Powdery Mildew On Lilac Leaves and Stems
Friday, September 11th, 2009I was sitting on the front steps a few days ago when I looked to my left. I noticed a strange white powdery substance on the branches and stems of the Lilac bush right in front of the house. I stood up and walked towards it. As I got closer, I noticed a whitish coating on all of the leaves. I knew something was wrong. I have seen the white stuff on the leaves before, but I just thought that was the way things were supposed to be. The white stuff on the woody parts of the plant gave me concern.
I went inside and started doing some searches on the internet for “white coating on lilac leaves” and so on. I got the results I was looking for rather quickly. Apparently, “Powdery Mildew” is very popular. It infects a variety of plants and trees, with the Lilac being one of them.
There are any number of remedies to deal with Powdery Mildew, but they all boil down to doing one thing…spraying the infected plant with a fungicide. Where was I going to get a fungicide? Oh no, not another trip to Home Depot.
As I sat there in deep thought, I remembered a few years back when our old neighbor, Tim, was cleaning out his garage. He cleverly made a pile of small bottles next to our basement door. He said that I could either keep the stuff or just get rid of them. Gee, thanks Tim. Well, as it turns out, I kept them and I’m glad I did. I recently discovered that a few of the bottles contained a fungicide that can be used to deal with Powdery Mildew, Black Spot, Rust, etc… It’s called “Garden Safe Fungicide 3″ and uses an oil extract from the Neem tree, a native of India. The active ingredient in this fungicide is called clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil, to be exact. It’s non-toxic and safe for the environment.
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- Powdery Mildew on Lilac leaves
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- Powdery Mildew on Lilac stems and branches
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- Rust spots on shrub leaf
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- Garden Safe Fungicide 3
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- Clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil
I decided to give the shrub a nice spraying of this fungicide. I poured some of it into my handy dandy sprayer and hooked it up to the hose. I did my thing and sprayed the Lilac bush. I decided to leave it at that, just in case everything died because of it. The directions say to do this every seven days to eradicate the Powdery Mildew from the plant. A few days have gone by and I’m not noticing all that much of a difference. The good news is that nothing was killed because of the spray. I can now reapply and also tackle another shrub out in the front yard with what looks like rust spots on the leaves.
I’ll let you know how things turn out in a few weeks.
