Hey folks, I'm new here and to this whole permaculture thing. I recently started growing a bunch of perennial plants that sounded useful, one of which was a young comfrey plant. Everything was going fine until I noticed strange white spots developing on the large leaves after a week or so of it growing in the ground. I did a little googling and found out that these are probably a fungus called "powdery mildew" and that it would kill the leaves if nothing was done. I also read that you can stop the infection by spraying a water and baking soda solution onto the leaves. I did this, but after a day of doing it the leaves turned brown, drooped to the ground, and ultimately died. i'm thinking the baking soda is responsible for that, but I don't really know. So I guess what I'm asking is: Has anyone here had similar problems with "white spots on leaves" and what was the solution for you?
I haven't had this problem but my thoughts would be if it is a fungus I would want to use an acid not an alkaline. So I would be trying very dilute vinegar. Hopefully your plants will survive anyway. Comfrey I have found is pretty tough stuff so long as it gets water.
Yeah, I'm still watering it hoping that a new leaf will pop up eventually. My only concern is that because its so young it might not have established a large root system.
powdery mildew is in the air... hard to keep off things. i have never seen it on my comfrey, but we've only had these plants for a few years now. we get powdery mildew on some other plants but i don't bother spraying them. if you just transplanted it, i would not spray it with anything else for a while, just keep it watered if there are any dry spells. most times you should not have to spray any plants you grow. nature has cycles and fungi are a part of that cycle.
We have had great luck propagating comfrey by inserting leaf cuttings directly in damp soil (and keeping the soil moist). Comfrey just wants to grow!
if you were in the states i could easily send you some more if those didn't make it. don't think i can send stuff to Canada easy tho...
Thats nice of you to offer. Its amazing how I end up paying 5 bucks for something most people have problems getting rid of. I actually looked on Kijiji to see if there was anyone around me that was willing to share a root cutting. No luck though. Oh well, I'll just have to get it going on my own. I guess you learn from mistakes.
give it some water and see if it will grow again. good luck. i should take some of the plant we have and move it into an area where there is nothing but clay and see how it fares. where i have the plant now is pretty good topsoil and it is getting pretty big (flowering now). it has been so dry here lately i won't be transplanting anything more until fall.
...no, I have never seen that. But I'm in the tropics and a comfrey clump is just about indestructible out here. Something seems fishy. Did it ever sprout back???? or did the root rot and die?