Can Milk Control Brown Rot?

Reader Contribution by Staff
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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.

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