Seedlings Dampening Off / Dying

[TommyT]

I've notice quite a few people (me included) have been having problems with their seedling dying at a young age.
So I'm starting this tread to hopefully get some insight on what others do to prevent your seedlings from dampening off. Or in other words from dying.
When I hydrate my Jiffy Pellets in water I have been putting them in the microwave and basically boiling the water to kill off any bad micro organisms. BUT, after rethinking this I don't believe this to be a good solution because I am also killing the good micro organisms and bacteria that fight off the bad ones.
So what is one to do?

I've also noticed when you buy new vegetable seeds in the stores they are putting a red coating on the seeds. I'm sure that the red color is just to make it easier to see and plant. But, do these coatings have any type of nutes and/or hormones in it to help the seeds grow at a young age?
Should a person try to roll the seeds in a powdered rooting hormone before planting?
What are your guys methods to starting your seeds successfully?

[seymore_budz]

I soak in water untill they sink. At the same time I soak the media that I'm going to plant in. I use a little liquid oxygen in the water used to soak the media.

Once they are in the media I water with a spray bottle. Atomising the water really helps increase oxygen within the water and keep things happy. It also stops the media from getting sodden.

I germinate around 50-80 seeds a year and don't have many failures using this method. I do get the odd freak though

[TommyT]

Atomising the water

How is that done?
By adding hydrogen peroxide?
Should I spray them with a solution of it?

[2-Scoops]

You could pre-soak in summink like superthrive water solution or if wanting sterile a h202 and water solution, both should give seeds a helping hand starting off. I do both myself, well ive used superthrive years that way and recently started using h202 and water solution on older seeds which ive done last few times now. Not sure about the rooting hormone tbh but why not hey.... although i think any root tonic, liquid seaweed or b-vit type root boost should also help out at start for sure.
https://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourt ... s/h2o2.htm & https://www.using-hydrogen-peroxide.com ... oxide.html


Liquid seaweed is summink i also use regularly once weekly throughout a grow or when im stressing out plants in fact its kinda replaced my use of superthrive

[seymore_budz]

Atomising the water

How is that done?
By adding hydrogen peroxide?
Should I spray them with a solution of it?

So atomising the water is just fancy talk for spray them with a spray bottle. I also add peroxide and some seaweed but that's not essential.

[Josh]

I just pop them in a moist jiffy and place in a ziplock baggie until sprouted, seems to do the trick most of the time. My veg room is 24/7 lighting so constant warm temp helps a bunch

I also stopped watering the jiffy directly after transplanting, only getting the surrounding coco wet.

A good breeze on the seedlings will keep things from rotting also

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[GMO]

chamomile tea, 2 bags into a 250ml boilnig water. steep it for 3-5 mins then let it cool to room temp. then apply around new plantings to knock back dampening off. also adding cinnamon powder around the base of the stem can help draw out excess moisture

[Josh]

I’ve only had a few dampin off and I honestly think it was the awful coco I had got. I now only use canna coco


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[TommyT]

Here is a little experiment that I am doing. I thought maybe someone else might think that it's interesting.
I am using:
Takeroot rooting hormone powder
Captan Fungicide powder

One batch of 6 seeds will be coated with Takeroot rooting hormone powder.
One batch of 6 seeds will be coated with Captan Fungicide powder.
One batch of 6 seeds will be coated with both Takeroot rooting hormone powder and Captan Fungicide powder.
One batch of 6 seeds will not be coated at all. These are the control batch.
All of these 4 batches of seeds will be watered by adding the water to the bottom tray and allowing the water to wick upwards.

There will be an exact duplicate of coated seeds in a separate tray that will be watered by spraying distilled water from the top.

On to the images.

This is the Captan Fungicide powder that I coated the seeds with:

This is the Takeroot rooting hormone powder that I coated the seeds with:

I put the seeds in a little strainer and used distilled water to wet them with:

Spraying the seeds:

The wet seeds:

I put the seeds and the powder into an old pill bottle and shook them till they were all coated with powder:

Here the seeds were place into the germinating trays. One to be watered from the bottom and the other to be sprayed with water from he top:




Now let's wait and see if any of this makes a difference.

[TommyT]

I have a question to all the seed manufacturers.
After this, how long before we see the weed seed manufacturers coating their seeds.