bought Daconil, the battle is on
 

i have been watching the taters, and maters like a hawk this year, after having late blight go through the garden last year. i noticed some brown lesions on some of the potato leaves, a little leaf curling and a few shoots that shriveled, and dried up. i yanked 3 of the worst ones, and disposed of them, and am reconciled to spraying every 5 days to salvage the rest of them. the taters were looking pretty good up until now. the ones from tom have some pretty nice blossoms. the tomato plants are still small, but are at the ready to take off stage. they all look ok at this point. i bought some serenade to use as a preventative, but not sure weather using it now would help, or maybe alternate using the two on the tomatoes. i dislike having to spray anything, but i know whats going to happen if i don't.

i thought after gardening in the U.P. for 10 years, it was going to be a piece of cake coming back down to lower michigan. its been anything but. no blight of any kind up north, just deer, potato beetles, and a bear once that knocked down part of the fence around the garden, and hope you don't get an early or late frost.
we will see what happens.


keith

I pray that it is not late blight. I live near Detroit and am a first time tomato planter. I have only 5 plants and I just started spraying last week with Daconil as a preventative. Everything looks great so far. Good luck with your plants :D >>>>>>>>>>>>>>Talon

Keith, fyi. :( ran across this article yesterday from MSU.

[B][URL="http://ipmnews.msu.edu/landscape/Landscape/tabid/92/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2882/Potato-late-blight-confirmed-in-Michigan.aspx"][COLOR=#810081]Potato late blight confirmed in Michigan[/COLOR][/URL][/B]


posted on June 25, 2010 09:34
[B][FONT=Arial]Willie Kirk, Plant Pathology[/FONT][/B]
[FONT=Arial]Potato late blight was reported and has been confirmed in St. Joseph county in one field near Nottowa on Monday, June 21. With the thunder storms and heavy rains that have occurred in the state in recent days, it is important to be extra vigilant when scouting fields for late blight. Particular attention should be paid to pivot tracks and other such lanes created by farm machinery.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]For further information on measures that should be taken when late blight is observed, refer to the [URL="http://ipmnews.msu.edu/landscape/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=t4EbTqzCL94%3d&tabid=92"][COLOR=#0000ff]Late Blight Extension bulletin[/COLOR][/URL]. This bulletin is also available as a high quality downloadable .pdf file from [URL="http://lateblight.org/"][COLOR=#0000ff]http://lateblight.org[/COLOR][/URL]. You can also get updates as texts sent to your mobile phone if you subscribe to [URL="http://www.twitter.com/late_blight"][COLOR=#0000ff]Twitter[/COLOR][/URL], sign up link available also on the web site.[/FONT]

thanks for the info steve,

last year, none of the potato tubers seemed to be affected by blight. there was some foliage issues, small brown dots on the leaves, but the plants didn't self destruct like the tomatoes did. the tubers all stored ok for several months. i will be staying on top of this.
here i am surrounded by acres of corn, soy beans, sugar beets, and wheat, trying to grow a few tomatoes, and potatoes. just doesn't seem like it should be that hard to do, eh.

life is still good


keith

i hope you're ok keith. this totally sucks.

i have actually heard on the radio this past week talk about late blight in ct. i predicted this, not that i'm a genius, but i've commented on this a few times over the past few months sighting potatoes left in the ground. this is a nightmare.

i googled daconil the other day. i just refuse to spray that stuff on anything i am going to eat. my garden is and always has been organic and i don't want to use it for that reason alone but when i was reading the precautions they have for just handling this stuff i can't imagine why anyone would eat tomatoes that have been sprayed with this!

i am at a crossroads. if i get hit with late blight again this summer then the writing is on the wall. it says "hi, i'm late blight. i'm here and i ain't going nowhere. expect me every year until the weather changes and i die out. trust me, i'm here for some time." with that in mind, if i get hit again this year then i am done growing tomatoes.

i have commented many times here over the past years that i have little to no use for summer. i dislike just about everything about summer except for growing my own food. if i can't grow tomatoes then there really is no use for summer imo. i considered giving up gardening but the organic produce i grow that feeds me a substantial amount of the year would cost a fortune. so i probably would continue to grow what i grow and drop tomatoes.

