pilea with fungal problem

I recently posted about my Moon Valley pilea. I had noticed that it had some white fuzzy mold on top of the soil. The plant is perfectly healthy though! Someone suggested that I re-pot and hold back on the watering. I have done just that. I re-potted it about a week ago and checked on it today to see if it needed watering yet. It did, but it also had a couple patches of that fungus again! Already!? Is this something that this type of pilea has issues with? Or what could it be? I am very confused here. I have many plants and this is the only one that has grown fungus. Any ideas?

If the mold is on the soil (rather than on the plant) then it has nothing to do with it being a pilea, it could happen to anything. Fungus will grow on the top of the soil when there's enough moisture around for it--even if the plant needed watering today, it could have been moist enough during the rest of the week that the fungus could grow. Fungal spores are everywhere, and chances are when you repotted some of the spores from the original pot came along for the ride, and then found the right conditions to grow again. The fungus on the soil most likely won't harm your plant--but it's a sign that things may be staying too wet which will harm the plant in the long run. If you've got ideal conditions for this fungus to keep growing, I suspect that your potting mix probably doesn't drain well enough.

Makes sense. So, are there any precautions I can take to prevent this? The soil was completely dry when I watered it today. When I re-potted the plant I did not pack the dirt, so I think it should be draining properly. If it isn't, what can I do for that?

I wouldn't worry about the mold on the surface of the soil in and of itself. The damage to the plant will be if the roots of the plant are staying too wet if your soil isn't draining well enough. I'd be surprised if mold could grow on soil that wasn't staying too wet.

I'd suggest reading the sticky thread at the top of this forum about good growing practices--Al talks about soil choice there and he explains things much better than I could. Just because you didn't pack the dirt down when you repotted doesn't mean that your potting mix drains well--it has to do with the composition of what's in the potting mix as well.

Also--how are you judging that the soil is dry? Are you looking at the top of the soil, or are you sticking a finger down a few inches into the pot to see how wet things feel underneath? The soil on top will always dry out a lot faster but often it can still be very wet an inch or two down which is where the roots are.

I will definately check out that thread. I do stick my finger in the soil to judge the dryness. It's just weird to me that out of the 13 plants I've had for a couple years, this is the only one with this issue. I've even had this pilea for about 3 years and this problem just appeared a few months ago. Hopefully I figure out why! Thanks for your help!

Is there a lot of peat in the soil? Peat = fungus & fungus gnats.

I haven't noticed any gnats since I killed them, I'd say, last summer. No new fungus has appeared since I removed what I found on the 12th.