Beginner Gardening: black tips on sunflower seedlings - help!, 1 by pokokpenyu

pokokpenyu wrote:
thanks so much for responding.

i checked out the article on damping off, and it's really good. lots of handy suggestions. i'm not sure it's damping off though, as the base of the plant seem to look okay. it doesn't have any of the mentioned symptoms - bulged/waterlogged/lesions/discolouration. am i missing something?

i'm attaching a photo here, so hopefully it's a little clearer whether the base of the stem is thinner than the top. it seems the same to me, but maybe i am just being willfully blind.

the black parts have grown a little larger than this morning, and i've tried looking everywhere to see what it could be a symptom of. do you think it might be altenaria blight (http://www.ikisan.com/links/ap_sunflowerDisease Management.s...)? or pottassium deficiency (http://highplainsipm.org/HpIPMSearch/Docs/FieldKey-Sunflower...)? or am i even crazy to be searching on information like this?

my friend thinks it might also be because the leaves got wet from yesterday's heavy rain. what do you reckon? i'll try the chamomile tea tomorrow. is it just standard one tea bag to a mug thing? sorry for being such an amateur.. and thank you!