tomatoes are my favorite garden crop. i could live on them all summer. if i could grow just 1 thing it would be tomatoes. if i can't grow tomatoes then it's going to be a tough choice whether continue to garden or give up. but one thing is for sure, i don't want to spend the money, time and effort to have tomatoes just to have them destroyed by something i have no control over. sorry to highjack your thread but i am just about at wit's end with this crap. every day i look at my plants which are beautiful and healthy growing like weeds wondering if this crap will wipe me out for a second summer, something that i never even heard of much less dealt with gardening for 20 years until last year.

maybe i'm getting too old, i am sick and tired of a lot of things. without tomatoes does life really have any meaning during summer? not to me. i could move to a climate that is cooler but i have lived here my whole life and don't want to leave. i have a really great place and i just paid off my mortgage 2 weeks ago over the past 5 months (23 years early) so i planned on staying here until i died. i'm really pi$$ed off at this point waiting for this other shoe to drop, not knowing what to expect. just plain tired of this crap.:cry::x:panic::bummer:

So order some Exel-LG and some Actinovate and spray the plants. Throw some MycoGrow in for a soil drench for good measure.

I have been told Serenade is also effective to prevent late blight and is accepted as organic.

The problem with Late Blight remedies is the only time you can positively prove how effective they are is when they fail. If you don't get Blight, it doesn't mean they worked. It could just mean the disease didn't find it's way to your garden. None of the remedies, even those that are supposedly organic, are without problems. They are all toxic in one way or another. Neem kills beneficial insects, copper kills earthworms etc. Organic doesn't mean non-poisonous. I personally would prefer to use nothing. I'm even willing to surrender part of my garden to the local rodents and bugs. They were here first and I'm willing to share. In the case of a disease that is as destructive as Late Blight, however, I have only two options, use non-organic remedies or stop eating tomatoes. (the ones you find in the supermarket are sure to have been treated with chlorothalonil so by resorting to store bought, you've accomplished nothing). Last year I used Serenade and Copper with limited success. This year I'm going to use Daconil. My State Extension Service and the USDA say it's safe and effective, so I'm going to give it a shot. I found this to be an interesting link. Check it and you can see what your risk of getting Late Blight is. You can zoom in to street level. [URL]http://uspest.org/risk/tom_pot_map[/URL]

Duckfan, I would also love not having to use products to prevent disease and pests from destroying my garden; but that is not an option because I love my home grown tomatoes.
I also cannot see the advantage to buying my produce from the supermarket over growing it myself and using the things necessary for production. At the very least I know what has been applied to my plants and what has been used to feed them.
If going totally organic was an option for me I would do it; but I tried for an extended period with disastrous results in my tomato patch. While the organic methods for soil building and fertilizing have shown terrific results, most of the organic pest and disease controls have been much less effective on tomatoes with the exceptions of bt, pyrethrins and neem oil.

b54red, I completely agree. I guess my point would be that Organic isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's still poison. (The obvious exception is BT. That's totally innocuous and I use it regularly.) I don't completely trust the people who claim to be Environmentalists either.They routinely make unsubstantiated allegations that spread like wildfire and before you know it, they're accepted as fact. They never bother to correct those statements either. As long as someone who is in a position of authority and is more educated than me says it's safe and effective, I will use it if I need to. The operative word here is 'need'. The website I posted will give you a localized forecast for the probability of Late Blight infection several days in advance. I have the Daconil but I will not use it until that forecast says it's necessary.

tom,

i understand how you feel having being there myself. consider using some of the organic methods mentioned to prevent an outbreak. for myself, i already have to deal the problem. i will continue to grow organic in every other way except for using daconil to control late blight. i want it out of my garden, and i am going to kill it. i am not willing to sacrifice my plants another year. its a compromise i am willing to make. i am not a certified organic farmer paying hundreds of dollars for that certification. like you, i'm just growing for the household. you have to look at the benefit/ risk ratio. take the drug prednisone, or steroids as a class. look at the side effect profile. there are dozens of possible side effects that could happen. heck, who would want to take a drug that could do that to you?
and yet, steroids are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs today in every shape and form possible to treat a broad spectrum of disease, and illness. i will use the daconil only as long as i need to do so. the benefit of using it is much greater than any risk of doing so.....for me.

