It’s best to sterilize your pots before using them, using a mixture of one part bleach to 10 parts water. Use clean pots.įungal spores are tiny and can reside in even the smallest amount of soil residue left in pots. Heating up your soil in this way helps to kill any fungal foes lurking within. It will get hotter than you might think, so be aware of this when you’re handling your soil mix afterwards. Just put your soil mix in a suitable container, cover it loosely, and heat on high for eight to 10 minutes. Personally, I prefer doing it in the microwave, as heating in the oven can generate a funky smell. But in my experience, I’ve found that it’s quicker and easier either to use either your oven or your microwave. If this really isn’t possible for you, or if you plan to reuse soil mix, then you can also sterilize your soil. The fungi that cause this disease live in the soil, so preventing soil contact with your vulnerable seedlings is the first good place to start. Use a sterile potting mix, rather than soil from your garden. There are two P’s that you should keep in mind when it comes to damping off – prevention and protection. The good news is that, as damaging as it is, there are a few practical, actionable steps you can take to see off damping off before it becomes established. There is nothing we can do to cure this disease once it’s taken hold, and even if there was, the tiny seedlings die so quickly that there would be very little time to help even if you could. Once your plants catch a case of damping off, they’re done for. Roots on infected plants are either absent, stunted, or have grayish-brown sunken spots. When you pull your plants up, you can also see signs of the disease on their root systems. It is also common to see a fluffy white cobweb growth on infected plants. The seedlings, especially the cotyledons (the first leaves produced) may have a kind of gray-brown color, and young leaves will wilt and turn from green-gray to brown. The most common way damping off will present itself is when your plant stalks become water-soaked, thin and mushy, and fall over at the base and die. There is therefore a critical period of growth between planting and maturity when special care needs to be taken to protect sensitive seedlings. The good news is that, although mature plants can still be affected by these pathogens, from the moment your plants have mature leaves and a well-developed root system, they are much more resistant the fungus or mold that causes damping off. In short, this fungal infection can really decimate your seedlings, and proper care needs to be taken to prevent a tragedy from occurring. Even worse, it is usually a large section, or an entire tray of seedlings that is killed. This disease causes such major issues in the root system of the plant that seedlings infected by damping off rarely survive to produce a vigorous plant. Young leaves, roots, and stems of newly emerged seedlings are all highly susceptible to infection. Infected plants usually germinate successfully and come up fine, but start to show signs that all is not well a few days down the line. This disease affects a wide variety of vegetables and flowers. The term is quite a general one, encompassing several disease-causing culprits, the most common of which are well-known fungal foes such as Rhizoctonia spp., Fusarium spp. “Damping off” is a soil-borne fungal disease that affects seedlings, causing the rotting of stem and root tissues at and below the soil surface of the young plants.
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