Topic: peppers not getting taller!

[ceres]

However, stubborn as I am, I shall continue to use milk, whether or not you approve Eristic and Ceres.  :P

It doesn't matter whether I approve or not.  It's been said multiple times on this thread, you do what works for you.

What works for me is understanding.  You posted something I hadn't come across before in my gardening experience so I asked questions.  Should I have blindly accepted it just because you said it?


 

[amphibian]

No idea if milk works or not, but that it is 'perfectly good food' is pretty irrelevant.

I am pretty sure the environmental impact of using some milk to control fungi is a lot less than using copper, lime or whatever jeyes fluid is made of. What about garlic based fungicides, or pepper based deterrents, are they also a 'waste of good food'. Indeed seaweed extracts are made from seaweed that could instead be eaten.

There are dozens of patent applications for fungicide compounds based on anhydrous milk fat.

[1066]

What works for me is understanding.  

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, in terms of trying to understand how these things work or don't. But what it also shows me is the general lack of research that's going on. Presumably a funding issue ?

1066

[Barnowl]

I recently read of fruit farmer who last year sprayed half his apple trees with a garlic based spray and the rest with standard pesticide. He was so impressed by the garlic, he's using it for all his apple trees this year. 
(... and the apples didn't taste garlicky  :) )

Anyone tried this on chillies/tomatoes?

[ceres]

Not on chillies/tomatoes but heard today (not got round to reading it yet) that the new issue of The Garden is talking about it for bleeding canker in horse chestnuts and the leaf miner moths don't seem to like it either.  What fungal/insect problems do you have with chillies that you think it might help with?

[amphibian]

The main issue is funding, companies like things that are applicable on a commercial scale and patentable and that can be linked in with their other products. Milk, which we have millions of gallons in waste every year, would be cheap on an industrial scale and would be hard to make money out of for an agro-chem company. They're not about to invest big money in showing farmers they could stop buying their chemicals and use their neighbour's waste/surplus instead.