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Milk for powdery mildew
I read online that milk can cure powdery mildew when diluted and sprayed on
plants. Has anyone done this successfully? I tried on some tall shrubs over my vegetable garden but it doesn't appear to be working. |
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Milk for powdery mildew
I've used powdered skim milk. The lactic acid changes the pH of the leaf
surface, making it a hostile environment for the mildew. I don't recommend you use whole milk or any milk with fat. I find one cup powder to a quart of water works for my crape myrtles. I spray it on with a pump up sprayer and I do it every 5 days till I see it working. On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:40:13 -0500, "Someone" wrote: I read online that milk can cure powdery mildew when diluted and sprayed on plants. Has anyone done this successfully? I tried on some tall shrubs over my vegetable garden but it doesn't appear to be working. |
#3
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Milk for powdery mildew
On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:40:13 -0500, Someone wrote:
I read online that milk can cure powdery mildew when diluted and sprayed on plants. Has anyone done this successfully? I tried on some tall shrubs over my vegetable garden but it doesn't appear to be working. Before I'd go spraying milk all over my garden, I'd try to correct the problem culturally. Powery mildew is generally the affect of poor air circulation and poor sanitation. Try opening up some of your affected plants so air can pass through and clean up all the leaf litter you can find. Do not compost this litter... trash it or burn it. Have caution at this time on fertilizing. New, succulant growth is more susceptible to powery mildew. I personally would lean more to copper based sprays to deal with powdery mildew. You'll need to check to see if copper is ok for all your infected plants because copper will damage somethings. It's also in your best intrest to locate the vector (source) of this mildew. It's very likly that it's blowing in from the neighbors house, weeds in an open lot, the woods near your house. If you can find the vector and destroy or treat it, you'll be far more successfully at removing the mildew from your garden all together. If you can remove or find the vector, your best bet is to plant mildew resistant varities. -- http://yard-works.netfirms.com |
#4
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Milk for powdery mildew
In article , "Timothy"
wrote: On Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:40:13 -0500, Someone wrote: I read online that milk can cure powdery mildew when diluted and sprayed on plants. Has anyone done this successfully? I tried on some tall shrubs over my vegetable garden but it doesn't appear to be working. Before I'd go spraying milk all over my garden, I'd try to correct the problem culturally. Powery mildew is generally the affect of poor air circulation and poor sanitation. Try opening up some of your affected plants so air can pass through and clean up all the leaf litter you can find. Do not compost this litter... trash it or burn it. Good advice but a few plants, such as beebalms, clean-up & trimming just won't stop powdery mildew, & a little "preventative" spraying of dilute milk or of neem oil seems to be the only thing that assures these plants are as beautiful at their seasons' end as they were at beginning & middle. I've found skim milk effective in stopping powdery mildew from showing up in the beebalms. Have caution at this time on fertilizing. New, succulant growth is more susceptible to powery mildew. "New succulant growth" is a common phrase in overviews about powdery mildew. But I never see this problem except toward autumn when humidity rises & plants are no longer putting on as much new growth. It's wearing-down deciduous leaves or die-back perennials that are most susceptible (I don't grow things like squashes & cucumbers, so perhaps those have earlier "new succulent growth" problems, I dunno, but for my plants it's exclusively something seen at the end of growing seasons). In my garden at least the only plants ever effected have been beebalm, honeysuckle, & the very lowest leaves of just one of our deciduous azaleas. The azalea requires no treatment at all, as the powdery mildew attacks only the lowest branches that touch the ground, & only at the time the leaves are about to fall anyway; when I'm industrious I pluck them to discard just before they fall, but even that doesn't seem to be essential. The beebalms are another matter. I can get an extra month of beauty out of the beebalms that will bloom into autumn if I treat them preventatively. If I can keep the beebalms from getting mildew, then there is none to spread to the honeysuckles which were never afflicted before the beebalms were planted. When a gardener seems to have excellent "preventative" luck there's