When I first acquired an allotment, I was told that I would never grow brassicas there, as it was riddled with club root.
However, One of the members gave me a tip that seemed to work. When planting out brassica’s add a good squirt of washing up liquid to the planting hole. It does not need to be the expensive type any cheap liquid will do the job.
Apparently the fungus spores absorb the liquid and that makes the spores expand and eventually destroy themselves?
I can vouch that I grew brassicas on the plots and other pests withstanding had fair results. I did get instances of club root, but nowhere near as severe as my neighbours who did not use the fairy treatment.
AJ
Club root
Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter
-
farmer jon
- KG Regular
- Posts: 78
- Joined: Sat May 12, 2012 6:26 pm
- Location: the red rose county !
never heard of this & to be honest would be very sceptical. I have heard the old wives tale of putting a 1-2" piece of fresh rhubarb at the bottom of the planting hole. think the idea has something to do with the acid in the rhubarb.
I have completely eradicated bad infections of clubroot by heavy dressings of hydrated lime tilled into the soil a month prior to planting. the plots are completely free now but it took 4 years to achieve.
I have completely eradicated bad infections of clubroot by heavy dressings of hydrated lime tilled into the soil a month prior to planting. the plots are completely free now but it took 4 years to achieve.
-
alan refail
- KG Regular
- Posts: 7254
- Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2005 7:00 am
- Location: Chwilog Gogledd Orllewin Cymru Northwest Wales
- Been thanked: 7 times
The only reference I can find is on this other forum.
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/ind ... /wap2.html
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/ind ... /wap2.html
Cred air o bob deg a glywi, a thi a gei rywfaint bach o wir (hen ddihareb Gymraeg)
Believe one tenth of what you hear, and you will get some little truth (old Welsh proverb)
Believe one tenth of what you hear, and you will get some little truth (old Welsh proverb)
-
peter
- KG Regular
- Posts: 5879
- Joined: Fri Nov 25, 2005 1:54 pm
- Location: Near Stansted airport
- Has thanked: 23 times
- Been thanked: 81 times
- Contact:
Probably pretty bad for soil flora & fauna.
Washing up liquid contains wetting agents and detergents and these will lower the surface tension and attack the cell membranes.
Washing up liquid contains wetting agents and detergents and these will lower the surface tension and attack the cell membranes.
Do not put off thanking people when they have helped you, as they may not be there to thank later.
I support http://www.hearingdogs.org.uk/
I support http://www.hearingdogs.org.uk/
-
Geoff
- KG Regular
- Posts: 5784
- Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:33 pm
- Location: Forest of Bowland
- Been thanked: 319 times
Does seem a bit odd. Club Root is described as a slime mould, I don't know scientifically what that means but it brings up an obvious picture. Perhaps a surfactant dissipates the slime in some way.
As I typed this I had a half recollection of some American research so I tried good old Google and came up with this http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/con ... 2.abstract it's old work and doesn't look too encouraging. There are some other articles, my search was "club root surfactants".
As I typed this I had a half recollection of some American research so I tried good old Google and came up with this http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/con ... 2.abstract it's old work and doesn't look too encouraging. There are some other articles, my search was "club root surfactants".
-
Geoff
- KG Regular
- Posts: 5784
- Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:33 pm
- Location: Forest of Bowland
- Been thanked: 319 times
Whilst Googling about Club Root came across this PhD thesis http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1 ... rt2008.pdf - rather long at over 300 pages and I confess to not reading every word but here are some bits. Apologies if this ends up as a long post but it is an interesting subject. Basically it bears out farmer jon's use of more active forms of lime and dismisses most other things. Most telling it suggests liming close to planting time is better than traditional over Winter treatment.
FROM THE ABSTRACT
The most effective treatments - when applied correctly - contained calcium, e.g. lime as calcium oxide or LimeX (a by-product of the sugarbeet processing industry), and crushed scallop and whelk shells (a by-product of the fishing industry). Whilst the effects of calcium and pH on clubroot are not new, growers need to think more in terms of dose of calcium applied in the field rather than just pH, and also, the time of addition of lime to soil before planting needs serious consideration as it may be optimal to apply lime less than two weeks before transplanting. LimeX 70 or powdered calcium oxide were demonstrated to be the most optimal lime treatments for control, and a split application of Perlka (granular calcium cyanamide) may prove to be a consistently effective method for controlling clubroot.
