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seeds New seedlings just arrived -what soil mix??
- Thread starter Odysseus
- Start date
Not sure that peppers would like the smoke residue, but certain soils are better used indoors after sterilized one way or another, to cut down on gnats if nothing else. Yeah it'll kill the microbes but as far as bacteria goes, it'll be recolonized in a few days after water is added. I just don't see the soil being the limitation on this grow unless it compacts too much and rots the roots, or of course if there is too little of it!
Dave2000 said:
I'm not sure that I believe that a sterilized soil is going to be recolonized after adding only water, and certainly not after just a couple of days. Recolonizing, at any rate, is the process of starting over, not resuming an established microbe community.
Cooking soil is a pretty radical course of action for something as easily treatable as a fungus gnat, any way you slice it. But it's not my money or time, so fire it up, Chez Substrato!
^ Soil is like anything else perishable. Leave (good pH) damp food out for a few days and you can't eat it because of what? Bacteria and/or mold. In fact many packaged soil was already sterilized because consumers don't like seeing mold and fungus growing in what they buy, or else it was dried out so much that it still killed a large % of the population.
Literally, in some geographic regions if that packaged soil at the store wasn't sterilized ahead of time, especially when stored outdoors during a rainy season, there would be mushrooms growing out of torn bags! There still are if it sits around long enough.
It's not at all radical. It's an established practice, extremely common for indoor plant soil to be sterilized to control gnats and fungus, and even outdoor soil, although I think you underestimate treatment for fungus gnats because it's not just a matter of control on your young plants, but also the nuisance of them hatching and flying all over the house, coupled with repopulating in OTHER existing house plants, or your sink drain, A/C floor drain, toilet tank, fruit, etc. Some people are okay with a few hundred random gnats and some are not.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sterilize+soil
Regardless, sure you can place more value on microbes then treat a gnat, fungus, or aphid problem later. There are many paths to arrive at the same destination, but IMO far far too much emphasis is often placed on microbes in this forum as if they're some rare or elusive thing when you can't really prevent them without exotic, repetitive chemical treatment.
On the other hand, this is yet another reason why I'd recommend growing outdoors instead of inside in AR. Let nature do it's thing, as close to what the plants evolved to thrive in as possible.
Literally, in some geographic regions if that packaged soil at the store wasn't sterilized ahead of time, especially when stored outdoors during a rainy season, there would be mushrooms growing out of torn bags! There still are if it sits around long enough.
It's not at all radical. It's an established practice, extremely common for indoor plant soil to be sterilized to control gnats and fungus, and even outdoor soil, although I think you underestimate treatment for fungus gnats because it's not just a matter of control on your young plants, but also the nuisance of them hatching and flying all over the house, coupled with repopulating in OTHER existing house plants, or your sink drain, A/C floor drain, toilet tank, fruit, etc. Some people are okay with a few hundred random gnats and some are not.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sterilize+soil
Regardless, sure you can place more value on microbes then treat a gnat, fungus, or aphid problem later. There are many paths to arrive at the same destination, but IMO far far too much emphasis is often placed on microbes in this forum as if they're some rare or elusive thing when you can't really prevent them without exotic, repetitive chemical treatment.
On the other hand, this is yet another reason why I'd recommend growing outdoors instead of inside in AR. Let nature do it's thing, as close to what the plants evolved to thrive in as possible.
And that's a problem why, exactly? The presence of fungii is indicative of a rich, healthy substrate. Organic growers strive for a soil web that is interlaced with fungii. If you're not growing organically, and like dealing with all of the issues that surround trying to maintain a sterile medium, well OK. You guys are usually the ones that are experts in identifying pests and diseases, because you get them all, eventually.
Why would you want to prevent microbes? Why would anyone even try?
Umm, yeah. Growing peppers indoors is cool, but not very practical. Growing weed indoors is understandable. Maybe this is just baby steps in the evolution of a grower? LOL
^ Surely you realize that shoppers would turn up their noses at moldy, smelly soil and pick a bag that looks *clean*. I'm guessing you would too, but it's not about you, it's about marketing to the majority consumer group.
