Trich's, fungicides, questions.

[Vertmorpheus]

Afternoon everyone, hope the weekends treatin yez well.

Just looking into germing of trich seeds and the like... a major issue seems to be the fungus/algae thing.. stands to reason, deserts are pretty "Sterile" places and suburbia isn't. But I'm not so big on the idea of dousing the bubs with fungicide, I don't use it in any other capacity at home so I don't want to start now. Question is, will proper heat treatment , solarisation, washing etc of prop mix components combined with Ti Tree and/or peroxide acting as a fungi/algaecide take care of nasties without making the cactii crook?I know I'd have to stuff with concentration etc, there's not really precise figures available. Probably a few practice runs on other sensitive seedlings to see how they go.But using a lot of fungicides of dif types of work has shown me plenty of examples where they have either killed young plants or caused drastic leaf deformations, midrib issues etc, like to avoid making healing plants sick themselves I guess.

Any thoughts? Rather not unleash chemical hell into the cradle of natural teachers.

happy prickles

GD

[Gardener]

If u zap your soil in the microwave before planting the seeds u should be right.

And wash pots, lids etc in water mixed with a little hydrogen peroxide.

Keep everything sterile right from the start. keep lids on so no spores can get in. See Rev's posts!

Do a 'fungicide' search on this forum, u'll find a lot.

Afternoon everyone, hope the weekends treatin yez well.

Just looking into germing of trich seeds and the like... a major issue seems to be the fungus/algae thing.. stands to reason, deserts are pretty "Sterile" places and suburbia isn't. But I'm not so big on the idea of dousing the bubs with fungicide, I don't use it in any other capacity at home so I don't want to start now. Question is, will proper heat treatment , solarisation, washing etc of prop mix components combined with Ti Tree and/or peroxide acting as a fungi/algaecide take care of nasties without making the cactii crook?I know I'd have to stuff with concentration etc, there's not really precise figures available. Probably a few practice runs on other sensitive seedlings to see how they go.But using a lot of fungicides of dif types of work has shown me plenty of examples where they have either killed young plants or caused drastic leaf deformations, midrib issues etc, like to avoid making healing plants sick themselves I guess.

Any thoughts? Rather not unleash chemical hell into the cradle of natural teachers.

happy prickles

GD

[Vertmorpheus]

Aha cheers for that... actually answers what I was asking in a fairly oblique way "are these things actually all that prone to nasties or is it the usual case of people that don't garden all that much wanting to germ everything in a sandwich bag cos that's what a mate said to do with the ganja ?" Thanks for the feedback, started some beans today see how they do, used a combo of lemongrass thyme and ti tree oil very diluted, poppin em in very well washed and heat treated mix, but I've used my basic mix methods in a lot of restricted airflow situations and never had anything nasty start growing. Let ya know how I go! (considering these as "Practice Cactus" so I'm trying not to get too attached, but its very, very hard not to haha)

cheers again, take care

GD

[shruman]

Hey G.D would u mind detailing ur lemongrass, thyme & ti tree oil mix, wot properties do the 3 contain to make them good anti-fungals?

[Vertmorpheus]

It's a diluted version of something I mix up to keep the stink out of my steelcaps haha... a drop or two of the three dif oils, with a tiny dash of ag surfactant, to a couple cups of water...shake like hell, wait, shake like hell...repeat.repeat some more.eventually goes kind of universally "milky" (emulsion business going on).I use rain water to mix just about anything like this, sometimes boiled but usually not. I've used stuff similar to this blend in the past on mildews and general damping off etc, was wondering really if there's anything in em that cactii sprouts specifically might have a problem with. The oils are all fairly well known antifungals antibacterials, with the thymol and eugenol in the thyme probably packing the most punch. Just trial and hopefully not too much error really. I sprayed the surface of the mix a bit, gently misted for quite a while, then sprayed a lil more just for good luck.. this doesn't end up hippystinkin or anything, but is certainly noticeable on the nose up close.. being well treated sand, stones and coco peat means it's fairly "dead" mix anyway.I didn't approach this in a very mathematical way, I do enough of that at work at home I like to be more instinctive...makes em more reliable next time haha... I figured I wanted it to smell of the good oil but not too potent in case it upset the sprouts.Instinct usually serves me pretty well though :D But I know lemongrass contains things that are suspected of being mutagenic and pesticidal... but hten commerical fungicides are like that too (got some great pics of mutant frangi's from fungicides , geeze I love chemical warfare)

Plenty of readin to be had online, just google antifungal essential oil.

I also find adding blackpepper oil to pyrethrum mixes helps a lot, rosemary oil keeps a LOT of pests off things and if you wan't bulk tomatos, a spray of lavendar oil solution early in the morning in the tomato patch draws a whole heap of bees. Intrigued by oils really, a lot of potential in those tiny and fairly well pricedb ottles (once you know how to use em). Good source of nutmeg, pepper and star anise oils around here too :d great in massage blends, but can make it hard to sleep afterwards ;) I have the occasional self sown german annual chamomile pop up around here, a tea of that keeps the slimies out of seedcells etc pretty well too.