always the possibility there never would've been mildew anyway, but it really seems to me that if beebalms are milk-sprayed very occasionally leading up to autumn, the mildew just never appears. And by now there are several horticultural station findings that make this happy outcome proven to be more than random gardeners' luck & lore. I personally would lean more to copper based sprays to deal with powdery mildew. You'll need to check to see if copper is ok for all your infected plants because copper will damage somethings. It's also in your best intrest to locate the vector (source) of this mildew. It's very likly that it's blowing in from the neighbors house, weeds in an open lot, the woods near your house. If you can find the vector and destroy or treat it, you'll be far more successfully at removing the mildew from your garden all together. If you can remove or find the vector, your best bet is to plant mildew resistant varities. I think I'm on solid ground suggesting that horticultural oil or diluted milk are best for effectiveness against powdery mildew, & the least chemically invasive. Milk diluted to as weak as 1 parts milk to 9 parts water were AS GOOD as fungicides in the 1999 Brazillian study that first proved milk was excellent for stopping powdery mildew. In stronger concentrations (diluted to one-fifth to one-half) the efficacy increased -- hence was vastly superior to even the best outcomes ever seen from copper-based & sulfur-based fungicides. Dr. Bettiol in Brazil used diluted whole milk, but other studies used either whey or 1% milk, all with excellent outcomes. Last year I used skim milk very effectively, but when I later saw the actual published studies, they found that a little milk-fat improved the effect (though milk whey was the greater factor). Last year, Peter Crisp of the University of Adelaide (with follow-up studies at Cornell, by Dr Wilcox et al) seems definitively to shown that dilute milk is the superior treatment for powdery mildew (Crisp's study was on vineyards). Crisp said that milk fed the organisms that stopped the development of mildew spoors; other papers say it is changing the pH range just enough to retard the spoors. For other sorts of funguses such as black-spot on roses, the Cornell study shows that milk was not a good choice, but what did work best was horticultural oil mixed oil with a tiny bit baking soda. This was highly effective for BOTH powdery mildew & blackspot. But because neem oil harms bees & ladybug larvae, I prefer milk, & I don't grow much of anything that is susceptible to blackspot except a single large rose that I hand-pluck for any blackspot, easily done when it's the only plant that ever gets it even a little. Most alleged values of compost teas have been wildly exaggerated by a new industry designed to suck money out of gullible gardeners' pockets, selling them all kinds of crapola that while functional is NOT more effective or better than actually cost-effective techniques, & the targetting recipes for narrowly derfined purposes are 95% flimflam designed to to sell easy marks even more unnecessary crapola. But finally some credible research is indicating that compost teas sprayed all over plants (as opposed to in soils) feed the bacteria that compete with & eat mildew spores in much the same way as does milk & whey. All the studies are so new that this information really only reached the larger gardening community between 2001 & 2002. More horticultural station studies are in progress right now, but there's already firm agreement everywhere that milk works extremely well without altering the flavor of crops & by adhering to organic gardening practices. The newest question seems to be: is a dousing of compost tea even better (at feeding the beneficial microorganisms that devour & outcompete the mildew spoors). Crisp by the way said that many Average Gardeners had been using milk for many years for this purpose (long before the first revealing Brazillian study) but until it reached university horticultural station researchers it was just one of those unproven Lore things. Crisp didn't even mention the Dr. Bettiol's earlier study, but knew of the milk treatment as used by people with houseplants. Crisp seems instead to have made a list of ALL the existing alleged treatments for powdery mildew, even those recommended by folksy practitioners, & tested them all. Milk was the hands-down out-front winner. Powdery mildew spores are not highly competitive & ultimately just about ANY treatment works to some degree (except sulfur at low temperatures). The trick is to increase the healthful bacteria on & around the plant. Any chemical treatment that intends to toxify the environment against fungal development is less effective than treatments that increase the healthful microorganisms overall. That would be milk or compost tea. Copper & sulfur fungicides interfer with fungal enzymic activity -- but also interfer with the enzymic acitivity of healthful soil funguses & other microorganisms which are the greater factors in keeping mildew at bay. I only got to try the milk treatment last year. When the beebalms became mildewed I cut them to the ground, discarded the foliage, & as they're fast growers they rapidly grew back with me giving them preventative sprayings of dilute milk. The mildew did not return. Because of the Brazillian, Cornell, & Adelaide studies, I'm convinced that my good luck was not just one-time-random-good-luck, so I am using milk as a preventative this year, with the expectation that I may not see the mildew at all. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