Organic growers are not some kind of stereotypical group that do xyz. The idea that pests and diseases are more likely with people who eliminate mold, fungus, insects, is backwards, though nobody tries, or at least succeeds to maintain a sterile soil. It's just a reset of the poor conditions at the soil processing facility or sitting out at a gardening store.
As already mentioned it's about not introducing problems into your home environment, but whatever was already in that home environment, will still be there with new plants or not. Sterilized soil is sterile for that one moment in time, or until you open the bag and add water.
Many microbes are beneficial, but that doesn't make ALL of them magically delicious. Your plants are competing with some of them, not all are symbiotic.
If you like mold spores and gnats in your home, if you want to invite health problems just in case you're right, it is your right to do so. There is no need, no factual basis that sterilizing soil ahead of time is a problem for indoor plants. If you drink the kool-aid and repeat urban myths without remembering that people do it with success, your argument is a lost cause. Light is the limitation on this grow.
Organic growers are not some kind of stereotypical group that do xyz. The idea that pests and diseases are more likely with people who eliminate mold, fungus, insects, is backwards, though nobody tries, or at least succeeds to maintain a sterile soil. It's just a reset of the poor conditions at the soil processing facility or sitting out at a gardening store.
As already mentioned it's about not introducing problems into your home environment, but whatever was already in that home environment, will still be there with new plants or not. Sterilized soil is sterile for that one moment in time, or until you open the bag and add water.
Many microbes are beneficial, but that doesn't make ALL of them magically delicious. Your plants are competing with some of them, not all are symbiotic.
If you like mold spores and gnats in your home, if you want to invite health problems just in case you're right, it is your right to do so. There is no need, no factual basis that sterilizing soil ahead of time is a problem for indoor plants. If you drink the kool-aid and repeat urban myths without remembering that people do it with success, your argument is a lost cause. Light is the limitation on this grow.
Hahahahaha, that's hilarious! Actually, the intention wasn't to smoke the dirt; just heat it up to 250 for an hour or so. I had to use the smoker (which is actually a large grill with an offset firebox providing indirect heat) because the wife didn't like the idea of me cooking dirt in her brand-new oven. Anyway, after the soil was sterilized, I added worm castings which re-inoculated the soil with beneficial microbes.
I have had the plants under 16 hours of artificial light (just what I could scrounge up before I get the LED built (a couple shop lights, several CFLs. The soil stayed wet much longer than I thought it would and is still plenty moist now. The leaves have continued to curl and brown spots have appeared on several leaves. Does anyone have any ideas what is causing this?
I have had the plants under 16 hours of artificial light (just what I could scrounge up before I get the LED built (a couple shop lights, several CFLs. The soil stayed wet much longer than I thought it would and is still plenty moist now. The leaves have continued to curl and brown spots have appeared on several leaves. Does anyone have any ideas what is causing this?
You are assuming that I've oversimplified something, here. I look at this a bit more philosophically than you do. For me, this is more like trying to treat cancer with chemotherapy. Sure, you get the bad cells, but you do it at the expense of the entire immune system. In many cases, it's not the cancer that's going to kill you, but that cold you catch on some Sunday afternoon. When you choose a synthetic regimen, you have taken away the natural mechanisms, and become responsible to give that plant everything that it needs, in a readily available form. If something fails, you have to troubleshoot it, and be aware of the interactions with other processes in the plant. I'm lazy. I'd rather keep my soil alive, and let it provide. You know, like nature. And I do think you greatly overstate the competition of microbes in the substrate. Unless there is something pathogenic - which is pretty rare - it's pretty unnecessary to try to guess what it is good and bad in the soil web. This isn't really where this topic was meant to go, though, now was it?
Personally, I've never been able to grow anything as easily or healthy with conventional methods (i.e., synthetic ferts and "sterile" substrate) as I have with established, living soil web. ("organic", if you like) No more deficiencies of anything, far less pests. (or the mitigation of said pests to non-threatening) But hey, that's just me.