FROM GLASSHOUSE EXPERIMENTS
Summary of lime treatments
LimeX70 and powdered calcium oxide were the most effective of the lime treatments at controlling disease. The results inferred that the fineness of the lime was critical in achieving good control. The powdered calcium oxide lime was also more effective at controlling disease than the powdered calcium carbonate form and this could have been because the calcium oxide treatment raised the pH of the soil higher than calcium carbonate, providing greater control by making spore germination conditions less favourable. The use of fine powdered calcium oxide in a field environment may not be acceptable to growers and therefore LimeX70 could provide the best option for a lime treatment used to control clubroot in the field. LimeX70 completely inhibited disease in all of the experiments it was tested in.
Summary of use of surfactants
Natural surfactants from plant extracts were more effective at reducing clubroot than the synthetic surfactant Agral. Therefore, careful selection of surfactants would have to be made to achieve optimal clubroot control in the field as different surfactants may act differently in their mechanism to control disease. It would be difficult for P. brassicae to build up a resistance to biosurfactants because it would require a major change in the make-up of its plasma membrane. Therefore, surfactants could potentially be a good way of preventing clubroot disease in the field.
Summary of effect of plant extracts on disease
The use of natural plant extracts that had previously been observed to have a controlling effect on clubroot such as rhubarb and peppermint oil were not effective at reducing disease.
FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS
Perlka (also known as calcium cyanamide ) was the most effective treatment at controlling clubroot in both the 2005 and 2006 trial. It also significantly increased the head weight and yield of the plants in the 2006 trial compared with the control plants. This would suggest that Perlka is effective in controlling clubroot in trials with different soil and weather conditions. Comparing the results from the 2005 and 2006 trials, it could be speculated that Perlka has a greater benefit to plant yield if it is applied in two applications; one just before planting and the other 11 days later as secondary zoospores are forming. Adding this treatment in this way may be a good control strategy against clubroot and is different to current practice which recommends adding Perlka 7 – 10 days in advance of transplanting no matter what the rate used.
The LimeX treatment worked well in the 2006 trial. In this trial, the disease pressure was very high and the weather conditions were optimal for clubroot development so it is likely that this treatment would have worked well in the 2005 trial when conditions were less optimal for clubroot development. LimeX gave the most significant disease control
of the lime treatments tested in the 2006 trial and was the only lime treatment to give a significant increase in plant yield in either of the trials. Therefore, this lime treatment shows the greatest potential for practical use by growers in the UK.
The results of the two field trials carried out in Fife have shown that pH and calcium in the field soil do have a part to play in clubroot control and that lime need not be added to the soil far in advance of planting to get a significant rise in soil pH and calcium as is normally recommended. Adding lime after harvest which is standard farming practice may not be useful in clubroot control because the earlier that limes are added to the soil, the more chance there is of the pH decreasing over time and of the leaching out of nutrients such as calcium so that the initial soil conditions at planting are favourable to clubroot. The field results from this study have shown that it may be better to add lime to the soil two weeks before transplanting to give the highest soil pH and calcium levels achieved by these treatments at planting.
CONCLUSIONS
The two field trials carried out in Fife in this study have shown that clubroot control is variable and cannot be controlled consistently using the same treatments at the same rates in different fields under different conditions. Perlka at the rates and timings of application used in these trials gave significant control of clubroot in the field even under optimal conditions for clubroot development. There was evidence that where lime was used to control clubroot in the field, fine powdered forms were more effective and best applied around two weeks before transplanting to give an increase in pH and calcium in the soil by planting. However, LimeX was also shown to be a promising treatment for clubroot control even when added to the soil immediately before transplanting. The key to clubroot control in the field is complex and more work has to be done on repeating these experiments in different types of soil with different spore loads and different weather conditions to develop treatments that give consistent control across varied situations.