now, i just need to do something about all these wabbits.



keith

[quote=duckfan;174484] None of the remedies, even those that are supposedly organic, are without problems. They are all toxic in one way or another. this to be an interesting link.[/quote]

Nothing dangerous or toxic about using Serenade (B Subtilis) or Actinovate ([I]Streptomyces lydicus) or MycoGrow. They are beneficial bateria, fungi, & Trichoderma that protect & feed the plants via a symbiotic relationship. Completely natural. [/I]

[I]More than 90% of plants have a relationship with some form of Mycorrhizae; fossil records indicate this relationship existing at least as far back as 400 million years. Mycorrhizae are beneficial to the environment in that they reduce the need for fertilizers. They help protect the plants from water stress, too. They can also protect plants[/I] rooted in soils with high metal concentrations.

Another safe thing you can do is mix a finely crushed aspirin into a gallon of water & foliar spray you plants with it. This will induce an immune response in your plants, helping protect themselves from pathogens. It also increases growth rate & flower set. It's called the SAR response.

[QUOTE=duckfan;174484]The problem with Late Blight remedies is the only time you can positively prove how effective they are is when they fail. ][/QUOTE]
*********
Late blight hit my area last season so I started alternating actinovate and agris fos every week with much success...until late September. I never had late blight before, and therefore wasn't familiar what an infected plant looked like, so I didn't pull them right away, and it took about a 3 weeks before it was obvious and realized what it was ~ which leads me to assume, not conclude, that the actinovate/agris fos helped control it. Yes, I pulled them the second I realized what it was! The reports are confirming LB in PA already this season and since we are so early in the season I am still using actinovate and agris fos along with daconil for the first time...with tears. I sprayed daconil (although it's not sold under that name anymore, it's called Ortho Max Garden Disease Control). I felt sooooo guilty spraying as I have always prided myself on being as organic as possible. I really felt like a terd when a bumble bee came flying around the flowers, I actually stopped spraying for a few minutes. If I wasn't so ridiculously passionate about my maters, I would not spray at all, but I feel it's my only defense. So I guess I'll have to wait and see with my fingers crossed!

[quote=Timmah!;174608]Nothing dangerous or toxic about using Serenade[/quote]

I won't quibble the point, even though there is some indication that Serenade can cause allergic reactions and eye and skin irritation in some people. The damage is apparently not permanent. I am aware that for every substance on earth, there are a few of us who are going to have a bad reaction to it. The rest of us won't be affected at all. My biggest problem with Serenade is that it simply doesn't work on Late Blight. The experts at my local Cooperative Extension said it wouldn't work. I wanted to stay organic and ignored them. I really wanted it to work. I followed the directions to a T but they were right. Late Blight won. I might as well have sprayed my plants with sugar water. That's totally safe (unless you're a diabetic) and it doesn't work either. The effect would have been the same.

In addition to Serenade, use Actinovate & Exel-LG. I've also added MycoGrow as a soil drench. Alternating sprays is probably gonna provide more protection than just one alone.

Timmah, Thanks for the input but I used every organic fungicide I could find. I tried alternating sprays of Neem, Copper, Serenade and Greencure. I admit I haven't tried Actinovate or the others you mentioned but I doubt they would effective for late blight anyway. It is not their intended purpose, especially the soil drench. That's a waste of time and money when you're talking about Late Blight. The others are fungicides and Late Blight is not a fungus. It's a 'fungus like' disease and it laughs at normal fungicides. Someone else suggested Agrifos. That's one I'll never use. I wouldn't even consider it. I do not use systemic insecticides or fungicides on anything I intend to eat. (The same goes for the Excel-LG) Last year I sprayed meticulously and re-did it after every rain. Organic fungicides just don't work. Anyone who claims they do didn't have a Late Blight problem in the first place. Anyone who tells you they had Late Blight and they cured it with an organic fungicide cocktail is full of crap. Those people definitely didn't have Late Blight . If eschewing Chlorothalonil and watching your tomatoes rot on the vine in July makes you feel like a better person, good for you. I put too much work into my garden to watch that happen again. Just so we're clear, I haven't used the Chlorothalonil yet. It is, however, in my arsenal this year and it will be used as necessary. There is a very close relationship between cool, damp weather and Late Blight. This has so far been a hot and dry growing season for me. The chance of infection has been extremely low and there hasn't been a reason to spray with anything, even organics. I will be keeping a close eye on the Smith Period forecasts and if there is the possibility of an infection within 50 miles of my location before September 15, I will be ready and I will be pulling out the sprayer. After September 15, the tomatoes are on their own.

