On Saturday I noticed the telltale signs of damping off when both of my plug trays of marigolds started to keel over, and my chopped-up speedling trays of tomatoes soon followed suit. I lost all of my tomato and pepper seedlings to damping off in 2012 and determined that it was because we'd just moved into our new house, the seedlings were under lights in a spare room in the basement, and I wasn't near as diligent about turning on the oscillating fan as I should have been. Disinfected, replanted, left the fan on 24 hours after that, and didn't have further problems. All of my research at that time made me more aware of how much I was watering too. I didn't have any problems last year, ran the fan pretty much all the time, threw some vermicompost in with my homemade soil-less seed starting mix, bottom-watered, and life was good.
Now I have an awesome straw bale greenhouse that my husband slaved over for me last fall. The marigolds were planted at the basement work bench and went straight to the greenhouse. The tomatoes were sprouted indoors and spent the first week or so there under the lights, and then moved out to the greenhouse to free up more space. Both were planted about three weeks ago, give or take. Because they were both in the greenhouse, I assumed that was where the issue was, especially since I started seeing some damping off symptoms in a couple of pepper plants, mainly just at the end of two of the three trays, which had all been started in early March and moved out to the greenhouse pretty early on. Initially I was chocking up this latest round of damping off to the learning curve that goes with being new to using a greenhouse, especially one that's as unique as mine is. I have an oscillating fan on in there 24/7 so I know that ventilation isn't the issue, although I do wish the fan actually had a lower setting. The breeze on the tomatoes wasn't quite as gentle as I'd have liked and I might have noticed the damping off a tad sooner had they been blowing around a bit less. However, I probably HAVE been guilty of overwatering, we don't have shade cloth on the greenhouse just yet (happening later this week) and I've been worried that with this overly warm spring weather we've been having, the plants will start to cook when I can't be home all the time to monitor how wet/dry they are. Plus my plants may be more stressed due to the temperature swings when it's in the mid-80's (or higher) in the greenhouse during the day and then may gradually drop into the low-50's at night. I also haven't been bottom-watering all of the Speedling trays either - one of the pepper trays is a full tray and won't fit into any of the wrapping paper tubs I have, and once I realized how much faster it was to use my big 2 gallon garden sprayer (aimed at the soil, not misted over the seedling), I started using that to water all of the peppers/tomatoes. I've also been starting quite a few more plants this year (all of the geraniums and bedding plants for my yard) , so I haven't been using any vermicompost in the mix. I replanted the tomatoes and marigolds on Saturday and went about misting the peppers and all my various other seedlings with chamomile tea and threw some cinnamon on for good measure, as well as the seedlings still under the lights in the basement.
By Saturday evening I was starting see casualties under the lights as well. So long celosia, parsley, dill and ageratum...My chamomile/cinnamon was probably too late and at that point, I realized the problem was indoors as well, and had an oh-crap-moment because I probably should have cleaned/disinfected my workbench BEFORE I replanted the tomatoes and marigolds. By Sunday, the gomphrena was starting to look shriveled at the base too and I decided to toss out most of the other youngest seedlings, but kept the statice and mint, since they still looked good. I made a garlic soil drench for the peppers and also doused a bunch of other seedlings, just in case. I spent a lot of time cleaning my seed starting room, bleaching all the trays, and mixing up new seed starting medium (and even raided the worm bin so I could add some vermicompost) but it got too late to actually replant and I headed to bed. I've been tossing and turning since 3am when after dreaming of floppy celosia, I was jolted wide awake by the thought that all of the seedlings that had the most damping off issues were planted in the 3/16-3/21 range. Now I'm worrying that my seed starting mix has been contaminated, and that the peppers have become victims due to their proximity to the tomatoes, hence only losing a couple plants so far as opposed to the whole trays. I've also still got nasturtiums in the greenhouse that were planted in the same time frame, but so far aren't showing any signs of distress.
I've been a sloppy seed-starter this year. I've basically just been brushing the dried mix off the bench and moving onto the next round of planting. I've also been using the same bale of peat for the past couple years. It's beyond dried out so I use a chisel to get it off the block, crumble it up, mix it with vermiculite and perlite, and then add near-boiling water to rehydrate it. I'm near the end of the peat, which as been sitting open on the garage floor forever, and for the past couple weeks have now been rotating the block and scraping the bottom of the bag, so I guess it's possible that the bottom of the block could have been contaminated and now that's what's winding up in the mix. (It's worth noting that I started some tomatoes, peppers and basil under the lights when we got back from vacation in early January with the intention of putting them in containers in the greenhouse, and never had any issues with any of those plants).
I was busy thinking my dirty bench was the issue when I started rehydrating two more buckets of mix yesterday morning, didn't even think to sanitize my buckets...which technically wouldn't help anyway if the mix itself is the problem. I'm guessing that one way or another, the odds are good that the newest planting of marigolds and tomatoes could keel over in a couple weeks, and then I'd be six weeks behind, instead of only three. I use the tomatoes and peppers (companion planted with the marigolds - it's pretty if nothing else) in dehydrated backpacking meals that I sell at my local farmer's market, as well as flower bouquets. I can't afford to have an empty garden. Seems like my best is to toss out the newest seed-starting mix (what a waste of vermicompost), go buy a new bale of peat, and then replant the tomatoes and marigolds for a THIRD time (made worse by the fact that now I'm out of seeds for a couple of my tomato varieties....), plus all the other flowers/herbs that were discarded yesterday.
Here's the question/problem...I really do have a point haha, I'm not just here to whine. In the last couple weeks, I've potted up a variety of plants (leftovers from the January tomatoes/peppers, coleus, etc) using that same maybe-contaminated peat on that same maybe-contaminated bench. I'm not really worried about those plants themselves, because they should be old enough to be spared...but if I go through all this hassle of replanting the tomatoes, marigolds and rest of my accent flowers yet again (not to mention the first round of zinnia planting slotted for next week), am I going to have to worry that those plants that do have the bad mix out in the greenhouse will infect my new plantings? Do I wait for them to dry out and then drench them with garlic or chamomile? I've tried to research online, and it looks like damping off can be spread in pretty much every way possible. Do I just use new mix, replant my seeds, be super vigilant about only watering when necessary, and do so with weak chamomile tea so that being in proximity to a possibly infected plant won't matter? My anxiety level over this is through the roof.
11 years ago
digdirt2