Super Fitness Health BlogProblems By Using A Sterlite Medium In Germinating Seed
Doesn’t it make you mad to find that flat of special seedlings damping off? You spent a lot of time planting the seeds and waiting for germination, you watered them, you babied them and there they are, half of them down with damping off disease.
Nothing to do but to douse them with fungicide and hope for the best. It’s no comfort to remember that you forgot to sterilize the soil. Or maybe you did and the pesky fungus slipped in. Anyway you’ve got troubles.
We have had damping off trouble too, but no more! For us it’s pretty much a thing of the past. We no longer use soil to grow those special things we especially want. We can’t afford to! In spite of the grower’s best efforts, once in a while he will have trouble with damping off. It happens, no matter how careful he is, if he grows his seedlings in soil.
We solved most of our disease issue probelms by using a sterile soilless medium for germinating seed. After spending a summer hybridizing, we don’t want those very special seedlings to die from fungus. If they die it means a year lost in the breeding program, and we may have lost that one seedling that would have been a valuable new variety. Perhaps you are not a hybridizer, and the seed you plant is just ordinary, but still you want your seedlings to grow into good plants. You count on them to fill a flower bed or a row in the vegetable garden.
In our estimation even the best soil is second rate material for growing seedlings. We never use it for those special lots of seed, but only for such toughies as tomato and cabbage. For the special seeds we use a sterile medium and feed the seedlings with a nutrient solution. Our hybrid chrysanthemum, penstemon, petunia and rose seeds are never planted in soil; yet we are growing the best seedlings, the best cuttings, the best plants we hive ever grown. We have almost eliminated seedling loss.
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