- Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:11 pm
#367160
I've been starting a lot of seeds lately. I've been using pots of 50/50 peat/perlite with a 1/4" of pure peat at the top. Usually it works well but in some cases, I get a growth of powdery mildew (or something similar) on the surface even before the seeds germinate. Since I can't see the ungerminated seeds, I don't want to do anything that disturbs the surface. And yet I want to check the mold. I know cinnamon is a good antifungal so I did some reading and armed myself with a formula for cinnamon "tea" and a spray bottle. These are the results:
The offending pot before spraying "Before" closeup After spraying, when the surface dried off a bit Two days later (the greener color is basically due to a different lighting setup) I think you'll agree that the mold is pretty much gone. My remaining questions are "Will the cinnamon adversely affect seedlings?" and "Will it hurt germination in any way?" I going to have to wait on the germination question but I took before and after shots of a pot of spatulata seedlings and I'm not seeing any damage: Two days later: All in all, I think that I'm going to be using the cinnamon spray. If there's any adverse effect on germination, I'll update this entry.
(And I don't know why there's another copy of this pic attached:)
The offending pot before spraying "Before" closeup After spraying, when the surface dried off a bit Two days later (the greener color is basically due to a different lighting setup) I think you'll agree that the mold is pretty much gone. My remaining questions are "Will the cinnamon adversely affect seedlings?" and "Will it hurt germination in any way?" I going to have to wait on the germination question but I took before and after shots of a pot of spatulata seedlings and I'm not seeing any damage: Two days later: All in all, I think that I'm going to be using the cinnamon spray. If there's any adverse effect on germination, I'll update this entry.
(And I don't know why there's another copy of this pic attached:)
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spatulata-oct09 before sm.JPG (177.15 KiB) Viewed 9294 times
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