Whatever works for you is what you should use. Myself, reading the EPA's and other sites on Chlorothalonil & phosporous acid, I would feel as comfortable if not more, using the latter.

"If eschewing Chlorothalonil and watching your tomatoes rot on the vine in July makes you feel like a better person, good for you."

I don't recall making any kind of judgement on someone's decision to use Chlorothalonil or any other product. It's not my garden & makes no difference to me one way or the other.

duckfan i am not picking on you but you stated a few things all in 1 post that i really want to comment on.

[quote]I do not use systemic insecticides or fungicides on anything I intend to eat. [/quote]i understand what systemic means and how it works. your comment about "on anything i intend to eat" is exactly my problem - why would anyone use daconil on anything they intend to eat? this is not meant to be a smart a$$ crack but a serious question. i know NOTHING about daconil and the precautions i read for handling it sounds like it is toxic nuclear waste! can someone tell me why it is safe to eat tomatoes sprayed with daconil?

[quote]Organic fungicides just don't work. Anyone who claims they do didn't have a Late Blight problem in the first place. Anyone who tells you they had Late Blight and they cured it with an organic fungicide cocktail is full of crap. Those people definitely didn't have Late Blight .[/quote]

i can tell you that i DID have LB last year and i started to spray my plants with fish milk just before it appeared because it is supposed to have anti fungal properties. i had 8 or 10 plants last summer. all were infected within 8-10 days of first discovering LB. I had been spraying fish milk about 1 or 2 times prior to the observed 1st infection of LB. i pulled that plant immediately and wished i did not, it was huge, very healthy and loaded with reif's red heart tomatoes. now about 1/2 of my plants died within about 2 weeks of the infection but the other 1/2 did not. i continued to spray with fish milk. i was able to pick and eat tomatoes tho way below a normal level. many tomatoes did ripen on infected plants with no harm to the fruit while some had to have a portion of the fruit cut off but the rest of that tomato was ok. i 1st saw LB on or about 7/9 and my last plants were pulled on labor day weekend but not cuz they were dead but it was too late for any remaining tomatoes to ripen in the last 25 days of september and flowers wouldn't produce anything that late in the season. sun gold was the least effected by LB. prue and cherokee purple held up well for about 6-7 weeks after being infected with LB. i had plenty of pictures of leaves and stems that were infected by LB to id it on my plants and there was NO doubt my plants were infected with LB. so i think you are wrong, not all plants die immediately (with a few days) of LB infection as they typically say and maybe some fungicides can help keep a plant going while infected - how else can anyone explain how 5 plants that were infected with LB in mid july live and produce fruit to early september? while i never saw LB or had LB infect my plants prior to last summer, i have no doubt my plants were infected.

[quote]If eschewing Chlorothalonil and watching your tomatoes rot on the vine in July makes you feel like a better person, good for you. I put too much work into my garden to watch that happen again.[/quote]

it's not that i feel more noble than anyone that is not organic, it is that i prefer to not introduce any chemicals into my garden's soil and certainly not on anything i will eat. i doubt you work any less hard on your garden than i do on mine, not a criticism of you, but i do put in a lot of work. some folks just plant vegetables and hope for the best, that is not me. i have educated myself on what being organic is and why it is better imo. remember i grow food not hobby garden. i am not the least bit green, i have much disdain for many people that push environment green behavior to the point it has been done. while organic, i'd quickly disassociate myself from anyone that i perceive as being a holier than thou eco wing nut and my point is i am not organic to save the planet, far from it. now this brings me back to why i eschew daconil - i don't use chemicals even to the point of losing my tomatoes and hopefully you read what i posted earlier about the loss of tomatoes. i feel it's a sophie's choice issue - poison my food and garden soil or lose my tomatoes. neither is a good choice and both suck.

i'd really like to hear why daconil is safe to eat, once sprayed on tomatoes you are eating it unless somehow it breaks down and safely disappears like Bt.

