Welcome to The Yardstead
Powdery mildew is a fungal disease which affects many types of plants. Cucurbits like zucchini, squash, pumpkins, melons and gourds are all succeptable to powdery mildew. It usually appears on leaves as small round white powdery spots which quickly spread and cover the entire leaf. In our garden here at the yardstead we've lost many zucchini, squash and pumpkin plants to powdery mildew. This year powdery mildew killed all of our zucchini and most of our paty pan sqash and yellow squash. Â
It is usually easy to identify powdery mildew by its appearance on the top of the leaves. It usually looks like white powder on the leaves.  Infected leaves usually turn yellow and wilt after just a few days.  Powdery mildew usually appears in our garden on one or two plants then quickly spreads to all the other zucchini and squash plants.  The infected plants usually don't die completely and frequently send out new leaves and flowers. We have been able to recover from powdery mildew in the garden a few times, when we caught it early and sprayed all the plants with neem oil.
On a few other occasions I applied the funigicide ...........
The winter melon also called wax gourd, white gourd or ash gourd is grown on a vine for its very large fruit that is eaten as a vegetable. Winter Melons originated in southeast asia but now the winter melon is cultivated in east and south asia as well as in India. Many asian families grow this vegetable in their home gardens here in the U.S.
The fruit is fuzzy when young. By maturity, the fruit loses its hairs and develops a wax coating, giving rise to the name wax gourd, and providing a long shelf life. The winter melon requires a warm, humid long summer to grow but can be stored in the winter like winter squash. The winter melon can be stored for up to 12 months. The melons are used in stir fry or to make winter melon soup, which is often served in south east asia in the scooped out melon, that has been decorated by scraping off the waxy coating. The shoots, leaves and tendrils are harvested as greens.
The first time I ever saw a winter melon.......
Powdery mildew is a disease caused by fungus that affects a wide variety of plants.  Plants of the family known as Cucurbits, which includes cucumbers, squash, zucchini, gourds, melons and pumpkins are very succeptable to powdery mildew. We lost all of pumpkins here at the yardstead last year to powdery mildew. Fortunately powdery mildew is easy to identify and treat. It can be identified by white powdery spots, usually starting on the leaves of the plant. It usually starts as small white spots which become larger and more numerous pretty quickly. If left untreated the white spots can consume most of the leaves which turn yellow and wither, causing the plant to die. The key to treatment for powdery mildew is to identify and treat plants as soon as any sign of powdery mildew is detected. The treatment for powdery mildew usually consists of a fungicide applied by spraying. There are several commercial fungicides available, some of which are made from natural plant oils. Last year we succesfully treated our zuchinni plants.....
