Among tomato diseases, late blight is one of the most common. This insidious disease is a fungal disease; it can instantly ruin tomato plantings, reducing the entire future harvest to zero.
Late blight can be combated in various ways. For this, a solution of copper sulfate, Bordeaux mixture, copper oxychloride and other drugs are used, and the most effective method is, of course, prevention. There are also folk remedies against late blight. These include a milk-iodine solution, tincture of garlic, hay or rotten straw. Also, amateur gardeners often use whey from sour milk to combat fungus. Let's find out why to spray tomatoes with whey and how to do it correctly.
Whey for tomatoes
The serum forms a thin film on tomato leaves, which prevents fungal microorganisms from penetrating into the plant tissue and developing there. This is facilitated by both the monacid bacteria themselves and the microflora contained in this product. The causative agents of late blight are afraid of these substances like fire and will not touch the plant, which is under “milky” protection. However, it is short-lived, so you will have to spray your tomatoes with whey quite often.
Beginners are often interested in how many times they should spray tomatoes with whey and how often it is necessary. It turns out that you can do this at least every day - the more often, the better and more effective the fight against fungus on tomatoes will be. Some gardeners adhere to the scheme - they do such spraying once every 10 days. Such procedures should begin in July, when the risk of fungal diseases increases. It is important to prevent pathogens from entering the fetus.
Keep in mind that the serum must be diluted with water to obtain a working solution. This is usually done in a 1:1 ratio, and the water for spraying is taken clean, soft, at room temperature or a little colder. The whey itself is obtained from spoiled milk or stale kefir. You can treat plants using a regular sprayer or a special garden sprayer.
For a better effect, you can add the drug phytosporin to a regular solution of home serum. This will help tomatoes fight diseases and prolong their fruiting.
Protection against late blight can be combined with fertilizing. To do this, the spray mixture is prepared slightly differently. It should include: 10 liters of water, 2 liters of whey, 10 drops of iodine and a couple of tablespoons of wood ash. This composition is used for foliar feeding and helps plants to be healthy and strong, enriching them with useful microelements necessary for normal life. It does not like late blight and alkali, which is present in wood ash - this is another advantage of this type of processing.
Iodine can be added not only to whey, but also to regular sour milk, which will give the same effect. This substance 
known to everyone for its miraculous antimicrobial effect. Iodine diluted in water can be used even if the tomatoes are already sick - in this case, you need to dilute 10 ml of 5% iodine in 10 liters of water and spray the plant twice within 3 days.
Spraying tomatoes with whey every day is, of course, very labor-intensive - but is it possible to avoid this boring, monotonous work? You can, and here's how. Since spraying is carried out for the treatment and prevention of tomato late blight, it is better to initially buy seedlings or seeds of plants that are resistant to fungal diseases. Then you won’t have to spend a lot of time processing the plantings.
Kira Stoletova
Feeding plants to obtain a good harvest is the primary task of any gardener. Useful serum for tomatoes replaces store-bought fertilizers and is safe for humans. You can make homemade fertilizer yourself from waste dairy products.
The benefits of whey for tomatoes
Spraying tomatoes with serum is carried out several times a month. This procedure does not harm fruits or neighboring crops. Serum for tomatoes and cucumbers is a universal remedy and fertilizer. Properly organized watering and fertilizing of tomatoes with whey guarantee a good harvest in the fall.
The biggest danger for tomatoes and cucumbers (seedlings and bushes) is late blight. A dangerous disease destroys seedlings and infects healthy bushes in a few days. The plant is difficult to save, and the entire future harvest is in danger of being destroyed. If you fertilize the soil and root system of tomatoes and cucumbers in a timely manner, such a problem will not arise. Treating bushes with serum is very profitable: you can make a cheap natural product with your own hands.
Folk remedies for tomatoes
Fertilizing on a natural basis is especially useful for crops in the autumn, when plants lack moisture and vitamins. To feed vegetable bushes, processed fermented milk products with a high content of amino acids are often used. Traditional recipes will help strengthen the plant’s defense mechanisms:
- Milk contains useful microelements and substances that replace immunomodulators for plants: such substances help strengthen plant stems and their root system.
- The amino acids included in the whey help the seedlings to begin rapid growth, and lactose fights pests.
- Monoacid bacteria additionally protect the leaves of the crop from the proliferation of pathogenic microorganisms.
- The microflora of the product allows you to destroy existing bacteria: fermented milk fertilizer cleans the surface of leaves and stems from fungus.
- Milk-based fertilizer for tomatoes is used several weeks before harvest to strengthen the emerging ovaries.