No one said Daconil was safe to eat. None of these chemicals, organic or otherwise, are good to eat. Daconil does however have the advantage of being able to be washed off. If it's systemic, you're going to ingest it. You have no choice.
I was not being critical of your decision not to use Daconil. If it makes you feel good, do it. If drinking a Coke instead of a Pepsi makes you feel good, do that too. Just think about this.Late Blight is so rampant in Florida and the other Southern States that without Chlorothalonil, there wouldn't be any Winter tomatoes. Forget about losing a full season's crop of tomatoes. Think about giving them up forever.
What many people don't realize to that if a supermarket tomato bears a USDA Certified Organic label, it doesn't mean that it hasn't been sprayed with Chlorothalonil or something equally toxic. If Organic farmers have no alternative, they are permitted to use those chemicals and still retain their Organic certification. Like the Energy Star Program, Organic Certification is Federal Government BS.
Like people, some plants seem to have a genetic immunity to certain diseases and some are just lucky. When I was in the Army over 40 years ago I had major exposures to Agent Orange and Asbestos. I also smoked for 35 years. I haven't suffered a single ill effect from any of that. Some of my friends who had similar exposures are dead already. Why didn't it affect me? I don't know. I know it wasn't the fish milk. (Whatever that is. It sounds worse than Daconil)
One thing you do that I would never consider is to leave infected plants in the ground and try to heal them. Those little spore generators can infect an entire County in a matter of days. It's not fair to your neighbors. Just because some inconsiderate SOB did it to you is no reason to do it to others.

I thought it might be helpful to post two links here, both have to do with organic products and Late Blight and both conclude that copper is about the only thing that has shown any effect at all, although limited:

[URL]http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/FactSheets/lateblight/Late%20Blight%20Organic%20Tomato%20MGT%202010.doc[/URL]

[URL]http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/resourceguide/cmp/solanaceous.php[/URL]

Tom, I know you best of the folks who have posted here so I'll direct my remarks to you but they pertain to the others who have also posted in this thread.

First, let's respect the right of each person to chose how they want to approach Late Blight as long as that person knows what they should about various products and their efficacies, which in some cases here I think some wrong, or should I say misleading information has been given.

That doesn't mean you should take what I say as gospel, but it does mean that I hope some of you would consider some perhaps alternative views.

Second, I don't care one whit if a product is synthetic or organic b'c both can have side effects. Rotenone, for example, is approved by every organic certifying agency I know of, NOFA is that agency where I live, and Rotenone has been shown to have greater toxicity in some ways than does Daconil ( which I'll refer to as Daconil so I don't have to type out Chlorothalonil each time)

What's important to me, be it a synthetic or organic product, is what the toxicity is or mnight be for humans, pets, insects, etc, well, the environment in general.

I started researching Daconil maybe 15 years ago. I'ts the most used ant-fungal in the world and has been for I think about 30 years now, and more is known about it than any other fungicide and many other products in general.

Because I have a scientific background I tend to approach questions of toxicity with that view and my conclusion many years ago was that Daconil was the best antifungal for the common fungal foliage diseases of Early Blight ( A. solani) and Septoria Leaf Spot and I used it for that purpose until about 10 years ago when I moved to a new location, amd there weren't the problems here with those two pathogens so at that time I decided to use organic fertilizers, well, that's about all I could do except for the occasional Colorado Potato Beetles for which the specific strain of BT worked well.

That was then , this is now.

For me and many others LB was never a major problem until last year and where I am in NYS was hit hard. I knew about it early in the Spring so had a decision to make, and an important one at that. Do I risk loosing ALL of my tomatoes, and those who know me know I now grow only varieties new to all or most, so it was an important decision to make.

