[Rob the rake]

Careful with the dosage, Gobs. I ground up two 300mg tablets and mixed it into 2 gallons of water. This was applied to 60 plants at watering time as a once-only treatment, and works out at only 10mg per plant.

After reading through many articles on the subject, I seem to have arrived at the right application rate by happy accident. Any more than this seems to have a detrimental effect on growth.

Another fella tried spraying it on his squashes and runner beans. The squashes were much more resistant to powdery mildew, but it stripped the leaves from the runners!

Since it has a systemic effect, it's probably best watered in anyway.
I'll be trialling the procedure next season on alternate plants/rows to get a direct comparison.

Incidentally, the scientists researching this are trying to synthesize their own version, probably since they can't charge us gardeners exorbitant prices for common old aspirin!

Rob.

[Calou]

Asprin!   :shock:  Blimey, that got my attention, very interesting.

[Rob the rake]

Sounds like bunkum, doesn't it? If you follow the link provided in my other post you'll see that salicylic acid (when aspirin begins to break down the 2 chemicals produced are salicylic and acetic acids) acts as a transmitter to tell the plant's immune system to swing into action.

I can't imagine that my toms and peppers would have done so well without it. All around me, other gardeners were losing plants to blight whilst mine have remained almost disease-free. Even the usual attack of botyritis, which usually sets in as the cold weather advances, has failed to materialise. The plants were still going, and still healthy, until I had to clear the greenhouse last week.

Unfortunately I had no untreated plants to use as a comparison, but I am encouraged enough to have another try in 2008. This coming year the squashes and potatoes will also get the treatment. Possibly the alliums as well, which suffered badly with rust(mainly garlic) and a little with white rot(maincrop onions). This time, I will leave a few untreated rows/plants as a control.

Rob.

[Rob the rake]

Here's a good link, which describes a similar experiment in simple terms. Done all proper and scientific,too!  

Rob.

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/how-to/qa/aspirin-cures-plant-headaches.aspx

[sweet nasturtium]

I'm glad you picked up this thread Rob, we nearly lost it to a nicotine debate but this is really interesting.

I was beginning to feel that all the vegetables on my plot were doomed because of the misery of blight this year, this has given me new hope.  When did you put the solution on?  Pre-blight or after?

[Rob the rake]

A couple of weeks after putting the plants in their final pots, to allow them to establish a decent root system. The research suggests an even earlier stage may be more beneficial, as it takes a couple of weeks for the plant's immune system to kick in after treatment.

Most research seems to have been done on tobacco, which suggests that toms, peppers, spuds and other relatives would react similarly. The benefit to other plants, as far as I know, remains untested. As I have already mentioned though, one gardener has found that an aspirin spray kept mildew at bay on his squashes, so maybe cucurbits will also benefit.

Rob.

[mkhenry]

We gegt a show here on SBS called Vasilis Garden - It a greek guy who goes to differen peoples gardens each week and sees how they do didfferent things - Its a great down to earth practical show without all the normal hype lots of gardening shows have - anyway he was visiting this ladies garden and she says she does everything natural and then they show us these tomato plants that have been grown in a hot house for 7+ months when He asked her her secret, she replies that she puts manure asprin and cigarette butts!  - Well I guess that is recycling at least - it was a bit of a giggle  

It was once the thing to put cig butts in the roots of toms.
Then it was discovered that most butts got there when one of the lads looking for some where to smoke would on a chilly day smoke in the greenhouse and stick the butts in the soil if in danger of being discovered by the head gardener.
Once that got about the practise ceased

[Rob the rake]

This is where I originally found out about using aspirin as a plant treatment. It's on one of those "how to live cheaply/household hints/creative recycling" kind of sites, which is worth a visit anyhow.

http://www.gomestic.com/Homemaking/Ten-Surprising-Uses-For-Aspirin-.39680

Rob.

[mushroom]

Careful with the dosage, Gobs. I ground up two 300mg tablets and mixed it into 2 gallons of water. This was applied to 60 plants at watering time as a once-only treatment, and works out at only 10mg per plant.

This is brilliant. I'll be doing this next year. Is a once-only treatment enough?

[Rob the rake]

Most of the sources I have found recommend low dosages. Some recommend repeat treatments, whilst others claim that the plant only needs the initial stimulation to get its immune system into gear. I'll dig out some links for your perusal!

Rob.

[Rob the rake]

Here's one!

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/how-to/qa/aspirin-cures-plant-headaches.aspx?

Here's another, with a cracking forum discussion.
 
http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/aspirin.htm

This one is to support a patent claim (I think!) and is pretty technical in places.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5989846.html

Last one(For now!).

http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Defenseless-plants-arm-themselves-with-metals-486-2/


Rob.

[mushroom]

Thanks for the links, Rob

The final one is interesting because it discusses salicylic acid causing increased concentration of glutathione. Does the increased glutathione lead to greater metal ion absorbance? I wonder how this would translate in an allotment setting. I don't want my plants to die from insect attack, but, equally, I don't want whatever I harvest to have extracted more metal from the soil than it would otherwise, if you see what I mean  :shock: but then again, this was just the hyperaccumulator analyzed, and another species for comparison. can the glutathione trait be activated in other plants?

it's kind of what came first chicken or egg very interesting though

[Rob the rake]

I can't imagine that there'll be enough free metal salts in the soil to cause any problems. Not the minor ones, anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong though!

Rob.

[Rob the rake]

The second link was incorrect. I have substituted it with the right one.

This is an extract from one of the posts.

 
"Enhancing stress tolerance in plants has major implications in agriculture, horticulture, forestry as well as in the re-establishment of natural vegetation. However a simple method for inducing multiple stress tolerance in plants without undesirable side effects has not been available till now. Seed imbibition or drenching with triazole compounds such as paclobutrazol, triademophone and uniconazole have been demonstrated to induce multiple stress tolerance in plants [9, 12, 21]. Unfortunately, these compounds also inhibit gibberellin biosynthesis in plants and hence have growth retarding effects. Salicylic acid and acetyl salicylic acid are not known to retard plant growth and no evidence of growth impairment of treated plants over untreated controls was observed in this study. The fact that seed imbibition of SA and ASA confers tolerance to plants suggests that these molecules trigger the expression of the potential to tolerate stress rather than having any direct effect as a protectant."

Rob. :oops:

[mushroom]

"expression of the potential to" - implies it'll work on some plants but not on others, and not in all situations... still, it's better than nothing!  
We can but try...