#5
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Milk for powdery mildew
paghat wrote:
...I think I'm on solid ground suggesting that horticultural oil or diluted milk are best for effectiveness against powdery mildew, & the least chemically invasive. Milk diluted to as weak as 1 parts milk to 9 parts water were AS GOOD as fungicides in the 1999 Brazillian study that first proved milk was excellent for stopping powdery mildew. In stronger concentrations (diluted to one-fifth to one-half) the efficacy increased -- hence was vastly superior to even the best outcomes ever seen from copper-based & sulfur-based fungicides.... (snip)... ...The trick is to increase the healthful bacteria on & around the plant. Any chemical treatment that intends to toxify the environment against fungal development is less effective than treatments that increase the healthful microorganisms overall. That would be milk or compost tea. Copper & sulfur fungicides interfer with fungal enzymic activity -- but also interfer with the enzymic acitivity of healthful soil funguses & other microorganisms which are the greater factors in keeping mildew at bay... I have heard these things (milk, baking soda) as garden lore for some time but I'm happy to see that someone has taken the time to do a real test and that it looks promising. For the last couple of years I have been treating my zinnias with ZeroTol, a commercial fungicide (basically hydrogen peroxide, an oxidizing agent, acceptable to the organic community). However, this year I will be trying milk on some plantings and ZT on others to try to compare the result. The powdery mildew can also be a problem on late zucchini and other cucurbits. Given the amount of time I (don't) have to keep records (I can just barely keep my spray log up to date), I doubt that this will be a real scientific study, but I hope at least to get an overview of whether it works or not for me. Email me next fall and ask me how it went. |
#6
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Milk for powdery mildew
On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 10:59:57 -0700, paghat wrote:
sniped Good advice but a few plants, such as beebalms, clean-up & trimming just won't stop powdery mildew, & a little "preventative" spraying of dilute milk or of neem oil seems to be the only thing that assures these plants are as beautiful at their seasons' end as they were at beginning & middle. I've found skim milk effective in stopping powdery mildew from showing up in the beebalms. sniped "New succulant growth" is a common phrase in overviews about powdery mildew. But I never see this problem except toward autumn when humidity rises & plants are no longer putting on as much new growth. It's wearing-down deciduous leaves or die-back perennials that are most susceptible (I don't grow things like squashes & cucumbers, so perhaps those have earlier "new succulent growth" problems, I dunno, but for my plants it's exclusively something seen at the end of growing seasons). In my garden at least the only plants ever effected have been beebalm, honeysuckle, & the very lowest leaves of just one of our deciduous azaleas. The azalea requires no treatment at all, as the powdery mildew attacks only the lowest branches that touch the ground, & only at the time the leaves are about to fall anyway; when I'm industrious I pluck them to discard just before they fall, but even that doesn't seem to be essential. The beebalms are another matter. I can get an extra month of beauty out of the beebalms that will bloom into autumn if I treat them preventatively. If I can keep the beebalms from getting mildew, then there is none to spread to the honeysuckles which were never afflicted before the beebalms were planted. When a gardener seems to have excellent "preventative" luck there's always the possibility there never would've been mildew anyway, but it really seems to me that if beebalms are milk-sprayed very occasionally leading up to autumn, the mildew just never appears. And by now there are several horticultural station findings that make this happy outcome proven to be more than random gardeners' luck & lore. sniped I think I'm on solid ground suggesting that horticultural oil or diluted milk are best for effectiveness against powdery mildew, & the least chemically invasive. Milk