I read the bulletins, I consulted the excellent information given out by Cornell and I decided to go ahead last year and spray with Daconil alternating with copper.

There were folks in my area who had LB infections. About 10 min away a field of about 1000 plants being grown for a farm market stand went down ASAP.

I had no LB here at all.

My point is that when faced with a possible dire situation and wanting to grow the special varieties I was growing I made the decision to use Daconil and copper and as I said previously I had reseached Daconil myself and felt comfortable using it based on the data I had read.

This year so far I'm only using Daconil but no copper but will add the copper if I start to see bacterial foliage infections.

I apologize, just a bit, for this post being so long, but I hope by posting what I did I at least brought another perspective to this issue and I hope the two links above will be helpful to some of you.

[quote=duckfan;174789]No one said Daconil was safe to eat. None of these chemicals, organic or otherwise, are good to eat. Daconil does however have the advantage of being able to be washed off. If it's systemic, you're going to ingest it. You have no choice.
I was not being critical of your decision not to use Daconil. If it makes you feel good, do it. If drinking a Coke instead of a Pepsi makes you feel good, do that too. Just think about this.Late Blight is so rampant in Florida and the other Southern States that without Chlorothalonil, there wouldn't be any Winter tomatoes. Forget about losing a full season's crop of tomatoes. Think about giving them up forever.
What many people don't realize to that if a supermarket tomato bears a USDA Certified Organic label, it doesn't mean that it hasn't been sprayed with Chlorothalonil or something equally toxic. If Organic farmers have no alternative, they are permitted to use those chemicals and still retain their Organic certification. Like the Energy Star Program, Organic Certification is Federal Government BS.
Like people, some plants seem to have a genetic immunity to certain diseases and some are just lucky. When I was in the Army over 40 years ago I had major exposures to Agent Orange and Asbestos. I also smoked for 35 years. I haven't suffered a single ill effect from any of that. Some of my friends who had similar exposures are dead already. Why didn't it affect me? I don't know. I know it wasn't the fish milk. (Whatever that is. It sounds worse than Daconil)
One thing you do that I would never consider is to leave infected plants in the ground and try to heal them. Those little spore generators can infect an entire County in a matter of days. It's not fair to your neighbors. Just because some inconsiderate SOB did it to you is no reason to do it to others.[/quote]

I am a newbie.....but my eyes are sore from reading so much here. I am not picking sides.....but I will agree with Duckfans post. Gardeners put a ton of pride and love into their gardens or they would not be posting here. Early and Late Blight + Leaf spot were issues last season BAD in Michigan. I will take the risk of being poisoned by a chemical that came out in the 60's for healthy fruit. In the winter time.......you have NO clue what chemicals are on that lettuce and fruits that you eat from the supermarkets do you? A lot comes from other country's out of the USA does it not? Do you eat salad at restaurants? Is that certified organic? I am a lawn guru and know for a fact that organics have come a long way in the last 10 years or so. Nothing is stronger than a man made chemical in today's world. I will use Daconil until something is "PROVEN" better organically:D I will not lose my plants that I worked so hard to raise with my own pride and joy :) >>>>>>>>>>>>> Talon

I have not lost plants to purely folige diseases in years, since I started spraying with a mild solution of Clorox and water when the diseases make their presence known. Daconil is somewhat effective at preventing diseases from getting a foothold on your plants but is not very effective when the rainy periods come and it is washed off daily. During those times it is futile trying to apply Daconil to the wet plants only to have it washed off again within hours. I applied it day before yesterday and it has rained off and on constantly since then.
The Clorox doesn't give you any preventative because it does it's work in a matter of minutes and is oxidized very quickly; but what it does seem to do is stop or at least slow the disease present on the plant at the time you apply it. At the very least it should stop further spore development from occurring because of its disinfecting power. If you have Late Blight present I don't see what harm it would do to try it.


