How To Treat Powdery Mildew // Honeysuckle Update

My honeysuckle which I planted quite a few weeks ago up this trellis, not all is well in the garden with the honeysuckle unfortunately. We have powdery mildew which I've never dealt with before and powdery mildew is a fungus. You can see here some leaves are worse than others and practically all over the whole plant. And the underside of the leaves looks like this. So yes it's an airborne fungus, while it doesn't kill the plant, it stresses the plant and also if it's covered in all these white spots it stops the photosynthesis process, the sun can't get to the leaves, but it is very very common and there are three ways that we can treat this before we resort to chemicals. I don't want to resort to chemicals wherever necessary, so there are three things that I've found that you can try. We will treat the plant with the first option, then I will do that for maybe 10 days, I will come back and then I'll be able to show you the results at the end of say 10 days. Hopefully the results will be good, the fungus will be gone and that will be the end of that. However, if it doesn't work, then we have two different options that we can try after that. So I'm going to do my best, my beautiful honeysuckle, it's not happy, apparently if it's in humid conditions that can cause the fungus to grow quicker and of course it's been so hot, well for a couple of months really hasn't it, and this area around here doesn't get that much sun for very long, so it could be that it's been in a shady position that might not have helped and maybe the air flow is not very good. Anyway, let's go and mix up the solution, we'll treat it and then we will start the process and see what happens. So we're going to need one tablespoon of cooking oil, it doesn't say what type, I have vegetable oil, we need one tablespoon of soap, hand soap, this is a mild one, so we've got one tablespoon of that, goes in there, then we have one quarter of a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, this is a half a teaspoon measure, so half of that I would say, probably, that all goes in, and then we need one litre of water, so mix all that together and put it in my little bottle, probably should do this over the sink, there we go, I've got it all over the place, put that in there, let's go outside, be nice if it works, you have to try these things anyway, I'll try and get it on the underside as well, let's hope it doesn't rain, so that's day one of the process, I have sprayed both sides very liberally and we shall see and I will come back to you in a few days, we'll do a bit more, I think I will do this for maybe 10 days, I mean if it's obvious that it's not working I won't bother with 10 days, but if it looks like it's improving, I obviously do want to wait quite a while, I don't want to say this is brilliant, you must try it and then three days after I've said that everything's dead, do I? So anyway I'll be back again in a couple of days and show you what it's looking like, fingers crossed, I have been spraying the honeysuckle for four days now and I have taken off some of the worsely affected leaves because I didn't want it to spread everywhere, it does look a little bit barer, the powdery leaves have all gone, it's looking so much more healthy, I'm quite encouraged, the leaves are looking stronger and glossier, it has put on some new growth, I will come back again in a few days time, it's day seven of the trial and I've just spent 20 minutes looking for my secateurs, could not find them anywhere, found them in a flower bed because I did not tidy up after me, lesson learned, so we have the secateurs because we want to have another look at the honeysuckle which is doing incredibly well, I'm so delighted with this trial, it's looking great, the leaves are glossy, clean, shiny, I'm very pleased, however we still have three more days to go, I did say 10 days so we have to do the 10 days, I just filmed a whole segment of me talking to you about pruning away all the old bits so that when we do the 10 days, I didn't have the camera on, when we do the 10 days all the dead bits have gone today on day seven so that we can see the difference, has anything else died in those next three days, but I didn't have the camera on so I cannot redo it because I've cut them off, so I think it's going to be one of those days, but anyway I trimmed off any little dead bits so that we could see in three days time if there's any changes, so here we are, it's day 10, there are outtakes at the end of this video, please let me know in the comments below if you like these outtakes because I'm never sure if you want to see them anyway, day 10 of the trial and I am calling trial a success, very pleased to say that the plant has recovered, I did lose a lot of leaves along the bottom which I had to cut away because I didn't want it to spread as I've mentioned before, but I think all in all these will pick up, it will recover, that's absolutely fine and you can see all the stems are lovely and purple so they're lovely and alive, I did mention also that there were two other methods that I was going to try which I'm not now because I'm happy with the bicarb method, but just for your interest, one was involving a milk solution, milk and water mixture, and then the third one was involving mouthwash, believe it or not, because of course if mouthwash can kill your fungus in your mouth then it can kill fungus on the leaves, so that does make sense, but it did seem a little bit harsh so I thought I would try the bicarb method first and the bicarb method has worked, so I'm very pleased to say I'm calling this trial successful, thanks for watching, bye everyone, see you soon, stay tuned for outtakes, bye, my honeysuckle which I planted which I planted and I've been spraying the honeysuckle for I've been spraying the honeysuckle for four days it is looking encouraging and come back again I had to go back to work this week for the first time in 14 weeks, I've done five days and it was a killer, I cannot lie, not used to that at all, I haven't got I do have, right, shall we go walkies, shall we go walkie walkies, let's go put these back then