Help! Powdery mildew!

I have returned from holiday and had noticed some white spots on the leaves of my squash/pumpkin plants. It has now spread considerably and appears to be taking the vines. What should I do? I have 7 well established fruit on these plants, should I take them off to ripen/ cut back the plant or leave be? :cnfs:

 

Well, you could try washing it off but the rough surface of the leaves will make that difficult. Alternatively, you could cut off the worst leaves and spray the plants with water daily to try and raise the humidity which might delay the spread of the mildew.

But if mildew has really got a grip, you may have to take the fruit off now and let them fully ripen independently. Presumably, you weren't going to leave them on for much longer anyway?

There's a huge field of pumpkins near my house and the farmer seems to have trimmed away most of the foliage already and the pumpkins are sitting exposed in order to ripen fully.

 

My courgette plants are absolutely riddled.

I was trying to hold on in the hope of sqeezing a few more fruits out of it, but do you think it's probably time to bin them?

 

As Flinty said, the best bet would be to trim off any leaves that are affected, and see how they go... if it gets worse, then unfortunately it would be best to remove the fruit.... but trim the leaves first.

 

Leave it alone Its just nature it wont affect the plant.

 

Are cucumbers/courgettes etc very prone to this mildew then? It rather spoilt mine this year.Is there anything I can do to help next year?

 

Thank you all! I will keep an eye on the plants and make a judgement about removing the fruit but I'm pleased to hear that the mildew on the leaves won't necessarily affect the fruit :yho:

 

The most common advice to try and prevent powdery mildew seems to be maintain good air circulation and avoid dryness around the roots. But I find those two things to be a bit contradictory because good air circulation usually reduces humidity! It's worth a shot, though.

In practice, some plants just seem to be magnets for powdery mildew e.g. scabious, monarda, ajuga, michaelmas daisies and of course, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins, etc.

What I do about it depends on when the mildew strikes. If it's late in the season when the plants are past their best anyway, I would dig them out straight away. But if it's early in the season, it can stunt the plants and make them very unsightly - I used to have a beautiful bed of ajuga which got mildew so badly it looked like it was covered in grey flour! In that kind of situation, I try to combat it with a weak Jeyes Fluid solution (only on non-edible plants) but any successs is usually only temporay.

 

I would hazzard a guess that bordeux mixture might work on it. Not tried it mind.

I cut all the mouldy leaves off, then the plants slowed down.