I use a mix of between 7 and 8 ounces of regular strength Clorox added to one gallon of water to give me a solution that is between 5% and 6%. A stronger mix will sometimes damage healthy plant growth. Make sure you spray the undersides of the leaves as well with a very fine misting spray. Spray late in the day or very early because bright sunshine during or right after the spraying will cause some leaf burn on healthy leaves. Within a couple of days after using it the diseased leaves will usually dry up and die while uninfected healthy leaves seem to be unaffected. Make sure to rinse your sprayer out because Clorox is a highly reactive substance.
It was a life saver or rather a garden saver last summer when we had rains almost daily for over a month. Every week I would go out and spray it between rain showers and was able to fend off the worst of the foliage diseases. Sometimes when there wasn't a chance for the leaves to even start to dry off I would increase the strength of the solution to compensate for the already wet plant diluting it further.
It will not help with systemic diseases like fusarium but I always spray those plants too because they are even more susceptible to other foliage diseases.
I know this is too easy a solution to be taken seriously but I have found it as useful for foliage diseases as the dishwashing soap is in pest control.

i was hoping carolyn's links would indicate daconil's toxicity vs safety. i would use it if i felt that it was safe to use. i just hate spraying something on my food that is going to render it the equivalent of store bought produce produced in a heavy chemical environment or that will harm the micro organisms in the soil.

is there anything indicating that this is really safe to use but not produced by the company that makes it! i would not use rotogen as it is on the extreme end of safe organic. bt i feel is safe, can i feel that way about daconil?

i truly don't want to lose my tomatoes but i am torn about using something like this having never used anything not organic.

tom

Compared to most other synthetic garden disease-treating chemicals, I consider chlorothalonil (aka Daconil) to be a much safer alternative.

Ortho's Garden Disease Control is 29.6% chlorothalonil and the remainder is kaolin, a form of clay and water. It's also used in some exterior house paints, in addition to being used as a garden fungicide:[URL="http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=chem&id=2354"] http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=chem&id=2354[/URL]

I've attached the Material Safety Data Sheet for Ortho's product. Please note the zero health rating and the section on accidental ingesting. (practically non-toxic) ;)
[URL="http://householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/household/brands?tbl=brands&id=15008031"]
[/URL]

Phosporous Acid, the active ingredient in Exel & Agri-Fos, has been in use for at least 25 years & is also considered very safe.

[URL]http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/ingredients/factsheets/factsheet_076416.htm[/URL]
[URL]http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/ingredients/factsheets/factsheet_076002.htm#environmentrisk[/URL]
[URL]http://www.epa.gov/oppbppd1/biopesticides/ingredients/factsheets/factsheet_076002.htm[/URL]

Test results indicate that the compound is practically nontoxic to birds and freshwater fish, and, at most, slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates. Low toxicity, the proposed rate of application, and mitigating label language present minimal to nonexistent risk to wildlife.

...results from mammalian acute and subchronic toxicity studies indicate lack of toxicity, adding further weight to the lack of risk from exposure

Given the low toxicity of mono- and di- potassium salts of phosphorous acid as indicated by toxicity data, and a history of safe use in other parts of the world, a determination of reasonable certainty of no harm for the general population, as well as subgroups including infants and children, was made.

...a lack of reports of toxicity or allergic reactions from 12 years of use in other parts of the world...

This was issued in 1998, that means it's been safely used for a quarter of a century.


Investigating the tautomer (read phosphonic acid) reveals that it's been tested on a wide range of animals since at least the mid 1970's & was found to be non toxic even at massive sustained doses.
The doses used would scale to a 175lb male ingesting an ounce every day for 90 days.

[URL]http://www.epa.gov/IRIS/subst/0530.htm[/URL]

I tried to post this much earlier today but the server was out and I was lucky to be able to cut and paste it elsewhere so I could post it here. In between I wanted to watch the women's tennis final from Wimbledon, which I did.


