken the plant before fungal invasion.
Of course, as a prevention of diseases caused by a fungus, planting varieties resistant to powdery mildew and septoria are suitable. Among them are: “Kolobok”, “Ural grapes”, “Kuibyshevsky”, “Grushenka”, “Finnish”, “Senator”, “Harlequin”, “African”, “Houghton”, “Masheka”, “Jubilee”. Varieties without thorns are less at risk. There are also varieties that are most susceptible to diseases: “Seedling Lefora”, “Date”, “Triumphal”, “Golden Light”, “Prunes”, “”. If possible, do not plant them if your site has high humidity or plants that suffer from powdery mildew or septoria.
How to fight
What to do if a white coating appears on gooseberry leaves? Start rescue landings immediately!
First of all, for treatment, use the drug “Topaz”, which has established itself as the best remedy for powdery mildew and septoria. It should be bred in accordance with the instructions, and the bushes must be processed twice – once before the gooseberry blooms and again after it fades.
Another drug serves as a more potent analogue of the Bordeaux mixture, it is called “HOM”. Bushes need to be processed before the gooseberries begin to bloom. A big plus of this drug is that it can be used in combination without fear for the health of the plant. So, for example, you can mix 40 g of “HOM” and an ampoule of “Fufanon” in 10 liters of water, and then spray the bush.
A good way to deal with plaque and prevent it from settling on healthy leaves is a solution of laundry soap and copper sulfate. You will need 150 g of grated soap, 20 g of copper sulfate and 10 liters of water. First, dissolve the vitriol in hot water, and then add a cool soapy solution to it. You should have a bluish solution without soap flakes. Spraying should be done immediately after flowering or when the berries are tied.
You can also mix 2 tablespoons of baking soda and 50 g of grated soap in 10 liters of water. Bushes, a near-trunk circle are watered with this solution, and plaque is also washed off the leaves.
As a medicine, ash infusion has proven itself well. For its preparation, 10 kg of wood ash is stirred in 3 liters of hot water and left to infuse for 24-28 hours. After it is filtered and sprayed with bushes every 10 days. At least 3 liters of solution should be spent on one bush.
Video “Gooseberries and powdery mildew”
This video is about gooseberry diseases that are accompanied by a white coating. You will learn how and with what to properly treat a diseased bush.
