Powdery Mildew, Blight and new peas!

I know that I haven't written about my new aquaponics system here yet, but I set up a basic system at home so that I could experiment and grow some vegetables for my family.

The plants have really been doing super and the growth has far exceeded the normal soil garden and I'm very happy with most of the growth. It hasn't been without it's own problems though. I have had some problems with my plants. First, the aphids attacked my baby cabbages and almost ruined them, but I quickly learnt how to deal with that (you can either squish them or make this organic spray).

Now I am dealing with powdery mildew on my capsicum plant (bell peppers) as well as blight on my celery. I just wanted to put it here so that you can learn something new.

Powdery Mildew  - Bell Peppers

First off - powdery mildew. It's a fungal disease that effects many different kinds of plants. It's normally one of the easier problems to spot because its symptoms are distinctive. Basically you want to be looking for a white powdery looking substance on your plant. It can form anywhere, but is mostly common on the underside of the leaves. It's common in places with high humidity and medium temperatures. To treat it you can either go out and buy an organic fungicide that will treat for powdery mildew, or you can make a spray of 1 part milk, 10 parts water. According to Wikipedia, studies have shown that in some cases it's as effective as normal fungicides.

Blight in Potato Plants

Next off I found some blight on my celery leaves. So from what I have read, blight is harder to spot than powdery mildew. Blight is not a disease in itself, but is a symptom that indicates that the plant has an infection  by a pathogenic organism ('germs' for the rest of us). It can affect any part of the plant, but is most noticeable on the leaves by chlorosis (yellowing of the leaves) and then browning of those areas and eventually death of the tissue. The first step to treatment is to remove the leaves that are affected. Don't put them in the compost heap because you will spread the problem - I threw them in the garbage. I am going to see how this works out for me. If the problem comes back I'll go and look for an organic spray that I can use.

Not all my news is bad though! My pea & tomato plants have started to show some flowers so hopefully I will be seeing some fruit soon (even though it's a bit too late for tomatoes). I will post some pics of the fruits when they come out.

I hope you learnt some thing from this :)