OP, you could really use some more drainage. I'm not sure that I'd agree with the up potting just yet, unless it's to get it into a substrate that drains better. All of the other discussions aside, the last thing you want in an indoors grow, are roots that are constantly wet. That's where the fungus that I previously discounted, becomes problematic.
Do you have a fan on those plants?
Also, consider some sort of "breathing" container when you pot up. Air pots, grow bags, etc... And get some perlite in there.
Do you have a fan on those plants?
Also, consider some sort of "breathing" container when you pot up. Air pots, grow bags, etc... And get some perlite in there.
I'm hesitant to disturb the roots again as they only arrived one week ago today, and I re-potted them from the tiny containers in which they were shipped to the 8" containers just 6 days ago. However, I may need to do that so I can lighten the soil with some more perlite and coco coir (pretty sure I added too much worm castings because the soil got pretty dense and muddy with that initial watering). They are growing new leaves, but they are lighter green than the rest of the plant and some are a little bubbly but they look healthy overall, I guess.
So now the question is do I take a chance disturbing the roots just 6 days after I put them in these new pots?
So now the question is do I take a chance disturbing the roots just 6 days after I put them in these new pots?
Your roots haven't had any real time to expand into the new media that surrounds the original rootball. Your call, but waiting isn't going to help you. Set it back a little now, or risk losing your plants later. Peppers don't like wet feet, and the indoor environment will only exacerbate the problem.
Thanks! I'll do it this afternoon.
By the way, as to the side discussion about sterilized soil, etc: the last time I grew peppers, they were in pots outdoors. At the end of the summer, I brought 3 of them inside. I didn't notice any bugs on them. Within a day the fungus gnats made their presence known. Within 2 days, they had begun breeding in the soil of every other houseplant in the house and in 3 days I had hundreds of the little bastards in my house. It took a month to get it under control.
As an aside, I work in biomedical research and have done my share of cell and tissue culture. When you want to grow something (a cell line, a species of bacteria, a plant, etc.), you want the only thing growing in your media to be the things you are trying to grow (in our case, that would be the both the plant and beneficial species of bacteria). The only way to accomplish this is to start with sterile media and then introduce only the organisms you wish to grow. Then you must maintain a contaminant free environment (in the house, it is not sterile, but there are no bugs, so the plants should stay bug free; sterile soil was heavily inoculated with beneficial microbes, so they will have a major head start on out competing any harmful microbes in the air that try to colonize the soil after the fact. In our case, sterilizing the soil for indoor use is to start with no unforeseen variables.
By the way, as to the side discussion about sterilized soil, etc: the last time I grew peppers, they were in pots outdoors. At the end of the summer, I brought 3 of them inside. I didn't notice any bugs on them. Within a day the fungus gnats made their presence known. Within 2 days, they had begun breeding in the soil of every other houseplant in the house and in 3 days I had hundreds of the little bastards in my house. It took a month to get it under control.
As an aside, I work in biomedical research and have done my share of cell and tissue culture. When you want to grow something (a cell line, a species of bacteria, a plant, etc.), you want the only thing growing in your media to be the things you are trying to grow (in our case, that would be the both the plant and beneficial species of bacteria). The only way to accomplish this is to start with sterile media and then introduce only the organisms you wish to grow. Then you must maintain a contaminant free environment (in the house, it is not sterile, but there are no bugs, so the plants should stay bug free; sterile soil was heavily inoculated with beneficial microbes, so they will have a major head start on out competing any harmful microbes in the air that try to colonize the soil after the fact. In our case, sterilizing the soil for indoor use is to start with no unforeseen variables.