diluted to as weak as 1 parts milk to 9 parts water were AS GOOD as fungicides in the 1999 Brazillian study that first proved milk was excellent for stopping powdery mildew. In stronger concentrations (diluted to one-fifth to one-half) the efficacy increased -- hence was vastly superior to even the best outcomes ever seen from copper-based & sulfur-based fungicides. Dr. Bettiol in Brazil used diluted whole milk, but other studies used either whey or 1% milk, all with excellent outcomes. Last year I used skim milk very effectively, but when I later saw the actual published studies, they found that a little milk-fat improved the effect (though milk whey was the greater factor). Last year, Peter Crisp of the University of Adelaide (with follow-up studies at Cornell, by Dr Wilcox et al) seems definitively to shown that dilute milk is the superior treatment for powdery mildew (Crisp's study was on vineyards). Crisp said that milk fed the organisms that stopped the development of mildew spoors; other papers say it is changing the pH range just enough to retard the spoors. For other sorts of funguses such as black-spot on roses, the Cornell study shows that milk was not a good choice, but what did work best was horticultural oil mixed oil with a tiny bit baking soda. This was highly effective for BOTH powdery mildew & blackspot. But because neem oil harms bees & ladybug larvae, I prefer milk, & I don't grow much of anything that is susceptible to blackspot except a single large rose that I hand-pluck for any blackspot, easily done when it's the only plant that ever gets it even a little. Most alleged values of compost teas have been wildly exaggerated by a new industry designed to suck money out of gullible gardeners' pockets, selling them all kinds of crapola that while functional is NOT more effective or better than actually cost-effective techniques, & the targetting recipes for narrowly derfined purposes are 95% flimflam designed to to sell easy marks even more unnecessary crapola. But finally some credible research is indicating that compost teas sprayed all over plants (as opposed to in soils) feed the bacteria that compete with & eat mildew spores in much the same way as does milk & whey. All the studies are so new that this information really only reached the larger gardening community between 2001 & 2002. More horticultural station studies are in progress right now, but there's already firm agreement everywhere that milk works extremely well without altering the flavor of crops & by adhering to organic gardening practices. The newest question seems to be: is a dousing of compost tea even better (at feeding the beneficial microorganisms that devour & outcompete the mildew spoors). Crisp by the way said that many Average Gardeners had been using milk for many years for this purpose (long before the first revealing Brazillian study) but until it reached university horticultural station researchers it was just one of those unproven Lore things. Crisp didn't even mention the Dr. Bettiol's earlier study, but knew of the milk treatment as used by people with houseplants. Crisp seems instead to have made a list of ALL the existing alleged treatments for powdery mildew, even those recommended by folksy practitioners, & tested them all. Milk was the hands-down out-front winner. Powdery mildew spores are not highly competitive & ultimately just about ANY treatment works to some degree (except sulfur at low temperatures). The trick is to increase the healthful bacteria on & around the plant. Any chemical treatment that intends to toxify the environment against fungal development is less effective than treatments that increase the healthful microorganisms overall. That would be milk or compost tea. Copper & sulfur fungicides interfer with fungal enzymic activity -- but also interfer with the enzymic acitivity of healthful soil funguses & other microorganisms which are the greater factors in keeping mildew at bay. I only got to try the milk treatment last year. When the beebalms became mildewed I cut them to the ground, discarded the foliage, & as they're fast growers they rapidly grew back with me giving them preventative sprayings of dilute milk. The mildew did not return. Because of the Brazillian, Cornell, & Adelaide studies, I'm convinced that my good luck was not just one-time-random-good-luck, so I am using milk as a preventative this year, with the expectation that I may not see the mildew at all. This is great information. Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have a few customers who would like to try such a spray but I've never been able to find concrete evidence on it's effectiveness and use. Have these studies been published on the net? If so, could you point me to them? Thanks for your time.... -- http://yard-works.netfirms.com |
#7
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Milk for powdery mildew
Timothy wrote:
