Chaga Helps Fight Plant Diseases

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Many years ago I read in one magazine that infusion of the tinder fungus helps well against late blight. Before you insist, you need to grind it on a grater. I wanted to test such an infusion in action, since this is a herbal remedy, and we have plenty of this raw material in our forest. But grinding a tinder fungus on a grater is a very time-consuming task, and I decided to try another vegetable raw material - chaga birch mushroom, especially since it is also a tinder fungus, as I found out later.

Since chaga has antimicrobial and antiseptic properties, I decided, so it can protect plants of tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers from various diseases. The biologically active substances included in chaga are powerful biogenic stimulants that increase the defenses of plants. Such biologically active substances are not found in any other tinder fungus. Chaga has an unusually complex chemical composition. It contains organic acids: oxalic, formic, acetic; tannins; polysaccharides. If a single component is missing in the human body or in a plant, the chaga solution compensates for its lack.

Chaga contains trace elements: copper, aluminum, zinc, silver, cobalt, barium, magnesium, sodium, nickel, calcium. The manganese contained in chaga is an activator of many enzymes. From the above, it became clear that chaga can have a beneficial effect on plants as a growth stimulant.

I bought five 50-gram bags of chaga at the pharmacy, poured the chopped chaga into a saucepan and poured five liters of hot (not boiled) water. Insisted for two days at room temperature. Then she strained the infusion. I diluted it with water to the volume of a ten-liter bucket. The cake was poured onto the tomato garden.

I sprayed with this solution tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Moreover, it is necessary to spray so that the solution necessarily hits the lower part of the sheet. It is there that phytophthora spores settle.

I spray greenhouse crops twice a season. The first time I spray it in the second half of May, before the flowering of tomatoes. I plant tomatoes in the greenhouse very early - in mid-April, so by this time they begin to bloom. In late June - early July I repeat this procedure, since by this time the tomatoes will grow up, and new leaves will appear, which also need to be treated for late blight.

I spray the plants in cloudy weather in the morning so that by the evening the leaves are no longer wet. If the solution gets on the fruits, then nothing bad will happen to them - these are plant materials.

In the fall, I sprinkle chaga on the greenhouse beds and embed it in the soil. I use not only the vegetable raw materials themselves, but also the cake left over from the use of chaga in the form of tea. I drink it as a biologically active substance in the spring.

In addition to spraying tomatoes and other greenhouse plants, on the same day I water them with chaga infusion at the root, as well as indoor flowers (in spring), and seedlings (once).

I tested this plant raw material for three years on greenhouse crops. And finally, I forgot what late blight is on tomatoes. The greenhouse door overlooks the planting of potatoes, which are sometimes caught by this scourge, and tomatoes do not get sick! This year I will sprinkle cake from chaga under potatoes, and I will also spray it with infusion against late blight. Earlier, on the day of planting potatoes, I dipped the tubers in the prepared chaga solution, and the potatoes were slightly affected by late blight, and only at the end of August. The solution of chaga was made in the same way as for spraying, only I did not dilute it with water.

Therefore, I believe that chaga is useful not only for people, but also for plants. And the most important thing is plant raw materials, and there is no need to use chemicals on your site. There is only one drawback - it is rather expensive.

Olga Rubtsova, PhD in Geography, gardener, St. Petersburg