No disrespect to your field or experience - I don't disagree with your assertion - but you won't find a single plant scientist anywhere who can definitively explain the difference between beneficial or harmful microbes to any acceptable degree. Their interactions, what they are doing at what time, and sometimes, even which is which. I have never met someone who can tell me what microbes I need in what quantity. From everything I can glean, we add certain strains based on what's shown to be naturally occurring in some fantastic growing environment, somewhere. This is a very deep subject, and rife with debate. And, of course, you are correct. If you choose to try to grow something indoors, and you want to eliminate the possibility of contamination of the ambient environment, you try to create a sterile environment, and control the variables - at which point you MUST control all of the variables, and you must understand how to do so. When you take control of variable X, nature no longer autonomously provides dependency to variable Y and Z. (you now have control, but by necessity must control) And yes, you are also right about limiting a single strain of growth - but that's a lab environment. We can both agree that once you've brought anything out of a controlled environment, contamination is inevitable. If you want to get serious about indoor growing, you'll really want to invest in a grow tent - at which point you'll probably also want to raise something more worthy of the venture than peppers.
I'm kind of dumb and lazy. I can understand your reasons for growing indoors, and appreciate your struggle to make it happen. (because I've done it myself) Growing vegetative plants indoors, and getting any kind of respectable yield, is not an easy undertaking. I keep coming back to nature. Fungus gnats and all. LOL
I'm kind of dumb and lazy. I can understand your reasons for growing indoors, and appreciate your struggle to make it happen. (because I've done it myself) Growing vegetative plants indoors, and getting any kind of respectable yield, is not an easy undertaking. I keep coming back to nature. Fungus gnats and all. LOL
Then you haven't met an actual botanical scientist. I actually dated one for a couple months -she studied the effect of root nematodes on soybean crop yields. If you were to ask a real scientist, they most certainly could tell you that beneficial microbes are those which do two things: A) do not harm the plant and B) provide something beneficial to the plant such as breaking down more complex organic matter to more easily utilized nutrients, or providing reduced susceptibility to disease. They could give you a few examples such as Enterobacter cloacae, Anthrobacter globiformis, Anthrobacter nicotianae, and some of the Pseudomona species. They could tell you that harmful microbes (such as the tobacco mosaic virus or Pseudomona aeruginosa) are those which cause disease or reduce the overall health of the plant. As far as what microbes in what quantity you need. . . no one is going to tell you that, because you as a layperson can't do anything with that information. Are you going to go down to the local home & garden store and ask for some Anthrobacter globiformis? If you could manage to acquire some, could you count them to determine how much water you need to add to reach 800,000-1,000,000 cells/milliliter? No.solid7 said:
Plants are not my area of research and look what I could tell you. Talking to a botanical scientist would blow your mind.
Sorry, you are going above and beyond to prove a point. The interactions of all those different microbes in a soil web are something on the order of mapping geonomes. (except that's actually been done) They are complex symbiotic relationships, which are not (in a purely scientific context) well understood. Yes, specific ones are, no doubt. They are understood well enough to form the *basis* of a science. Soil biology is still a young and growing field - especially with the modern trend of sustainable farming. Wikipedia to confirm this as quickly as you've told me what you know.
While I choose not to reveal what my profession or education is, I can assure you that I am not a layperson. I have worked very closely with scientists in the fields of Biology and Natural Sciences.
Nothing wrong with being a layperson. I've no formal education in botany and even managed to poison myself from fertilizer exposure a few years back, but I've been growing since knee high to a grasshopper, and more recently have managed to raise a stink on this forum enough to get people to post a lot of good info, and I did once stay in a Holiday Inn Express.solid7 said:
You're right -I really did go a little above and beyond to prove a point, sorry. But the point was that your assertion that "you won't find a single plant scientist anywhere that can explain the difference between beneficial and harmful microbes to any acceptable degree" is just completely incorrect. Hell, most college students studying botany could answer that question correctly, and they still have to earn their bachelors and then get a Ph.D. before being called a scientist.solid7 said:
Anyway, I appreciate the advice about my peppers needing to be re-potted to a better draining mix. I'm going to do that as soon as I get home.
You're welcome. I was simply trying to tell you that soil microbes are a largely uncharted frontier, and there are so many that have not even been identified, much less function documented. (or to put it another way, we don't know what they really do) Always be a good scientist, and keep your mind open to emerging concepts in soil microbiology. Because we really don't know that much about soil biochemistry, all things being relative. LOL