Dragon's Blood / Sangre de Grado

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I've seen the research on some of the Phyton products digging around on the internet. They didn't use a bunch of orchids to demonstrate the efficacy of the products, and they were targeting commercial growers rather than hobbyists to make it worth their while. They did use potatoes or some other basic crop plant.

I was actually pretty surprised as to how low the success rate was to consider the product effective. It was statistically significant compared to the untreated plants, but not much beyond that.
 
whoa whoa whoa!!!
I know we did not bring the awful erwinia into this. In my experience, since I did loose half my collection to this nasty bug, the ONLY thing that will work on erwinia is Phyton 27. trust me, i tried it all.
 
whoa whoa whoa!!!
I know we did not bring the awful erwinia into this. In my experience, since I did loose half my collection to this nasty bug, the ONLY thing that will work on erwinia is Phyton 27. trust me, i tried it all.

I've lost plenty to erwinia too, but Phyton 27 was no panacea for me. I've had better "luck" with dragons blood.
 
Best to choose the product within our personal comfort zone. Phyton 27, both a bactericide and a fungicide, would be my choice for a more expensive plant and I will admit that I wouldn't use anything but Phyton 27 on a plant that was a gift regardless of whether it was common or not but I'd still be willing to try the Dragon's Blood on an easily replaced plant.
 
whoa whoa whoa!!!
I know we did not bring the awful erwinia into this. In my experience, since I did loose half my collection to this nasty bug, the ONLY thing that will work on erwinia is Phyton 27. trust me, i tried it all.

You tried it all?
Is that a factual statement?
Did you try Dragon's Blood on your plants and have it not work?
 
Corn gluten meal!!! That's the kind of stuff that gives organics a bad name. I'll never forgive Garden's Alive (an otherwise decent company) for marketing that crap. When it first came out, I had a student investigating its pre-emergent herbicidal properties in a research experiment...the only way it worked, when it did, was by getting moldy...and perhaps the mold killed some seedlings. I actually bought some 2 years ago. For the hell of it, I planted grass seed where I had applied it...seed came up normally. as did crabgrass and other weeds....At least Garden's Alive admitted that diatomaceous earth isn't effective...but they should really discontinue this garbage. Take care, Eric
 
Hey wait a minute ;) I think it works! I do reapply it every 4 weeks but I think it works! Don't I count for anything? So don't burst my bubble here and lead me to believe that all I've been doing with my corn gluten meal is fertilizing and making my ground look a godawful baby barf yellow for the past few years?

What did you think about the research done by Iowa State if you don't mind my asking?
 
You tried it all?
Is that a factual statement?
Did you try Dragon's Blood on your plants and have it not work?

ok Lance, you called my bluff. At the time, i had tried most chemicals i could get at our ag supply store. The problem with erwinia is that it kills so fast and thus, requires and extremely aggressive treatment.
I still am waiting for the opportunity to try my DB out though.
 
ok Lance, you called my bluff. At the time, i had tried most chemicals i could get at our ag supply store. The problem with erwinia is that it kills so fast and thus, requires and extremely aggressive treatment.
I still am waiting for the opportunity to try my DB out though.

That's better. :poke:
I hope you never have the need to try the Dragon's Blood. At least now you have it should you need it.
 
Best to choose the product within our personal comfort zone. Phyton 27, both a bactericide and a fungicide, would be my choice for a more expensive plant and I will admit that I wouldn't use anything but Phyton 27 on a plant that was a gift regardless of whether it was common or not but I'd still be willing to try the Dragon's Blood on an easily replaced plant.

Phyton 27 is Copper sulfate and soap. Which means its a generic biocide in the right dose. It will whack aquatic crustaceans and other invertebrates at much lower doses than it will kill a fungus, or most bacteria. The active agent is copper, the soap is there to get the copper past cell walls. There's less magic to it than dragons blood, but not much more than hydrogen peroxide.

True antibacterials came from fungi, and the range of properties from phytochemicals is astounding, so to me switching to herbal cures is more like surgery rather than sledgehammer medicine.

I have found a company that specializes in antibiotics and hormones for plants, and carbenocillin was one of their recommendations for Erwinia, however the cost of most of their products was about like Enstar. So treating one plant at a time was not cost effective.
 
When using aggressive copper compounds such as Phyton 27 as a spray or drench would there also not be a substantial loss of beneficial micro fauna? We don't really want to kill all bacteria and fungi in our collections do we?
 
There's a lot more to Phyton than the 'copper sulfate and liquid dawn' description you give. I'll admit theres a lot to be found in the realm of natural cures, but like damn near every farmer and professional grower in the world, I'll take the stuff produced in a well-funded lab anyday. Nothing against DB, but if it was clearly better than Phyton and Cleary's for serious infections... well enough said.
 
As mentioned before, nobody has been able to synthesize the stuff.

SO???? WTF does that matter????
our ability to synthesize something does in no way make that thing more powerful. Many of the compounds in it I'm sure can be synthesized and its only a matter of time before we synthesize anything.
 
Phyton 27 is pretty much all I know to use when I am confronted with an infection that I haven't had cultured where a secondary bacterial infection, or secondary fungal infection for that matter, could very well be present but undetected. How many times have we sent a sample out for culture only to learn that there was more than one "bad boy" present? The way I figure it is that once a plant is stressed that it is open to further infections and that you act quick and don't sit around waiting to culture your foe. Ok, there are other fungicides such as Captan out there for some types of fungal infections but I don't want it in my house and would prefer to let the plant die than to use Captan so I would definitely try the Dragon's Blood in that particular situation. I am admittedly a creature of habit but am willing to experiment a little bit, just not on a real expensive or gift plant out the gate. Disclaimer- I've only used the Phyton 27 on carnivorous plants and hoya, never on an orchid. To date, the only issues I have had with orchids have been scale and that lousy slug. Based on my understanding, I would think that mycorrhizal fungi would be killed by copper sulfate but what would it matter if we already lose our beneficial bacteria and fungi every time we repot into fresh medium? And, if one was concerned, one could always place a drape around the base of the plant and remove it when finished spraying the plant.
 
Yeah, the way i see it is that I can introduce new beneficials simply by re-potting, they're replaceable.
 
There's a lot more to Phyton than the 'copper sulfate and liquid dawn' description you give.

From the Phyton27 website:

ACTIVE INGREDIENT
Copper Sulphate Pentahydrate*.... 21.36%
INERT INGREDIENTS................ 78.64%
.....................................................100.00%
*Copper as Metallic..........................5.5%

I'm not being snarky. I'm curious as to what the inert ingredients are.
 

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