What are the benefits of milk feeding? Feeding with milk creates an invisible but durable protective layer. Thanks to the formed film, the tomatoes are not affected by fungi and dangerous diseases.
Both the stems of the crop and the rhizome are processed with fermented milk products. Dairy feeding is absolutely safe for humans and does not affect the quality of the harvest.
How to carry out milk feeding
Whey can be used to treat seedlings at any stage of development. The plant is treated according to a clearly defined scheme: the stems and leaves are sprayed once every ten days or three times a month. For persistent strong crops, the number of sprayings is reduced to once a month. Experienced gardeners recommend spraying seedlings every week.
The more often tomatoes or cucumbers can be processed, the more natural dairy product will be needed. You cannot use a concentrated product for fermented milk fertilizer. Solutions are selected for plants in which the share of dairy products is only 50%. You can dilute the fermented milk mixture (residues from milk distillation) with purified water or healthy liquid additives. A 1:1 proportion is the best option for tomato seedlings and bushes.
To obtain fermented milk fertilizer, you can use cottage cheese or stale kefir. The strained product is immediately diluted with water (room temperature). The resulting solution should be sprinkled on the entire visible part of the plant and fertilized the soil to feed the root system.
Additives for feeding
The benefits of dairy products can be even greater if the gardener adds equally useful substances to the finished solution. Additives such as iodine or live beneficial bacteria will strengthen the crop against any seasonal diseases.
The drug "Fitosporin" is used as an independent supplement. Solutions with live bacteria are often added to fermented milk products. If you spray the seedlings with such an enriched fertilizer, the seedlings will not be afraid of any mold.
Recipe for universal vegetable whey
To strengthen tomatoes, comprehensive measures are needed. Watering should be alternated with planned fertilizing with special homemade solutions. To prepare an enriched mixture with iodine you will need:
- 10 liters of water;
- 2 parts whey;
- a few drops of iodine (no more than 10 drops);
- a small handful of wood ash.
Separately, each component of the solution is useful for the growing crop. Water is necessary moisture, acidic solution and iodine are strengthening substances for stems, and ash enriches the soil with necessary nitrogen. Thanks to the combination of all components, the mixture prolongs the fruiting of the crop, and ripened fruits do not rot or darken.
Feeding with iodine is used for the root system and green part of tomato bushes. For the best effect, you can alternate treatment measures: casting treatment is carried out once every 10 days using a simple serum, and tomato roots should be treated with iodine once a month.
Concentrated solution with iodine
If the plants begin to hurt: the legs darken, fungus appears on the stems and the leaves dry out, the gardener needs to take emergency measures. In such cases, a simple serum is not enough. You need to treat the roots and stems of tomatoes with concentrated fertilizer, which is prepared according to a simple scheme:
- to process all the vegetables you will need half a liter of fresh fermented milk products;
- waste from milk processing must be heated to room temperature;
- Add 10 drops of iodine to the warm serum.
Spraying the solution is carried out daily. The leaves of tomatoes and cucumbers are wiped especially carefully. Mold treatment is carried out in addition to other measures: removing diseased plants and replacing contaminated soil.
A concentrated solution for cucumbers and tomatoes in the form of seedlings or adult bushes is suitable. Cucumbers or tomatoes are not affected, but it is better to spray them with a simple mixture diluted in water.
Bush processing
Every prudent gardener needs to know how to spray tomatoes with whey. The prepared mixture should not be stored for more than two days, otherwise fermented milk products will only harm the culture. For peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes, natural fertilizer is used in the warm and cold seasons. A fermented milk solution is useful for greenhouses and greenhouses. Serum for tomatoes is sprayed using a regular spray bottle. The first treatment is carried out immediately after planting the seedlings in pots. From this period, the bushes need additional protection.
Spraying continues after planting the bushes in open ground. Regular whey will strengthen the immunity of plants and allow them to bear fruit well in the future. The components of the solution are diluted immediately before spraying and used immediately. For active growth, you need to spray tomatoes with whey with the addition of Fitosporin.
How to spray plants correctly
Spraying tomatoes requires a serum to water ratio. If the solution is diluted in a 1:1 ratio, the solution will not harm weak seedlings. Such spraying does not give a long-term effect, so after treatment you should not delay with repeated protective measures.
Spraying tomatoes with serum is carried out on days of good weather. If spraying is carried out during rains, the product will not have an effect. In order for tomatoes to grow faster, processing must be combined with feeding the soil with wood ash or natural fertilizers. Feeding tomatoes using natural whey is beneficial on large plantations and small plots of land (saving money for the gardener).
