Baking soda frying leaves?

18 years ago

Last week I decided to take action against the PM on my ancient Dorothy Perkins. The PM was only afflicting the new canes. I decided to blast it with the baking soda/lt. oil/water combo mentioned on this forum. So far so good.

I went away for the Fourth of July holiday weekend and came home to find that the leaves on all the previously-PM'd canes had fried, turned black and dropped off. The rest of the plant was unaffected.

Is that what it's supposed to do? Somehow I don't think so.

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Comments (3)

LizzieA
18 years ago
What was your recipe and how much baking soda did you use?
tomtuxman
Original Author
18 years ago
I have a small 1-liter pump sprayer and I used about a heaping teaspoon of baking soda and a few drops of oil. In addition to spraying the Dorothy Perkins, I used up the rest on some other roses and clematis. The weird thing was that the healthy foliage was completely unaffected. But the PM'd foliage blackened and shriveled, and it didn't happen immedaitely, it took a few days. I'm totally at a loss to figure out why.
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LizzieA
18 years ago
Well, that sounds OK. The original Cornell formula is 2TBS Horticultural Oil (Sunspray) and one heaping Tbsp baking soda in 1 gallon of water. Sorry, I have no idea what could have happened, you're right, it's very strange.