It’s that time of year again, but finding an organic fungicide to use can be hard. Try these easy homemade fungicide sprays for your backyard orchard. These sprays can be made out of ingredients you have in your house and whipped up in no time at all!
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Homemade Fungicide For Fruit Trees
What Is A Natural Fungicide?
A natural fungicide is made of organic or natural ingredients instead of harsh or dangerous chemicals that can be harmful to you, your animals, or wildlife around you. The recipes you’ll find below are all organic natural fungicides for your orchard.
Does Dish Soap Kill Fungus?
Yes! Dish soap will kill fungus, which makes it a great ingredient for homemade fruit tree fungicide sprays! We use dish soap in many of our fungicide sprays.
Why Use A Fungicide Spray On Your Fruit Trees?
Why you should use a fungicide spray on your trees is pretty simple, a fruit tree fungicide will help to keep your fruit trees healthy and disease-free leaving you with a better harvest at the end of the season.
When To Use Fungicide Sprays On Your Orchard
You should spray your fruit trees with a fungicide spray at least twice, once when the flower buds first form, Then again when the buds swell but before they open.
How Do You Make Homemade Fungicide Spray?
Making your own homemade fungicide for fruit trees is a great way to save money, while still ensuring that you are raising organic fruit. These four natural fungicide sprays are what we use on our own trees year after year and they are super easy to make!
Homemade Fungicide Spray #1
This fungicide for fruit trees spray is super easy to whip up and can help protect your trees from fungal diseases including Powdery mildew, blight, anthracnose, Botsytis, downey mildew, fusarium wilt, rust, and scab.
Ingredients:
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Quart Warm Water
Small Squirt Dish Soap (we use Castile Soap
)
Directions:
Dissolve baking soda in warm water and add soap. Mix carefully and test on the tree before spraying the whole thing. If this solution is too strong it will burn the leaves. Never spray this in direct sunlight, try to do it on days with little to no wind and in the late evening hours.
Natural Fungicide For Fruit Trees #2
This natural fungicide can be used to treat black spot, leaf spot, and scab mildew. I like to use this one on our peach trees and plum trees every season.
Ingredients:
1 Gallon Water
3 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
Dash Of Molasses
Dash of Mild Dish Soap
Directions:
Mix and spray in the early morning or late evening. Avoid spraying it on windy days or in direct sunlight.
Organic Fungicide For Fruit Trees #3
This garlic fungicide for fruit trees works well to fight against pathogens like powdery mildew, downy mildew, and leaf spot.
Ingredients:
3 Ounces Minced Garlic
1 Ounce Mineral Oil
Dash of dish soap
Directions:
Combine garlic and oil and leave for 24 hours. Then mix into 1 gallon of water add the dish soap and spray. Avoid spraying in direct sunlight or on windy days.
Homemade Fungicide Spray #4
Cornmeal makes another great fungicide for fruit trees to kill soil-borne diseases by stimulating beneficial micro-organisms. I use this on many of our roses when they have fungus.
Use 2 lbs per 100 Sq. feet of horticultural cornmeal
or whole cornmeal
. Spread around the base of the tree and activate it with water.
To create a foliar spray:
1 cup of cornmeal
1 gallon of water
Soak cornmeal overnight, then strain and spray onto the trees.
How To Spray Your Orchard With A Fungicide Spray
Using a tree sprayer (we like to use a 5-gallon bucket and trombone sprayer) thoroughly cover your fruit trees with the fungicide spray. Make sure you wear, gloves, goggles and a mask to keep the spray out of your face and try to wear a hat and long sleeve shirt as well.
Does Rain Wash Off Fungicide Spray?
Whether the rain can or will wash your fruit tree fungicide spray is a really common concern, which causes people to be hesitant to spray before rainstorms. However, once dry fungicide is pretty hard to wash off and the rain has little effect on them.
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Excellent suggestions. Thank you.
Have 20 acre hobby farm with small fruit orchard. Will add you to my favorites. Thank you for your suggestions and expertise. God Bless.
You’re welcome! So glad you found us. God bless!
Great homemade recipes which I prefer. Thank you so much for posting. My apple an plum trees thank you.
Thank you for the tips, definetly i will try this for my apples, peach and plums this summer..Godbless
You’re welcome! God bless you too
Thank you for sharing this information. I wasn’t able to spray my trees earlier this year, and they now the fruit has just started developing. Will spraying now, prevent brown rot?
Now is the perfect time to spray your fruit trees. This is something that will need to be done throughout the season. We usually do it weekly.
My mulberry was growing and produced tons of mulberries then all of a sudden all the fruit disappeared..now the leaves are turning brown and spotted..can I still spray it?
I have a ton of aphids and many ladybugs have come to help me out. I don’t want to kill the ladybugs or any of their larva. I see other places that soap kills ladybugs. Will the dash of dish soap kill the ladybugs and their babies? I also have a powdery mildew on this plum tree that I need to get rid of. However, the tree is really large and not sure if I can get it to the top. Any tips or ideas are welcome I don’t want to lose my tree.
I would steer clear of using soap if you are worried about killing them. You can use a trombone sprayer to reach the top.
Oh, ok, thank you! I’ve never heard of a trombone sprayer. I will look for it for sure.
I’m having trouble finding a trombone sprayer. Most places are sold out, but I did find a syphon sprayer and thought that might work. What are your thoughts?
They can be hard to find, I got ours on Amazon. Yeah, a Syphon sprayer should work!
I am wondering if these natural fungicides help with leaf curl on each trees, I am getting red/brown stuff on leaves then they curl and fall off? Not sure what to do, fruit already developing. Thank you
It should Roz. We use it in our orchard.
My young pear and apple fruit trees have beautiful fruit on them, but some of the fruit has black spots, as do some of the leaves. Can I treat the trees (with the fruit on it) this time of year (late August), and if so, which one of your homemade sprays would you recommend as being best for this? Thanks!
Yes, you can spray them now with a fungicide. I would try spray #2 or #4 to treat them. Make sure you rake up all the leaves this fall and get rid of them so it doesn’t reinfect the tree next year.
I have 3 young apple trees and they all have powdery mildew on them. A few of the leaves have also turned a red/purple color and im hoping its not to late to save them! They are less then a year old , but i can see that all of there new leaves are also becoming infected. I made the 1st homemade mildew spray, but im not sure if it might be too late in the season. With winter coming, can i do anything else to help my apple trees survive?
Powdery mildew is very rarely a tree killer. The color change is probably from the change of season. You can try a mixture of baking powder and water sprayed onto the trees. Once the foliage falls rake it up and burn the leaves. Once the tree is dormant for the season I would use a copper fungicide.
My pears are deformed, very lumpy and small. I was told it could be a boron deficiency. How do I fix this?
Hi Cynthia! Thank you for writing us. According to the University of MA Amherst your soil can be amended with Borax, boric acid, and Solubor. A soil test needs to be done and you can take it to your county extension to make sure the issue is a boron deficiency and if so how severe it is. If your soil is very acidic it is recommended to do a foliar feeding of the boron instead of using it in the soil. https://ag.umass.edu/vegetable/fact-sheets/boron-deficiency
Can these sprays be used on vegetables like courgettes or is it just fruit trees
Yes, they can.