It happens every summer. Just as your beautiful cherries, peaches, plums or grapes start to ripen, disaster strikes. As the disease called brown rot takes over, fruits become covered with a powdery brown coating as they quickly rot and shrink into mummies.

Some varieties are more susceptible than others, but what can you do when you have high-risk fruits that are trying to bear a good crop? Organic growers use sulfur sprays, but frequent use can cause problems in the soil. This year I tried a newer natural method, which involves spraying a dilute milk-and-water solution to suppress brown rot to acceptable levels. It could be a single-season fluke, but my experiment has been a resounding success. 

Why Milk?

In 1999, a team of Brazilian researchers found that weekly sprays of a milk solution controlled powdery mildew in zucchini squash. In more recent studies, milk or whey-based sprays were as effective as fungicides in controlling powdery mildew in two plantings of wine grapes in Australia. Plant pathologists suspect that as compounds in dairy products interact with sunlight, they cause crippling damage to powdery mildew fungi and spores. If milk works on powdery mildew, I thought it might help with brown rot, which has a similar life cycle.  

My subjects were a mature 'Stanley' prune plum and a mature planting of 'Concord' grapes – both easy targets for brown rot and other fungal diseases. In the past, the plum crop was often lost entirely to brown rot, and the grapes typically had half of their fruit ruined by brown or black rot.  

Using a hand-held compression spray bottle, I applied a spray using this recipe:
one-half cup organic low-fat milk
1 quart warm water
3 drops dishwashing liquid (to help the mixture stick)

Beginning in early July, I sprayed the plants five times at two-week intervals. I sprayed in the mornings, covering the fruits and foliage until the spray mixture dripped to the ground. I stopped spraying when the fruits began to ripen, because I didn't want milk residue on the fruits.

The results? Less than 10 percent disease incidence on the plum, and less than 30 percent on the grapes – both huge improvements over past seasons. 

I'll repeat the method next year, but meanwhile it would be great to hear from other gardeners who have tried milk on other disease problems. Did it work for you as well as it worked for me?

Above: Despite two days of steady rain, ripe 'Stanley' plums did not turn into fuzzy shrunken mummies.

Left: Regular milk sprays suppress powdery mildew on grape foliage, and may help defend fruit from brown rot and black rot, too. 

Green Fortune baby pak choi

Along with traditional fall crops like mustard, turnips and collards, fall is a great time to try arugula, Chinese cabbage, and other Asian greens that have caught your eye. Leafy greens become more crisp and sweet as nights become cooler and longer. Sow the seeds where you want them to grow, and shade the seeded bed for a few days to keep it moist. See 13 Ways to Beat the Heat for a roundup of easy ways to help beds keep their cool through the dog days of August.

I got out early to finish setting out my fall broccoli, and it's a good thing I did. As the morning warmed, I realized I was not alone. Only a foot from where I'd been working for an hour, yellow jackets began shooting out of a 1-inch hole in the ground like popcorn from a hot air popper.

Heart pounding, I did what I did last year when a yellow jacket nest appeared in the butternuts. I popped an old cake cover over the entry hole, and weighted it with a brick.

It's the most natural way I know to deal with a badly placed yellow jacket nest, and folks have been doing it for a long time. Before there were translucent plastic cake covers, people used large glass bowls. The wasps buzz around inside the cover for a week or so, but because they can't leave to gather food and water, the colony basically starves to death. The light that comes through the cover convinces the wasps that there's hope, so they don't try to dig an alternate entry hole.

It's not that I don't like yellow jackets. As Terry Krautwurst eloquently explains in Wasps!, yellow jackets are major beneficials, and this time of year they are all over my garden. They drink water from the bird bath, feed on composting fruit, and seem to spend a lot of time looking for meaty insects among weeds and grasses. As I watch them, it's clear that they know way more than I do about every aspect of my garden — weather, plants, insects, birds — the whole enchilada.

But you have to draw the line somewhere, and I draw mine at the garden fence. Nests outside the garden's boundary get to stay, but inner garden incursions are met with the lethal cake cover. Try it. It works.

Photos by  Barbara Pleasant  

A few weeks ago, Mother Earth's intrepid editor-in-chief, Cheryl Long, told me about a study from Kansas State University in which good quality organic lettuce was successfully grown in high tunnels in July and August with the use of 40 percent shade. That intriguing tidbit coincided with visits to two local organic farms — Five Penny and Full Circle — that use high tunnels. It's hot in those things! Surely if lettuce would grow in a high tunnel in Kansas in August, I could work a similar wonder in my Virginia garden. 

I began by starting seeds indoors, because lettuce germinates poorly (if at all) in hot soil. After the little plants gradually became accustomed to strong sun, I set them out under a shade cover made from a double thickness of black nylon net (75 cents at the fabric store) attached to wire hoops with clothespins. The cover provides about 30 percent shade, and the lettuce is doing great!

On very hot, sunny days, I add a lightweight piece of cotton sheeting to block even more sun, and the lettuce doesn't mind one bit. In Hawaii, summer lettuce is routinely grown under 35 percent to 50 percent shade.

How does it taste? The Kansas State study included customer surveys, and there were no complaints about the flavor. As for my experiment, I'm already calling it a success because I have garden-fresh lettuce for one of the season's most perfect foods — tomato sandwiches.