seeds damping off sucks, seedling-mowing vermin suck

[Aji hombre]

if I get any new starts in the ground at all this year, it will be pure perseverance. Ah well, at least the overwinters are leafing out.

 

[geeme]

Too many of us know your pain. In case you don't already know, damping off is a fungus on the surface of the soil. To prevent it, bottom-water when you can, ensuring the water does not reach the soil's surface, and run a fan on the plants a few times a day to help keep the surface dry. You might be able to save some if the fungus has already started. It can be hard to detect, but the surface will have a brown, what I describe as "mealy" surface to it. Scrape this off, then mist the soil surface with hydrogen peroxide. Mist it for several days to get rid of as much fungus as possible.

 

[patrick]

geeme is on the money. Air movement is the key.

 

[Aji hombre]

Thanks for the advice. My seedlings were outside during the day and inside at night--and bottom-watered (rather sparingly, too). I attribute the damping off problem to some cooler temps (favorable to fungus) and a pre-infested medium. I tried "getting fancy" by making what seemed like a nice seedling medium--orchid mix for drainage and a good amount of fine-sieved dried (but not sterilized) worm castings from last year. I'm guessing that the castings may have contained a lot of bad fungal spores or conidia. I lost about half of the sprouts. Lesson learned: use worm castings in mix only for older plants that are past the damping-off risk.

But the survivors would have natural fungus resistance, right? Well a few days after transplanting to four-inch pots they were mowed down below the cotyledons by something nocturnal--rat, squirrel, bunny. They were just taking off, too. Roots had spread about half an inch out of the original root ball.

I've got round two coming up in sterile mix now. And so far no luck with snap traps in the garden...

 

[ntenny]

But the survivors would have natural fungus resistance, right? Well a few days after transplanting to four-inch pots they were mowed down below the cotyledons by something nocturnal--rat, squirrel, bunny. They were just taking off, too. Roots had spread about half an inch out of the original root ball.

(I just clicked the "like" button, which isn't quite the right word, but there wasn't a "sympathize" button!)

The little @#*($&@ers *know* somehow when it will hurt the most for them to demolish your plants. Just down the coast from you, we seem to have a particularly serious grade of rabbits---they keep getting past the dogs, through the chicken wire, under the railroad ties, over the screening, you name it. I swear they're dropping their lapine Special Forces troops into my garden by helicopter when no one's looking.

The only thing that's ever helped much is keeping the containers closer to the house, where the dogs patrol more assiduously. By which I mean they lie around on the lawn, but even that appears to keep the bunnifauna away a *little* bit. Wretched little burglars.

-NT