Beginner Gardening: Mold or Fungus grew and DESTROYED my Jiffy Greenhouse - HELP, 0 by Gymgirl

Gymgirl wrote:
SabrinaW,
From the looks of your "before" pic, I see several considerations:
►It looks like your seedlings are growing tall and "leggy," which indicates perhaps you do not have them under a light source. Is this the case? They seem to be stretching toward the light source. You can construct a simple light shelf very easily. I'll post the link for you. Concrete blocks, shelf boards and two fluorescent shop light kits from Home Depot or Lowes. Regular old 48" fluorescent tubes will do. Keep the lights no more than 2" away from the tops of the seedlings. 12-14 hours of light per day.

Simple light shelf by Tom Conner (tcfromky)

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/48/

►Epilogue1212 is spot on! Great advice. I had the same mold issue beginning to grow on some of the 208 tomato seeds I started this January. Carolyn Male (Dr. C - THE tomato expert) advised that there are some harmless mold spores that float around and sometimes settle on the soil. The saturation provides a great growing field. Hence, I dried out my seedling starter mix and bottom-watered only enough to slightly moisten the soil. I, too, have used a mixture of 1 TBSP Hydrogen Peroxide to a gallon of Warm water to help with any funguluglies. After the seedlings started getting fatter and were potted up to larger containers, once they were moistened I poured off any excess, and never let them remain in standing water.

►Unlike behillman, I remove the cover of my seedling tray as soon as the very first seedling peeps through the soil.

►Since you are growing in individual peat pellets, in the future you can move the ones that have broken through the soil immediately under the lights, and leave the remaining ones under your cover until they break through. But, once one seedling comes up, at the very least you should prop the cover open a bit to provide some air circulation to the tray. Remember: too damp/wet + no air circulation = a potential mold bed!

Keep us posted on your next attempt.

BTW, What were you starting?

Linda


This message was edited Apr 11, 2011 3:34 PM