That does sound like damp off.

Karen

ZenMan said:Hi Thomas,

" My first time growing mizuna and the seedlings were doing so well and then just keeled over. "

That could be Damping Off. And that infection could be from the seeds themselves, and not the growing medium.

ZM

Could be. I've started some new seedlings and will leave out coir when I prick them into cells. I might bring the coir into work and see if I can get someone to test it. The reason I suspect the growing medium is because I'm seeing the issue with different types of plants but not all plants.

Hi Thomas,

I don't use coir (I use Premier Pro-Mix BX) but, like I said before, the coir might not be to blame for your seedlings collapse -- that could be from a seed-transmitted Damping Off infection.

Commercial seed packet seeds have all been treated to sterilize them from disease transmission, but almost all home saved seeds can be assumed to be infected with one or more diseases. So using or not using your coir may have no bearing on the Damping Off problem.

But that raises the question, what medium are you using in the cells besides the coir? Non-commercial starting mediums are also suspect to have diseases.

Some people use hydrogen peroxide as a Damping Off preventative. There is detailed information on the use of hydrogen peroxide in other message strings here in this Seeds forum.

ZM

It's probably overkill but I cook my soil before using for seed starting. Never see damp off

Karen

Yeah. I've read about cooking soil. Not something I'm willing to do. I'm going with salt or something in the coir since it's all the plants of specific varieties. Will know in a couple weeks since I restarted plants and will uppot them into a coirless planting medium.

Bingo1961 said:Questions about starting zinnia seeds. This is my first time trying to grow anything from seeds. I have the Ferry-Morse 72-cell seed tray with the peat pellets. Should i use one seed or more per pellet pod? If i use 2 seeds per pod and both come up, can i leave them both or clip one off? Should i use a heat mat or not? I was thinking about getting 2 Sansi 15w grow lights for these and some jiffy 3" pots. The zinnias i was going to try are Magellan, Dreamland, a few Benary's, and a few Zahara and Profusion for some pots. Thanks for any information and i enjoy reading in the forum.

Sow the seeds in the garden. They come up in four days and the Dreamlands will bloom about five and a half weeks after the seedlings emerge. There is no way that zinnia seeds started indoors will outperform those seeded directly.

I never had any luck with direct seeding. For me, it's indoors under lights or wintersown.

Karen

Herbs and veg mostly. Lots of rosemary for containers. I'm hoping to bring one indoors over winter. Been having trouble starting lettuce. Probably because I keep fussing with my seed starting mixture.