Powdery Mildew Blues

Last year my grapes were attacked by skeletonizers, this year its powdery mildew!  Ewww!  It sounds as if I'm a bad housekeeper or something.  It started with just a few leaves with white dusty patches and some with brown spots, both seen in the photo above.

The powdery mildew advanced quickly. In just a week or so big patches of leaves were curled up, brown at the edges, and nearly dead.  The literature on powdery mildew says it is not fatal to a plant, it just severely weakens it and ruins its appearance.  But I say this grapevine is on a death spiral.

I tried a popular method of slowing down the mildew growth by spraying a mixture of baking soda, liquid hand soap and water.  The treatments seemed to have little to no effect on the ravenous mildew.

My amazing garden assistant and vegan chef Amy Flemming, chopping
down mildewed grape vines.  We carefully disposed of these without
shaking and spreading the mildew spores.  We also gathered up all of
the fallen grape leaves, everything went in to our Green Barrel and NOT
the compost bin.

So I made the decision to take her down, sorry Miss Thompson Seedless.  I sacrificed you to save your neighbors, Mr. Red Flame, and your sister Ms. Thompson Seedless.

The severe pruning of the most mildewed vine seems to have helped.  The other 2 grape vines are flourishing and producing grapes!  This will be my first grape harvest.

Below is a picture of the terrible little skeletonizer caterpillars that I had last year on my grape vines.  We sprayed organic Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT for short) to eliminate the little monsters and it worked!

Western Grapeleaf Skeletonizer - Scientific name: Harrisina brillians
Photo from The World of Insects

This is what a grape leaf looks like after the skeletonizers hit - 

Next year I will be proactive and spray the new leaves as they emerge in the spring, as suggested by my friend Ruth Brown.  Maybe spray with BT one week, then a neem oil mixture the next week...?  I'm not sure, I'm just learning as I go :-).

On the other hand there is Jay Barringer of Phoenix Fruit Growers who knows exactly what he is doing!  Jay recently did 2 very informative videos on the problems you can encounter while trying to grow grapes here in the valley.  He shows the damage that Leaf Hoppers and Katydids can do to grape leaves.  Jay's incredible food forest is featured in most of his videos which are chock-full of valuable information!  Subscribe to Jay's YouTube channel Yes It Will Grow Here. 

What is Blooming in the Garden

Chocolate Flowers - they really smell like chocolate!

Orange Sunflower

A few Nasturtiums are still hanging in there in the
shadier parts of the garden.  These only get morning sun.

Wild Sunflower

Lemon Bee Balm (Monarda citriodora)

Passion Fruit Flower

Echinacea - Purple Cone Flower

Blackberry flowers

Lavender, not sure of species, it doesn't have
much of a lavender scent.

Harvesting Chard

I recently harvested most of my beautiful rainbow swiss chard plants, leaving just a few that I thought might make it through the summer.  It would require some creativity in the kitchen to actually use all of this chard.  Neighbors had already had their fill of my chard bounty through the winter and spring.

A few of the chard plants were survivors through the previous summer and had huge roots.  The roots turned out not to be woody so we roasted them just as you would beets or other root vegetables.  Though you wouldn't think so by looking at them, they were actually very tasty!

Most of the chard we blanched and froze, to use later in sautes or soups.  We blanched and froze the stems separately.  For the next few days we had chard salads, chard wraps, chard falafel, and even made chard pesto!  We tried out a "chard chip" recipe found on the internet, hoping it would be a close second to the popular "kale chip", but it didn't even come close.

We still had more chard than we could eat or freeze so we pickled the chard stems and the chard roots.  I use it as relish.

So now I'm waiting to harvest some of the seeds from my best red chard plants that have bolted.  I will post more on harvesting chard seeds (a first for me) as the seeds dry on the plant.  Right now they are still green and kind of pretty to have in the garden!

I still haven't given up on the "chard chips", here's the next chip recipe
I will try - Spicy Swiss Chard Chips