Groups keyboard shortcuts have been updated
Dismiss
See shortcuts

Pennypack Farm's Farmer Resource Blog: NEW POST: Controlling Downy Mildew on Winter Crops!

54 views
Skip to first unread message

Steph Jones

unread,
Jan 8, 2025, 1:43:28 PMJan 8
to Pasa Community Board
Hi Fellow Farmers!

We have begun updating our farmer resource blog on our website and will be writing new blog posts weekly if not every other week throughout the season. In these blog posts, we will share about a topic that is relevent to the farm that week, what we're doing, problems we're facing, things we're seeing on the farm etc. The aim is to share about really specific topics where we can just explain the nitty gritty of what we do on our farm. 

We have a few already posted for this year, and have just recently posted one about dealing with downy mildew on winter crops like spinach and lettuce. 

You can always find the blog on our website, and below is the link to the newest post! Please share with fellow farmers, apprentices, and/or interns. We love talking about farming and sharing what we do! 


If you have questions or want to further discuss anything on the blog, please reach out to me, St...@pennypackfarm.org. All the best!


Lindsey Shapiro

unread,
Jan 10, 2025, 11:54:30 AMJan 10
to Steph Jones, Pasa Community Board
Wow, thanks for sharing this incredible resource with the Pasa Community!

I'm curious to hear more about your experiences with Stargus. Do you usually apply it through the drip lines or via foliar feed? Are there specific crops that seem to benefit most? And do you apply it preventively, or only when you begin to see a problem?

Thanks again for being so generous with your know-how!

--Lindsey

Lindsey Shapiro (she/her) | Farm Bill Campaign Organizer | Pasa Sustainable Agriculture

814.349.9856 x719

215.297.6780 (cell)

 

Not a member? Join today!

Connect with us: Newsletter | Facebook | Instagram 


My new part-time hours! This growing season, I will be dividing my time between my Pasa position and my veggie farm. Thank you for your patience, if my email response times are a little slower than usual.

Want to learn more about my farm? Visit rootmassfarm.com or check us out on Instagram!



--
Views expressed in this forum do not necessarily represent the views of Pasa.
 
Please do not repost the same message more than once.
 
When posting, please use the following in the subject line to help to clarify the purpose of some messages. You can use as many as seem appropriate: EVENT; SEEKING; FOR SALE; LAND; JOBS; POLICY; EQUIPMENT; NE PA; SE PA; NC PA; Central PA; SC PA; NW PA; SW PA; OS East; OS North; OS West; OS South.
 
Pasa will monitor messages posted to this group. Abusive language and spam are grounds for removal from the group.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pasa Community Board" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to community+...@pasafarming.org.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/pasafarming.org/d/msgid/community/86dea458-e155-47e0-a6c8-b4bcfe0d1dacn%40pasafarming.org.

Steph Jones

unread,
Jan 10, 2025, 1:24:40 PMJan 10
to Pasa Community Board, Lindsey Shapiro, Pasa Community Board
Hey! Happy to talk Stargus:

We discovered it in 2023 when we were having an outbreak of Phytopthora fruit blight on our eggplant and a little on our peppers (which were in the same field as the eggplant) and tomatoes. We consulted with Steve Bogash from Marrone and sent in samples to Penn State of the eggplant. Penn State said there was no evidence of pathogens in the roots (soil borne) but on the fruit itself, which I guess was a better outcome than on the roots. The Italian eggplant were for sure hit the hardest, which is why we have switched to only growing asian eggplant (Orient Express and Turkish Delight), which fared better. So once we were aware of the problem, we began tank mixing Stargus and Regalia in our typical copper spray applications on Tomatoes. We only sprayed Stargus and Regalia on the peppers which didn't have as much evidence of the phytopthora. (We also did other cultural controls on the eggplant like culling every fruit and blossom in trash bags, and sprayed the heck out of it with JetAg 5). We also sprayed our Butternut once before they vined out. We continued on to have a successful pepper, tomato, and butternut season in 2023. 

Seeing how well Stargus and Regalia helped the tomatoes and peppers deal with the stress of phytopthora, we decided to preemptively include it in our spray program for 2024 for those same crops: 
- We sprayed the peppers and eggplant once with a tank mix of Stargus and Regalia mid June
- We sprayed our butternut once with a tank mix of Stargus and Regalia late June
- We included Stargus and Regalia in any of our copper applications, mostly for tomatoes every 7-10 day intervals, and also on our two successions of cucumbers one time each. 

We absolutely going to use it in the same manner this year, and are also going to consider using it in the drip for our onions and chard. We deal with chard that yellows quickly, and even with good fertilizing and varieties, it just peters out so quickly for us. Brandon our seed rep from Johnny's told us it may be a root/soil disease that is affecting it, so this year we will probably use Stargus and Actinovate through the drip for that. We also might run Stargus through our onion drip. 

Of course it is difficult to always say the efficacy of a certain product, especially since 2024 was such a dry year, great for keeping diseases down etc. But we will continue to use it as we believe in those kinds of products that promote the good bacteria/fungi/microorganisms and are biologicals. When we were dealing with the Phytophthora, Steve Bogash recommended using oxidate on the peppers and tomatoes as well, which had minimal incidence of it, and we felt like we wanted to steer away from killing all the healthy bacteria on those plants. But that's just how we tend to lean in terms of sprays and farming mentality. Hope this helps!

- Steph

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages