Bordeaux mixture: production and use in gardening and gardening

It's hard to imagine that even 30 years ago, tomatoes and cucumbers, for example, could not be sprinkled, and they grew remarkably. It is practically impossible to get a normal crop without auxiliary plant protection. One of the simplest and safest means used in gardening to combat plant diseases is the Bordeaux mixture, from which a solution is made for spraying plants at different stages of development.

Depending on which plants, and most importantly, at what stage the spraying is carried out, a different concentration of the prepared solution is used. Fruit trees are treated with a 3% solution before bud opening, and 1% solution is used on the leaves to not burn the delicate tissue of the leaves.

Bordeaux mixture is sold in specialized stores in the finished form. But it is more expedient to prepare it yourself. First, it is desirable to use it within a day. She is not subject to storage. Secondly, cooking it is not difficult, no special skills are required. In stores, kits are sold with the already weighed quantity of its constituents in the form of powders. You can not mix them.

The Bordeaux mixture is prepared as follows.

To prepare 10 liters of a 1% solution, take 100 g of copper sulfate and dissolve in 5 liters of water. Copper sulfate in cold water dissolves poorly. Therefore, it makes sense to first pour the powder, say, a liter of hot water, and when the powder is completely dissolved dilute to 5 liters. In a separate dish, dilute lime with five liters of water, then the finished lime milk is filtered through gauze or stocking. Mixing both liquids, you need to pour copper sulfate into the milk of lime, but not vice versa. The mixture must be prepared in non-metallic containers.

Ready Bordeaux mixture should be sky-blue. But it is better to test it before use, so as not to burn the leaves of plants. To do this, use litmus paper. The red should turn blue, and the blue should stay blue. If (which often happens) at hand it is not, you can put an ordinary knife or nail into the solution. If after a couple of minutes on it there is a characteristic plaque, the liquid is not suitable, it is necessary to add lime (milk) to it, otherwise the acid will damage the petals. If there is no plaque, everything is in order, you can start spraying. When the mixture is prepared for spraying unblown trees, you can do without checking. In this case, the mixture does not damage the plants.

If a 1% Bordeaux mixture is prepared, its use is quite extensive. In fact, you can spray all the plants growing on the site. It should only be taken into account that the so-called waiting period is 15 days. That is, from the last spraying to harvesting, it should take just that much time. In addition, there are restrictions on the number of sprayings per season. For example, apple, pear and grape can be processed no more than six times . Plums, cherries, cherries, potatoes and tomatoes suffer less spraying - no more than four. Gourds, onions, cucumbers, currants and gooseberries are sprayed only three times per season.

For spraying in early spring (according to unblown kidneys), the mixture is prepared in this proportion: 400 liters of lime and 300 g of copper sulfate are taken per 10 liters of water. The technology of solution preparation is the same as in the previous case. This 3% Bordeaux fluid, its use is limited to a single spray in the beginning of spring.

The remedy is effective against many diseases, has been used for more than a hundred years and many gardeners know it as a "best friend and irreplaceable helper" in the garden. But perhaps not everyone knows that instead of lime, you can use sodium carbonate, ordinary soda. It turns out not less effective means, only it is called the Burgundian mixture.