To spray or not to spray

I have two outdoor headbands approximately 4-5 weeks into flower that have been fighting powdery mildew since late veg. I was able to knock it down for a time using actinovate and organocide but once flowering got under way I switched to simply spot treating leaves with organocide. In the past week the PM has started to build up steam, showing up on 3-5 leaves each day. I'm wondering if it's not too late to give these ladies one more good spray down with actinovate followed by a dowsing with either organocide or a neem/silica solution suggested by a fellow RIUer. What do you guys think? Am i too far along in flower to spray? If i spray now will my buds taste off? anybody ever foliar feed this late in flower?

a few pics are attached to show how developed my buds are. the second is the top bud and the third a side bud.

thanks for any help

any suggestions out there?

I'm leaning towards not spraying and here's my reasoning: one, i don't want to take any chances messing with the flavor (flavor is utmost important to me). two, it's not too bad right now. it sucks combing through the plants every day but i happen to have the time right now and I don't mind too much. three, I think as night time temps drop into the 50's the PM will be naturally slowed down such that management will be even easier (PM thrives 60-80, if i understand correctly).

Any thoughts? Suggestions on a treatment with a short residual time (don't mind labor intensive) that'll be easiest on the plants and have the least impact on flavor? Do you guys think I'm in danger of a PM issue that'll blow up once the weather sours a little?

It would be a real bummer if these ladies succumb to powdery mildew on the home stretch

id keep spraying actinovate, hate for it to take over. i would spray that girl till the branches started falling over. twice a week really.

I can't see any pm in the pics you've posted. But from my experience once you get pm outside it doesn't go away. The best you can do is spray the effected fan leaves and pull the real bad ones and hope it doesn't spread too bad. Also pruning a little inside and near ground to promote airflow wouldn't hurt.
And if it was me I would remember not to grow w/e those strains were outdoors again.

the pm isn't in the pics because of how light the infection is. But it's there.

Would pruning the inner nodes at this point in flower be too stressful for the plant and effect my yield? I've wondered about this... from what I understand, the plant spends time and energy building up hormones for budding near the bud site. When the node is pruned, in addition to creating a pathway for disease, that effort is lost and the plant has to spend more time and energy transitioning from a budding state to a growth and repair state and the yield is negatively effected. I feel like that's the general belief regarding pruning in flower, from what i gather browsing internet forums. But, it seems pruning the inner nodes would have very minimal impact due to the fact that they're perpetually shaded and have little bud development. The small amount of bud development, it seems, means the plant is already neglecting the node and sending little in the way of hormones to the area. So, it seems clipping one small neglected node, among the hundred or more on a larger plant, would be little more than a hiccup. Of course, I'm no botanist and this is merely speculating on my part, but it seems logical.

Obviously, pruning on behalf of a disease is another story. Then, I suppose, it's a balancing act between which is more invasive. Fortunately, I don't think my ladies are there yet.

I was also thinking of just dowsing the inner, less developed nodes with organocide. That'd keep the pm from popping up in the thickest areas of the plant and since those buds wouldn't amount to much anyways the loss would be small. I'm sure that'd be less stressful than snipping them.

And the strain is headband. I don't know if it's as much the strain as it is the prevalence of PM in my area. You can walk down the street and nearly every plant growing along the storm drains are covered in it. Same with my neighbors yards.