Marestail to stop blight

[Barry]

Having just seen blight descend on our allotment and nuke virtually everything in site, I was wondering about something I have heard in respect of the French using marestail to counter this disease.

From what I understand, the marestail is harvested, allowed to desicate and them mixed with water and sprayed on plants. It is supposed to protect them against fungal infections from spores.

I was pondering why and wonder if it might not be the same effect as you get with the silicon on marestail, which is what prevents it from being killed by weed killer.

Imagine, if you coat a plant in naturally occurring silicon, that might form a protective layer around it, preventing blight spores from accessing the surface area.

I'm really only guessing how such a brew would be made, but would simple dried marestail mixed with water suffice?

I know is sounds mad, and the risk of spreading marestail (from spores!) would be there, but marestail is easily and quickly removed using ammonium sulphamate (yes, it really does work!), so the risk is minimised.

I'm really tempted to experiment. What do you think?

[alan refail]

http://littlegreenblog.com/green-home/g ... to-blight/