ZABIBU

The fruit is in good shape despite a short but heavy storm yesterday and we even had hail stones which worried me considerably at the time. Another 6.5 mm of rain but no damage. Today we had beautifully clear skies again and this will help the sugar build up. Perhaps this is it for the unusual weather now. We did one last round with Thiovit Jet (wettable sulphur) and Coptrace so as to keep the mildew in check, because there are still some signs that it is in there and with the rainfall and the sunshine we are just making sure that the mildew leaves the fruit alone.

Interestingly we have used fresh milk or skimmed milk for mildews fairly sucessfully in the past and again this year, diluted 1:10. It seems to control and prevent mildew so long as there is nothing severe to treat.

 Milk diluted 1:10 with water-  we found this to be a helpful mildew control and treatment.

I had first read about this being used in Australia and then I came across a renowned vintner called Nicolas Joly who also spoke of using milk successfully for mildew control. I will talk about Coulee de Serrant and the day we had with him in the Loire in another post later.