Disease Prevention
Spraying of vegetable bushes is carried out during seasonal diseases and to prevent dangerous diseases in plants planted in open ground. Treatment is always cheaper than treating tomatoes for fungi or pests. Tomatoes that are treated with whey in a timely manner do not get sick and allow you to harvest a good harvest in the fall.
For prevention, treatment of vegetable bushes is carried out after cleaning the bushes from dry leaves and rotten stems. You need to start spraying the crop in greenhouses while the stems are not yet strong. Prevention can be carried out less frequently than spraying the crop during the disease. It is enough to spray the tomatoes once a month and organize constant watering in order to harvest a good healthy harvest by autumn.
How to deal with cucumber diseases using folk remedies. Serum treatment.
Using milk processing waste (with additives or diluted with plain water) you can destroy a disease that kills young ovaries or fruits. A safe fertilizer will protect the stems and roots of the bushes. Regular treatment with serum will preserve seedlings and protect bushes from environmental threats. Every gardener should know that the principle of “water, fertilize, saturate” always works on crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers.
03.02.2018
Hello, dear readers! Everyone is familiar with whey, the basis for making kvass and okroshka. After the milk has soured, very valuable milk proteins, milk sugar - lactose, minerals and vitamins remain in it.
Thanks to this, whey is very useful not only for the proper microflora of the human intestine, but also for plants, which no less than we need amino acids, which the roots of tomatoes will receive if they are fed with sour milk residues. This article will help you figure out whether it is possible to spray tomatoes with whey.
What is whey?
Often, some housewives use whey, which is obtained by preparing cottage cheese by heating. It is completely unsuitable for spraying tomatoes, because the necessary living microorganisms die during heat treatment.
Therefore, a pasteurized product is useless for combating late blight, and this is exactly what they sell in stores. Last year I sprayed our plantings with store-bought serum almost 2 times a week, but I was extremely dissatisfied with the result!
It turns out that you need a completely different type of whey, the one that exfoliates from sour milk, since it contains milk yeast and fungi, which late blight is so afraid of. This whey, natural and not boiled, is carefully separated and used.
It contains microelements that inhibit all kinds of unhealthy and destructive microflora, including fungal ones. The most common diseases and main enemies of tomatoes are powdery mildew and late blight.
Operating principle
When spraying plants, a thin film is formed on the leaves, which prevents the development of harmful microorganisms and prevents their penetration into the tissue. The lactic acid bacteria of this product very effectively fight late blight - this fungus is afraid of lactic acid microflora like fire. But the problem is that this protection is short-lived, and you will have to spray the tomatoes constantly. Therefore, the most popular question among new gardeners remains “how often can you do this?”
The fact is that the serum will not cause any harm to the foliage and fruits, so daily treatment of the bushes is possible. Or according to the principle: the more often the better! But daily spraying is very tiring, so the best option is once a week. You won’t have to process the crop as often if you grow tomatoes from strong, disease-resistant seedlings.
You need to spray tomatoes with a lactic acid solution from July, when the risk of fungal diseases increases, and it is important not to miss the moment and prevent the disease from penetrating inside the fruit.
Correct working solution
Serum is never used in pure, undiluted form. Typically, a liter of fresh, strained whey is diluted in ten liters of warm water. The water should be soft, without chlorine, and not lower than 24 degrees Celsius. This solution can be watered at the root or in the furrows.
But precaution is important here - the fatty acid properties of fermented milk raw materials can disrupt the acid-base balance of the substrate, and this is dangerous. If it is used for leaf watering, it can be diluted as 1:3, but be sure to alternate root and foliar feeding.
To spray tomatoes, add a little laundry or tar soap, liquid or grated, to the solution. The soap will serve as a link between the milk and the leaves, like a primer before coating. The milk film will last longer, and its effect will be more effective.
It would be nice to spray the mulch under the plants along with the foliage.
Many gardeners add 10-20 drops of iodine to the working solution when spraying tomatoes. It has an antimicrobial effect on the environment and will repel pests. It is also used for cucumbers.
Iodine can be added not only to whey, but also simply to sour milk - the effect will be the same.
It is advisable to spray with iodine while wearing a mask, because it is a volatile metal, the excess of which is very harmful to humans.
Whey diluted with water forms an acidic environment; in such an environment late blight fungal spores do not develop, and iodine serves as a disinfectant. Treatment with such a solution helps to increase the plant’s immunity. Especially with temperature changes in the second half of summer.
The solution for foliar prevention against late blight is made more concentrated than the usual one for feeding. Why do you need only one glass of water and a few drops of iodine per liter of pure whey? We treat the tomatoes with this mixture the first time during flowering and then after the ovary appears. After this, we spray the tomatoes once every 2-3 weeks.