...This is great information. Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have a few customers who would like to try such a spray but I've never been able to find concrete evidence on it's effectiveness and use. Have these studies been published on the net? If so, could you point me to them? ... Try google ["powdery mildew" milk] You'll get a lot of stuff, much of it looks like short blurbs for magazines or newsletters, but some of it will have real references. I'm going to see if our extension service can put something out on the subject. |
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Milk for powdery mildew
On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 15:08:40 -0400, Dwight Sipler wrote:
Timothy wrote: ...This is great information. Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have a few customers who would like to try such a spray but I've never been able to find concrete evidence on it's effectiveness and use. Have these studies been published on the net? If so, could you point me to them? ... Try google ["powdery mildew" milk] You'll get a lot of stuff, much of it looks like short blurbs for magazines or newsletters, but some of it will have real references. I'm going to see if our extension service can put something out on the subject. I'm well aware of google and have already done so. Just as you have stated, there are a lot of 'short blurbs' on the subject but I would like to see the quoted studies. I know Cornell is rather good at publishing their studies on the net but didn't see anything from them as of yet. Besides... would love to add another link to my bookmarks folder ;0) -- http://yard-works.netfirms.com |
#9
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Milk for powdery mildew
In article , "Timothy"
wrote: [clips] This is great information. Thanks for clarifying this for me. I have a few customers who would like to try such a spray but I've never been able to find concrete evidence on it's effectiveness and use. Have these studies been published on the net? If so, could you point me to them? Thanks for your time.... If you don't live near an agricultural college (the library will have all the relevant recent articles to hand) then you'll have to go through a regular library's InterLibrary Loan, & usually there's no fee for photocopies. Ask for Williams & Williams: "Cow's Milk Vs Powdery Mildew" in HortIdeas Dec 1999; You could e-mail Peter Crisp direct for tear-sheets of his paper in the "Australian Grapegrower and Winemaker," or for other fragments of his larger research (the whole study is a PhD thesis). His e-mail is Or get paraphrases of the research at several credible websites; here's a copy of the initial press release from U of Adelaide: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/pr/media/.../milkwine.html Bettiol's signal research is in several journals, but the entirety of one of his papers is also he http://www.agrar.de/agenda/bettiol.htm but I first saw it paraphrased in ORGANIC GARDENING. There are several other things available as PDF files I downloaded to my desktop but didn't keep a record of where I got them. But one PDF file of Bettiol's research can be downloaded he http://147.46.94.112/journal/sej/ful...908_180801.pdf Cornell has a large powdery mildew research project that goes back many, many years. All the articles you can find before year 2000 are about efficacy of sundry fungicides & of a single biofungicide, including horticultural oil which they like to cite by trademark name to get the advertisement in for their sponsor. As late as 2000 Cornell promoted fungicides & the one biofungicide obtainable from their funding sources as "the only" effective treatments; the biofungicide AQ10 has since been shown to be one of the poorest of options & Cornell's research in its favor now looks more than averagely funding-source-driven. Cornell was also funded to find out if tydeid mites could control powdery mildew; the mites worked but the method commercially impractical for cost reasons, yet Cornell did a premature press release favorable to their funding source anyway (these types of press releases are primarily to please funders & frequently the findings at the end of a study are not so thrilling as the promises originally made, but there will be no further press releases unless they can again please the sponsors). Here's Cornell's original press release from 1999, http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases.../Mite.bpf.html all but promising tydeid mites were the cat's meow of powdery fungus control, soonafter dropped like a hot potato when within a month the efficacy & ultra cost-effectiveness of milk became known. Cornell would never admit the outcome of their research is ever influenced by brand funding, built-in promotions of brand-name products notwithstanding. And the premature "promotion" of methods that will go down in flames -- that's just part of the publicity machine & is completely out of the hands of the scientists per se. But it's harder to deny