Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: MoreWhisky on May 29, 2010, 14:11
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Im very intrested for ;) 'research' ;)about using jayes fluid on onion bed aganst white rot, from anybody has done this in the PAST , are we allowed to discuss this subject this way?
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No, we are not allowed to discuss that.
On the other hand I have read that watering the griund with garlic extract the year before you want to grow alliums on it will trick the white rot fungus into germinating. It can't find any alliums to grow on so dies and is not there to infect your crop next year. Sounds better than murdering all the worms and other helpful soil organisms to me.
I'll look for a link for you.
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I found this article this morning very informative regarding White Rot-garlic, etc..
http://www.dgsgardening.btinternet.co.uk/whiterot.htm
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Ive just looked on Robinsons mammonth vegtable seeds web site and this is what is says about it;
'White rot is perhaps the most serious of the problems as there is no chemical control available. The infected onions must be lifted and destroyed. Remove the soil that the onion was growing in. Do not store or re-use this soil but dispose of it. The ground can then be given a thorough cleaning by using a soil sterilant.'
So does anbody know of a legal soil sterilant?
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I think it was Robinson's website we've had problems with before. They were overtly recommending the use of a chemical banned for a couple of years. I emailed them and got a response that wasn't worth the paper it wasn't written on.
I'm not aware of any permitted soil sterilisants, except for boiling water perhaps. And I don't know how effective that will be. And of course you are killing off all the good bugs as well as anything bad.
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White rot = do not grow onions on that spot.
Try raised beds with newly imported soil.
Maddening I know but safer and more successful.
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Thanks for that link realfood. It's the one I've been trying to find. :)
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Ive read about this idea/method a few times on various threads. So have we anybody who has had a positive result using this method?
Im going to have to try something or stop growing alliums i think :(
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Ive read about this idea/method a few times on various threads. So have we anybody who has had a positive result using this method?
Im going to have to try something or stop growing alliums i think :(
I'm holding off giving up altogether.... still have an area that has not produced white-rot results but more by chance than judgement and how long for I'm not sure. :(
It would be interesting, as you say, to hear how others have got on.... (raised-beds?)
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Presently no fix for white rot, although have a search and one or two universities are researching in to it, would make interesting reading if I understood what they meant in layman terms.
There are onion varieties that claim resistance, but resistance isn't immunity.
Mammoth seeds have a variety called Golden Bear of which they say:
Early maturing globe shaped with vigerous growth. Heavy yeilding. Highly tolerant to Downy Mildew and Botrytis. Resistant to White Rot.
50seeds £2.10
Again: Resistance isn't immunity
Sure I have read of another variety, as I seem to recall a different name mentioned.
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Are you sure it's white rot?
Are there other fungal diseases which can attack onions? We've had a couple of spud posts this year where people have automatically assumed the problem to be blight when it was frost; could a similar assumption be made here?
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EYUP
good morning everybody,
i had white rot last year in one area of the plot
went on loads of web sites and wow they all paint a
dark picture of it
no chemicals will eradicate it
so up to the lotti with my wall paper steamer
gave the area a good going over and touch wood
no sign of it as yet
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When sowing parsley seeds outside 1st make a drill and drench it with boiling water then sow the seeds...
Would it work with onions too do you think or would you simply end up with a very warm seed bed and quickly awakened white-rot spores?
(Rather hot worms I guess :tongue2: )
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Doubt that would work with white rot as the fungal spores I believe are soil-borne so can travel laterally through the soil with water movements - thus although the immediate area might be sterile on planting, the spores will probably reinvade ...
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Doubt that would work with white rot as the fungal spores I believe are soil-borne so can travel laterally through the soil with water movements - thus although the immediate area might be sterile on planting, the spores will probably reinvade ...
Rot!
I thought that sounded far too easy.. :(
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Knew I had read it somewhere:
A new "biological" control for onion white rot, developed through HDC-funded research, will be described to growers at the ADAS/Syngenta UK Vegetable Industry Conference & Exhibition on 28 January.
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Project leader Ralph Noble, a senior research scientist at Warwick HRI, said the treatment involves incorporation of composted green waste and the soil-dwelling fungus Trichoderma viride into soil before planting or sowing.
"In two field trials there was very high disease pressure throughout the growing season but we recorded no white rot with this treatment and yields were comparable with or higher than yields from sets treated with the fungicide Folicur," he said.
White rot, caused by the fungus Sclerotium cepivorum, is the major soil-borne disease affecting onion crops. HDC estimates that 15 per cent of the UK crop is affected by this disease, causing losses worth £7m each year.
The project was based on the discovery that incorporating onion waste from processing, controlled white rot in subsequent crops because sulphur compounds in the compost stimulated white rot spores in the soil to germinate, but the fungus then died in the absence of the host crop.
With onion waste in short supply, the HDC project looked at other materials and found that brassica waste, green waste and poultry manure are also effective.
T. viride suppresses many disease-causing fungi, including the white rot pathogen. The project has also been looking at ways of applying T. viride to onion sets as part of an integrated control strategy.
The conference, held at the East of England Showground, Peterborough, will also include presentations on the state of the industry, food security, carbon footprinting and crop protection in the wake of EU legislation changes.
- For more details, contact Michelle Patching at ADAS on 01954 268214.
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The conference was Jan 2009, not sure what ADAS is.
If it is Sulphur compounds that stimulate the white rot spores to become active then die from lack of a host it makes me wonder if adding straight Sulphur would do the same?
I am presuming from reading the above that composted onion waste is added in the years or time that onions (alliums) were not grown. Seems implauseable to stimulate it and have onions in the ground at the same time.
Interesting about poultry manure.