For greater effectiveness, if you want to play it safe, add Fitosporin to the serum solution.
This method will prolong fruiting.
Dairy supplements
Correctly combining the protection of tomatoes from late blight with their feeding will lead to an impressive and healthy harvest.
To feed tomatoes, you need to dilute not one liter of whey, but two, in a ten-liter bucket of warm water, and add 10 drops of iodine with a couple of tablespoons of wood ash. This composition for foliar feeding makes tomatoes strong and resistant to infections, enriching plants with useful microelements that are important for normal life throughout the entire period of development. And the advantage of this treatment is that, in addition to lactic acid bacteria, late blight will be repelled by ash alkali and we will receive fertilizer and double protection at the same time.
A folk remedy in the form of lactic acid bacteria diluted in water has long been famous for caring for tomatoes. This method of foliar treatment, safe for fruits and humans, has helped more than one generation of summer residents in caring for tomatoes.
To all my advice, I want to add one more, about the video course “How to reliably preserve the harvest” - 12 proven methods for 12 crops so that your work is not in vain, which was recommended to me by friends.
They say that this course has brought them invaluable benefits in preserving the harvest. They recommend it to me too. This is advice from professionals in their field who give recommendations that have been tested in practice.
Happy harvest and see you soon!
Of all the diseases affecting domestic nightshade crops, late blight is the most common. Fortunately, today farmers have at their disposal many means that are effective in combating the disease - copper sulfate, Bordeaux mixture and more. But you can go the other way and spray the tomatoes with whey from time to time - this lactic acid product protects plants from fungus by forming a thin film on the surface of the leaves, preventing microorganisms from penetrating inside.
Whey is a lactic acid product that appears as a result of making homemade cottage cheese or after straining yogurt. Cottage cheese is less nutritious, since the preparation process involves long-term heat treatment. But for garden purposes, you can use any whey, even the one sold in supermarkets.
For a crop such as tomatoes, treatment with whey is very useful, since the dairy product is rich in mineral compounds, amino acids, lactose, and valuable proteins. The fermented milk product not only perfectly fights diseases such as late blight, but also perfectly fertilizes the soil.
Video “Processing”
From the video you will learn how to process tomatoes using whey.
Use in the garden
As a rule, it is customary to spray tomatoes with fermented milk whey in order to prevent the development of pathogenic microorganisms, such as fungal diseases. This is due to the ability of the drink components to suppress the activity of pathogenic bacteria without posing a danger to the plants themselves. 
Pathogens also do not like monacid compounds, which the product is rich in. The use of serum is allowed for young seedlings or adult plants both in greenhouses and in open beds.
Developing, strong tomato bushes can begin to be treated with fermented milk from the first days of July - this will help enrich the young plants with the necessary amino acids. And, of course, this remedy effectively combats such a problem as late blight, despite the insidiousness of the disease that visits most household plots, especially in rainy summers.
The first preventive treatment can be carried out as soon as you plant the seedlings in the beds: it is necessary to spray weak bushes with the serum so that the pathogen cannot infect fragile plants.
Spraying rules
Most farmers prefer to treat tomato beds with whey much more often than the standard scheme suggests - once every ten days. The fact is that milk protection is very short-lived, so it needs to be renewed. As already mentioned, the thin milky film on the surface of plants that the product creates does not allow pathogens to function normally, therefore, thanks to the serum alone, you can completely rid your tomatoes of the dangers of late blight.
To prepare the solution, the whey is diluted with water at room temperature in a one to one ratio. Depending on the size of the tomato bed, you can handle it with a regular sprayer or use a special garden sprayer.
It’s great when it is possible to add the drug phytosporin to the prepared water-whey solution - it will not only increase the crop’s resistance to diseases and pests, but will significantly extend the fruiting period. 
Or you can go even further and combine treatment against diseases with fertilizing. But for this, the solution needs to be prepared in a slightly different way: take 10 liters of water, 2 liters of fermented milk whey, 10 drops of regular iodine and a few tablespoons of wood ash. The drug prepared from these components is intended for foliar feeding and effectively helps plants develop, making them strong, healthy and resistant to diseases and pests.
Considering the fragility of protection, gardeners recommend spraying as often as possible. Of course, it is unlikely that you will be able to do this every day, so you should opt for crop varieties that have increased resistance to the disease.
