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Sweet and sour gooseberry is loved by many gardeners. Yes, and how to do without a single bush in your summer cottage, knowing the great benefits of gooseberry? After all, this is the richest source of vitamin C.One of the most difficult problems for novice gardeners is the appearance of powdery mildew on the gooseberry. This disease is the worst enemy for the plant, which destroys not only the fruits, but also eventually kills the viability of the whole bush, affecting even the roots.
Powdery Mildew
The powdery mildew on the gooseberry is a fungal disease spreading through microscopic spores. Gooseberry bushes can become infected through insects that carry spores on themselves, or myceliums with spores can get onto the plant bush with the help of wind masses. 
Mealy dew develops not only on gooseberry bushes, but is also the worst enemy of raspberries, currants, and yoshta. It is not difficult to detect the affected areas of this disease. Mushrooms with spores form a white bloom on the gooseberry foliage, similar to scattered dry flour.
Mealy dew affects not only the leaves of the bush, but also the young shoots of gooseberry. 
If time does not take action, the powdery mildew eventually affects the fruits of the gooseberry. The disease begins its development at the end of May, when the gooseberry forms new shoots and throws out color for the further formation of the fruit ovary. Favorable conditions for breeding spores create a warm weather and a humid atmosphere.
The development of the disease begins with the lower branches of the bush, it is on them that last year's infectious spores can survive. Many summer residents, not recognizing powdery mildew at the very beginning, are surprised at such a picture. 
Powdery mildew looks like a few weeks later, the bright patina becomes coarse and changes its color to brown. Such fruits are unsuitable for consumption because the peel is very poorly peeled from the berries, especially when they ripen.
All affected leaves twist over time, stop growing, and shoots change their arched shape and dry out. Most of the ovary falls, resulting in loss of crop. If the plant does not help, then it simply simply dies.
How to deal with powdery mildew?
Even complex diseases of fruit shrubs such as powdery mildew can be prevented and won. The fight against powdery mildew involves three approaches.
- Agrotechnical - applicable for minor lesions of the bushes, when isolated cases of lesions are detected.
This method consists of planting mildew-resistant varieties of gooseberry and timely pruning of infected branches in autumn or early spring.
Resistant varieties include "Kolobok", "Harlequin", "Ural Grape", "Grushenka", "Kuibyshevsky", "Masha", "Senator", "African", "Jubilee", "Finnish", "Houghton".
Cut infected material is burnt or buried in the soil in places remote from the gooseberry plantation.
With the onset of the first spring heat, it is necessary to remove last year's foliage from under the gooseberry bushes, which can also serve as an excellent breeding ground for spores.
Remove damaged leaflets and branches immediately. Before the buds swell on the branches of the gooseberry bushes, treatment is carried out with a solution of potassium permanganate heated to 90 ° C, it is the hot shower that disinfects all the branches and the soil under the bush itself( two tablespoons of potassium permanganate are diluted in ten liters of water).
Feed gooseberry bushes is only potash and phosphate fertilizers, which are responsible for the formation of high-grade strong shoots that can resist powdery mildew, while nitrogen fertilizers, on the contrary inhibit the development of young shoots, due to which they are more susceptible to the defeat of this disease.
- Chemical - applicable when large gooseberry plantations are infected and consists in spraying the bushes with potent drugs.
It is recommended to spray the bushes before flowering and after it for a more effective result.
For this purpose, copper sulphate( one hundred grams per ten liters of water), Topaz, HOM, Tiovit Jet, Vectra, Cumulus preparations are used.
- Agrochemical - a combination in practice of the above methods for dealing with powdery mildew.
In the question of how to deal with powdery mildew on gooseberries, folk recipes are also valuable, the effectiveness of which is proved by the practice of many gardeners.
Traditional methods of treating gooseberry for powdery mildew include the following remedies:
- preparing a solution for spraying gooseberry bushes from soda and grated household soap( ten liters of water fifty grams of soda and soap);
- preparation of the solution with ash( three pounds of ash per ten liters of water);
- preparation of a solution with urine( one glass of urine for five liters of water).
Spraying of bushes is carried out as well as with chemical preparations, before flowering and after it, if necessary, the action is repeated several more times.
