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Originally Posted by greentiger87
Interesting. I definitely didn't get the same results with Actinovate. It seems to work splendidly for soil borne diseases, but for foliar disease on tomatoes, it just delays it. It's not sufficient unless I alternate it with daconil/mancozeb to act as a protectant. It may just be different disease pressure down here.
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I would guess you have more disease pressure in your area. The climate in Cincinnati is very similar to St. Louis. We get a fair amount of humidity (along with 90 degree temps.) in July, August and early September, but I would imagine your humidity is similar to Florida.
When I sprayed my pepper and tomato plants, I basically sprayed until the water was running off of the plants. Based on the Natural Industries website, the more Actinovate a person applies, the better. If cost isn't a major concern, you could possibly try using a heavier dose per gallon of water (for example a 1/2 tsp. as opposed to 1/4 tsp.). I'm not saying this will necessarily work in your area, but the Natural Industries website would seem to suggest your chances of success would improve with a heavier dosage, and it might be worth while to do a small trial with a more concentrated spray to see if it has any impact or not.
The one thing that really stood out to me was how Actinovate seems to stimulate plant growth (I guess by improving the plants ability to intake nutrients from the soil). In my previous post I mentioned my pepper plants.
For my tomato plants, I typically prune all of the leaves off up to the lowest set of fruit. Therefore, at the end of the season, the bottom 5 - 6 ft. of my plant will just be the main stems. When I sprayed with Actinovate, I noticed a lot of plant regrowth on this bottom 5 - 6 ft. (similar to my sweet pepper plants). In particular, my Sarnowski Polish Plum plant not only re-grew, but also set a large number of tomatoes. As a first time user of Actinovate, I was probably more impressed with this aspect of the product than its ability to minimize diseases.