the dilemma it put them in when they have a decade's worth of research proving the exellence of fungicides, such as the chemical industry LOVED and re-funded such research annually without a blink to keep the good news coming -- then suddenly all that research is outmoded by finding out milk works better. From the chemical industry's point of view, the fungicides are going to be FOREVER supported by outdated Cornell studies, just like the herbal medicines industry will cite articles fifty years disproven if that's all they have. And Cornell might still expect refunding-without-a-blink if they can just hold off being too aggressive about getting the news out that milk is better. The "Cornell formula" as Cornell first promoted it implied one should use Safers Sunspray oil plus baking soda. Getting a trademarked name in there had nothing to do with the science of it & everything to do with their funding. That they recommended Sodium bicarbonate mixed with the trademark product instead of Potassium bicarbonate was a complete error -- the once-famed Cornell formula was so focused on promoting their sponsor's oil, they failed even to find out the addition of Potassium b. would be way better than Sodium b. The corrected formula is still recommendable as the foremost treatment for blackspot, but for powdery mildew milk is easiest & nothing exceeds it. Cornell has included that fact in "overviews" of all the methods available, but still seemed to highlight trademarked products & bury the essential details re milk further down the list. Cornell cannot afford to put organic methods research high on their agenda until & unless some of their MINOR funders, such as the Organic Farming Research Foundation, can begin to compete with the chemical industry dollar for dollar, which will never happen. If you think that's cynical, you should see what goes on behind the scenes at a research hospital, where human lives are even more in the balance, & it's the drug industry's money rather than patients' health needs that call all the shots. Anyway, in the meantime, web-wise, a conflicted Cornell seems to rely on Science News and Science Daily News to paraphrase their research. And Peter Crisp in Australia & Wagner Bettiol in Brazil continue to get all the glory. (Crisp by the way was funded by vintners eager to obtain organic alternatives for grape-growing, or it might never have been researched -- it's always the money that speaks before the science.) -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
#10
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Milk for powdery mildew
there is no lactic acid in powdered skim milk. there is the sugar called lactose.
lactic acid is the fermentation product of glucose. however, milk is slightly alkaline, a condition that can be reproduced with baking soda. Ingrid I've used powdered skim milk. The lactic acid changes the pH of the leaf surface, making it a hostile environment for the mildew. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List Manager: Puregold Goldfish List http://puregold.aquaria.net/ www.drsolo.com Solve the problem, dont waste energy finding who's to blame ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unfortunately, I receive no money, gifts, discounts or other compensation for all the damn work I do, nor for any of the endorsements or recommendations I make. |
#11
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Milk for powdery mildew
dr. Is it possible that lactobacillus could grow? I understand there is some work with that bacteria and disease suppression. On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 02:07:33 GMT, wrote: there is no lactic acid in powdered skim milk. there is the sugar called lactose. lactic acid is the fermentation product of glucose. however, milk is slightly alkaline, a condition that can be reproduced with baking soda. Ingrid "As crude a weapon as a cave man's club the chemical barrage has been hurled at the fabric of life." Rachel Carson |
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Milk for powdery mildew
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#14
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Milk for powdery mildew
bacteria like wet conditions. the quickest growing bacteria divide every 20 minutes
in optimal conditions. would have to be soaking wet for bacteria to grow. Ingrid Tom Jaszewski wrote: Is it possible that lactobacillus could grow? I understand there is some work with that bacteria and disease suppression. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ List Manager: Puregold Goldfish List http://puregold.aquaria.net/ www.drsolo.com Solve the problem, dont waste energy finding who's to blame ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Unfortunately, I receive no money, gifts, discounts or other compensation for all the damn work I do, nor for any of the endorsements or recommendations I make. |
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