You cannot neglect the rules that will help reduce the risk of developing the disease to a minimum:
- observe proper crop rotation in your garden - do not plant tomato seedlings where potatoes previously lived; most likely, fungal spores remain in the soil;
- do not wait for the disease to manifest itself and carry out preventive spraying immediately after planting the seedlings;
- the intensity and frequency of spraying will directly depend on weather conditions; the cooler and damper it is, the more often treatment will be required;
- try to take measures to speed up the fruiting period, so the infection simply will not have time to reach your harvest. This is achieved by removing the lower leaves from the tomato bushes as the upper ones form.
But if something irreparable has happened and the disease cannot be stopped, measures must be taken to preserve the remains of the crop. In this case, you need to remove all, even completely unripe, fruits and leave them to “ripen” in a sunny place, preheating them in an oven preheated to 40 degrees for about four hours. Or you can speed up this sanitization and soak the fruits in hot (60 degrees) water for about two minutes. Thanks to such manipulations, the tomatoes will remain healthy and ripen successfully. 
As you can see, all problems can be solved and difficulties can be overcome. The main thing is to love what you do, and a rich harvest will definitely overtake you!
Video “Growing mistakes”
From the video you will learn what mistakes can be made when growing tomatoes.
Many gardeners notice that after rains, tomato shoots become covered with brown spots. Moreover, not only the leaves and stems suffer, but also the fruits. Trying to save their harvest, summer residents are forced to remove the still green specimens from the branches, but even here an unpleasant surprise awaits them. Instead of turning red, the tomatoes begin to turn black and rot. This is due to a disease called late blight, caused by the late blight fungus.
What to do if the leaves have already begun to turn black? Many summer residents prefer to use to combat late blight traditional methods. One of the most popular - milk and iodine for late blight on tomatoes. How to use solution That’s right, we looked at videos on YouTube where experienced gardeners share their experiences.
Recipe No. 1
Ingredients: milk, water, iodine.
- You can buy purchased milk, but it has a short shelf life. It is left for several days to sour.
- Pour 500 ml of sour milk into 10 liters of water and add 2 ml of iodine (convenient to measure with a syringe).
- Mix everything well
Late blight treatment
The treatment is carried out in two stages: watering at the root and spraying on the leaves.
- The resulting solution is watered at the roots of tomatoes to prevent late blight. Consumption for primary treatment: 1 liter of solution per 2 bushes. The treatment is repeated after 2 weeks, but the concentration of the solution is increased: 1 liter of milk is taken per 10 liters of water, the amount of iodine remains the same. Consumption for secondary treatment: 1 liter of solution per 1 bush.
- After watering, you need to leave half a bucket of solution under the root and pour it into a watering can. Then add water to the top of the watering can and now water the tomatoes over the leaves. It turned out that for treatment on leaves, the concentration decreased by 2 times: for 10 liters of water, 1 ml of iodine and 1 glass of sour milk.
Action:
When the milk solution gets on the leaves of tomatoes, it forms a thin protective film. It prevents the penetration of pathogenic microorganisms, and the tomato bushes are under milk “protection”. However, it must be borne in mind that the effect has a limited duration of action, so treatment must be carried out repeatedly, preferably in the morning or evening hours. The procedure is repeated 3-4 times per season.
Important: The essence of the treatment is that fungal spores are afraid of an acidic environment. And it is provided by lactic acid bacteria: kefir, whey or milk. The older the dairy product, the stronger the effect. Therefore, very often to prepare a solution they take not only sour milk, but also fresh whey or kefir. We discussed in more detail the treatment of tomatoes with a solution containing whey.
Recipe No. 2
The solution is effective for tomatoes in a greenhouse, it has been tested in practice many times by the author of one of the videos on YouTube.
- 1 liter of fermented milk product is dissolved in 10 liters of water and 20 drops of iodine are added.
- The solution is poured into a sprayer and the leaves, stems and fruits of tomatoes are treated in a greenhouse or open ground.
- You can spray it again after 2 weeks and use it until the end of the harvest.
- Iodine can be replaced with brilliant green.
Recipe No. 3
Ingredients: milk, water, iodine, boric acid powder.
- To prepare the solution, use warm water. In order for it to heat up, you can put a bucket in the greenhouse in advance.
- It is better to take non-fat milk. The original source does not say whether the milk should be sour.
- 5 grams of boric acid are separately dissolved in 1 glass of warm water.
- Pour 1 liter of milk into 10 liters of water, add diluted boric acid and 20 drops of iodine.
- Mix everything thoroughly, pour into a spray bottle and spray the stems, fruits and leaves of tomatoes against late blight.
Late blight is a very insidious disease. But it can be, if not completely defeated, then at least contained. A set of measures helps save the harvest.