[quote=tjg911;175096]i was hoping carolyn's links would indicate daconil's toxicity vs safety. i would use it if i felt that it was safe to use. i just hate spraying something on my food that is going to render it the equivalent of store bought produce produced in a heavy chemical environment or that will harm the micro organisms in the soil.

is there anything indicating that this is really safe to use but not produced by the company that makes it! i would not use rotogen as it is on the extreme end of safe organic. bt i feel is safe, can i feel that way about daconil?

i truly don't want to lose my tomatoes but i am torn about using something like this having never used anything not organic.

tom[/quote]

Tom, I didn't give any specific links b'c they were all on a previous computer and the hard drive wasn't switched and I have no i ntention whatsoever for spending the hours on the net that I once did in reading and saving those links.

You've now seen the MSDS, and while I've seen them before I forgot to look at the link just provided but down at the bottom it should still cite the company that makes Chlorothalonil and sells it to various companies with various brands so they can make their own formulations whether for golf courses, tree farms, home gardens or commercial busineeses and you can also go to EXTOXNET and pull up the Daconil/chlorothalonil page yourself if you want to read it.

I'll say again, that more is known about chlorothalonil than almost ANY other fungicide since it's been used for the last 25-30 years and is the most widely used fungicide in the world.

Before I switched to growing organically when I moved here in 1999 I let Charlie my famer friend who prepared my field where I grew tomatoes, to spray with Daconil ( actually Bravo, same thing) each year specifically for the fungal foliage diseases. Late Blight was not a problem at the old farm where I was growing tomatoes and other crops.

So from about 1983 through 1998 I was exposed to Daconil a lot and I don't have green ears, or black fingers or an orange nose or purple feet and I ate plenty of tomatoes in the field without washing them and I'm quite alive and fine as were all the commercial farmers I knew back then who also used Daconil as an important adjunct to their commercial ventures.

So when Late Blight appeared as it did last Spring I had absolutely NO hesitation in using it last year and none this year either. I follow the Cornell updates for NYS and surrounding states such as MA, PA and CT and that helps as well.

if you have any personal hesitations then don't use it. Copper is the most widely suggested organic alternative as you saw from reading the two links I posted, but in the one link you also saw the cautions about using copper as well and copper is not very effective at helping to prevent LB as you also read in those two links on organic products suggested for LB.

It's refreshing to find a gardening site where you can get common sense answers instead of the Draconian doom and gloom of the tree huggers. If one of their group decided that hydrogen dioxide was a carcinogen, those idiots would besiege the forums proclaiming the dangers of H2O. All I know is that I'm going to die. It's a given and no one is going to be able to change that. I'm going to enjoy myself until it happens.

One precaution to observe when using chlorothalonil products (Daconil and Bravo) is never to rub your hands around your eyes after handling fruit or foliage sprayed with this fungicide. It is an irritant to the eyes and causes extreme burning. Even after flushing thoroughly with water to remove it from the eyes, the burning is slow to go away. Someone may have mentioned this already, but I wanted to mention it since I have learned from experience never to touch around my eyes after handling tomato plants or fruit sprayed with this fungicide.

I agree Duckfan. By the way, that would be Dihydrogen Monoxide, Dihydrogen Oxide, et al. Hydrogen Dioxide is another name for hydrogen peroxide. =)

okay i can't believe i am saying this but i'm going to try daconil.

the reason i have decided is i found this post by carolyn from last year and it says a few things that i needed to read. her comment is #5 in this link [URL]http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?p=317569[/URL]

now i have a couple of questions about this since i know nothing about this product.

(1) it sounds like you use this after every rain or every 5-7 days if it does not rain?

(2) i like concentrates because they are more cost effective. can i buy daconil as a liquid concentrate (i hate powders)?

(3) how long will liquid concentrate last? for example i have bt concentrate from the mid 90's and it's still effective when kept in a cool dark place.

(4) i'm guessing you really drench the plant when spraying it? i assume this means under the leaves as well as the top leaf surfaces?

(5) are there products with chlorothalonil that should be avoided? are there products with chlorothalonil that are better than others? please cite names.

i'll re-read this thread and try to glean info now that i am willing to try daconil. i think i'd better buy it now before everyone is trying to get it and it's not available. i also hope the concentrate will store for a couple of years and i'll get a quart. like i stated in my original comment in keith's thread if i can't have tomatoes what's the use of summer, this product seems to be somewhat safe based upon carolyn's comments and i'm going to die of something anyway! :roll:

tom