Dawn Soap for Mold Control on Tomato Plants
The enjoyment of watching your tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) thrive in their way into a bumper crop comes to a screeching halt at the first sign of mold. Whether fungal diseases or insects are answerable doesn’t matter. You need help before the problem takes over the tomato area. The difficulty is that chemical fungicides leave toxic residues. For a safer alternative, utilize organic homemade fungicide or insecticide with Dawn dish soap.
What Dawn Does
Dawn dish soap contains biodegradable chemicals, known as surfactants. They wet the dishes quickly and evenly, and they also improve the stickiness of mold-fighting fungicide options for plants. Their effectiveness is particularly noticeable in difficult water. The surfactants also make Dawn a fantastic treatment for tomatoes affected by insect-related sooty mold.
Dawn Soap at Fungicide
For nontoxic fungicide that also supplies tomatoes using root-strengthening potassium, mix 1 tbsp of potassium bicarbonate powder and 1 teaspoon all dormant oil and heat in 1 gallon of water. Pour 2 quarts of water into a lawn sprayer, then the powder, soap and oil. Gardening radio show host Randy Lemmon recommends inserting the hose or faucet nozzle into the solution before inserting the remaining 2 quarts of water; otherwise, the solution may get too foamy. Potassium carbonate controls white, talcumlike powdery mildew along with the fuzzy, grayish-brown mold from Botrytis cinerea infection.
Dawn Soap at Insecticide
Sap-sucking aphids, scale insects and whiteflies coat tomatoes using their sticky honeydew waste, along with sooty mold spores landing on the honeydew germinate into layers of greasy, black mold. Controlling sooty mold involves eliminating the insects. Together with the caution that it may damage some tomato cultivars, mixture an insecticidal soap concentration of 1 tbsp of Dawn soap in 1 cup of vegetable oil. To utilize the concentrate, shake it well and mix a solution of 1 to 2 teaspoons per 1 cup of tap water.
Test Before Spraying
To be on the safe side, test the tomatoes to get a response to the Dawn soap prior to treating them. Spray a couple of leaves of each using the homemade solution and wait 48 hours for symptoms of harm to look. Burned leaves may have yellow or brown stains, scorched margins or burned tips. If the tomatoes pass the test but you’re worried about neighboring plants, then cover them with waterproof material before spraying.
Applying the Sprays
At the first sign of mold, spray the potassium carbonate solution completely covers all of the tomatoes’ surfaces. Duplicate after rain, or once weekly for three weeks during dry weather. To control insects, then spray the tomatoes in the early morning or late afternoon once the sunlight is weakest and the evaporation speed slows. So long as it stays wet, the soap kills insects by them. Coat all the surfaces, particularly the feeding sites on the undersides of the leaves. For complete control, spray the tomatoes once or twice each week till the infestation ends.