FROM THE ABSTRACT
The most effective treatments - when applied correctly - contained calcium, e.g. lime as calcium oxide or LimeX (a by-product of the sugarbeet processing industry), and crushed scallop and whelk shells (a by-product of the fishing industry). Whilst the effects of calcium and pH on clubroot are not new, growers need to think more in terms of dose of calcium applied in the field rather than just pH, and also, the time of addition of lime to soil before planting needs serious consideration as it may be optimal to apply lime less than two weeks before transplanting. LimeX 70 or powdered calcium oxide were demonstrated to be the most optimal lime treatments for control, and a split application of Perlka (granular calcium cyanamide) may prove to be a consistently effective method for controlling clubroot.
FROM GLASSHOUSE EXPERIMENTS
Summary of lime treatments
LimeX70 and powdered calcium oxide were the most effective of the lime treatments at controlling disease. The results inferred that the fineness of the lime was critical in achieving good control. The powdered calcium oxide lime was also more effective at controlling disease than the powdered calcium carbonate form and this could have been because the calcium oxide treatment raised the pH of the soil higher than calcium carbonate, providing greater control by making spore germination conditions less favourable. The use of fine powdered calcium oxide in a field environment may not be acceptable to growers and therefore LimeX70 could provide the best option for a lime treatment used to control clubroot in the field. LimeX70 completely inhibited disease in all of the experiments it was tested in.
Summary of use of surfactants
Natural surfactants from plant extracts were more effective at reducing clubroot than the synthetic surfactant Agral. Therefore, careful selection of surfactants would have to be made to achieve optimal clubroot control in the field as different surfactants may act differently in their mechanism to control disease. It would be difficult for P. brassicae to build up a resistance to biosurfactants because it would require a major change in the make-up of its plasma membrane. Therefore, surfactants could potentially be a good way of preventing clubroot disease in the field.
Summary of effect of plant extracts on disease
The use of natural plant extracts that had previously been observed to have a controlling effect on clubroot such as rhubarb and peppermint oil were not effective at reducing disease.
FROM FIELD EXPERIMENTS
Perlka (also known as calcium cyanamide ) was the most effective treatment at controlling clubroot in both the 2005 and 2006 trial. It also significantly increased the head weight and yield of the plants in the 2006 trial compared with the control plants. This would suggest that Perlka is effective in controlling clubroot in trials with different soil and weather conditions. Comparing the results from the 2005 and 2006 trials, it could be speculated that Perlka has a greater benefit to plant yield if it is applied in two applications; one just before planting and the other 11 days later as secondary zoospores are forming. Adding this treatment in this way may be a good control strategy against clubroot and is different to current practice which recommends adding Perlka 7 – 10 days in advance of transplanting no matter what the rate used.
The LimeX treatment worked well in the 2006 trial. In this trial, the disease pressure was very high and the weather conditions were optimal for clubroot development so it is likely that this treatment would have worked well in the 2005 trial when conditions were less optimal for clubroot development. LimeX gave the most significant disease control
of the lime treatments tested in the 2006 trial and was the only lime treatment to give a significant increase in plant yield in either of the trials. Therefore, this lime treatment shows the greatest potential for practical use by growers in the UK.
The results of the two field trials carried out in Fife have shown that pH and calcium in the field soil do have a part to play in clubroot control and that lime need not be added to the soil far in advance of planting to get a significant rise in soil pH and calcium as is normally recommended. Adding lime after harvest which is standard farming practice may not be useful in clubroot control because the earlier that limes are added to the soil, the more chance there is of the pH decreasing over time and of the leaching out of nutrients such as calcium so that the initial soil conditions at planting are favourable to clubroot. The field results from this study have shown that it may be better to add lime to the soil two weeks before transplanting to give the highest soil pH and calcium levels achieved by these treatments at planting.
CONCLUSIONS
The two field trials carried out in Fife in this study have shown that clubroot control is variable and cannot be controlled consistently using the same treatments at the same rates in different fields under different conditions. Perlka at the rates and timings of application used in these trials gave significant control of clubroot in the field even under optimal conditions for clubroot development. There was evidence that where lime was used to control clubroot in the field, fine powdered forms were more effective and best applied around two weeks before transplanting to give an increase in pH and calcium in the soil by planting. However, LimeX was also shown to be a promising treatment for clubroot control even when added to the soil immediately before transplanting. The key to clubroot control in the field is complex and more work has to be done on repeating these experiments in different types of soil with different spore loads and different weather conditions to develop treatments that give consistent control across varied situations.