Long live Jackie French! :D

happy gardenin',

GD

[ENtiTY]

Aren't sufactants supposed to be bad for Tricho's? I thought I read on the forum here somewhere that it kills'em pretty quick.

[xerimyco]

Hello greendreams!

As mentioned upthread, pasteurizing your soil is one of the best preventitives. Another very useful thing is and undiluted 3% H2O2 spray, this can be used before and after germination with excellent results.

As for airflow, in small projects (a few hundred or thousand seeds) a sealed container can work real well, especially if you pasteurized the soil and container toghether. For larger projects (tens or hundreds of thousands), sealed pasteurized containers are not practical- usually the seed flats are put in semi-permanent "tents" of clear sheet plastic to maintain humidity. In this case, as much air movement as possible is desired. I'm not sure why this works- I've always thought that maybe the spores and such can't germinate if they are flying around wildly on air currents instead of resting steady on the substrate.

I've never had a problem with algae. I don't see how it would hurt anything unless it actually physically covered up your seedling cactus.

GOOD LUCK!

[Ace]

Welcome xerimyco!

small projects (a few hundred or thousand seeds)

larger projects (tens or hundreds of thousands)

Jeebers man!! Where do you source those sort of quantities?!?! Your idea of a small project certainly sounds like a huge one in my books - your large one would be enough to start a nursery!! lol

Where are you located? Arizona?

[shruman]

I dont think algae is a problem that directly affects plants but competes & out competes for nutrients, stunting growth.

[Vertmorpheus]

Cheers for the info guys, much appreciated!I know it's a case of grandmothers n eggs but I hate babying plants, just about all of em want the right conditions from start up and as long as they're provided, further messing about usually isn't need IME.

Not talkin surfactant at levels high enough to act as "soil wetting agents" rather just enough to break the emulsion of the essential oils of which a dilute amount is then misted very quickly over the surface from time to time... nothing is getting "drenched" more added to its lil atmosphere...but yeah, let yez know how it turns out! Another batch is being started that doesn't use anything for fungus etc at all...my other constantly moist germination efforts never erupt in weird growths and hopefully they won't either! If they all die we know not to listen to silly hippies like me Either way, I reckon I'll try to steer clear of anything that involves sealed moist conditions...having a coco component keeps my prop mixes evenly moist, worked well enough for other" tricky" things. I don't think elves run aroundt he Andes covering vast areas with glad wrap, tends to make me think of the amount of posts online saying that "well i soak my seeds in water then germ on on papertowel in an ounce bag, spray with this vent with that..." if something HONESTLY takes THAT much fiddling I figure it might prefer veg. prop. over seed prop , hint taken if that's the case :D Cheers for the numbers on peroxide too, wasn't sure on the specifics... I'm still wondering why the approach seems to be either sealed n sprayed or unsealed n vented... kind of opposing tactics there...not that many plants don't have a wide range of startup conditions but yeah, seems a lil weird.Or maybe not, as long as conditions are swung away from what the nasties like to live in but still within the range of plant growth I guess it's all good.I know a bit about starting up ferns from spores, might just treat em the same but more on the dry side.

I'll see how they go...suspect all the babying is more about human stress than plant stress.A holdover from times or places where the seeds are seriously hard to get rather than readily ordered by the thousands for bugger all off the internet, or obtained for free from kind, generous members of the community.A batch of tricho beans , 1200 of em or something, can be had from SAB for all of 20 or so bucks last time I checked.

Algae is a sign of excess moisture n nutes and not enough air usually... in the trade we see it more as a symptom than a problem in itself, BUT some can leave highly toxic exudates as they reproduce and die off. Generally just means you're fucking up somewhere along the line though, so regardless of what the growth is causing, the lack of air and proper nutrition is going to cause your babies hassles soon anyway, if only a nasty case of damping off and collar rot.Growths like that tend to show acidity too and not every crop is into that.

The idea also occurs to me to have a system in the container you are germing in that allows oxygen to be dispersed thru the medium from a small tank (i can borrow one of those cheaply enough). Pipe dreams haha.

I'll let you know how they go though... fingers and toes crossed :D

thanks for the info once again!

GD

[xerimyco]

Welcome xerimyco!

small projects (a few hundred or thousand seeds)

larger projects (tens or hundreds of thousands)

Jeebers man!! Where do you source those sort of quantities?!?! Your idea of a small project certainly sounds like a huge one in my books - your large one would be enough to start a nursery!! lol

Where are you located? Arizona?

Thanks for the welcome Ace!

I was born into the nursery industry here in Arizona. I've grown and sold hundreds of thousands of cacti of numerous species, and I'm considered small fry here. I've worked with and am friends with folks that produce over a million plants (cacti) a year! When I find time (my most precious commodity), I will post a few pictures of some of the larger operations here in southern Arizona.

Thanks again for the welcome, I'm real happy to have found this forum. It is by far the most mature and infomative place I've found yet.

[Vertmorpheus]

hey all, bit of an update... out of 5 tubs of seeds, none have given into fungal hell... two got the tinest spot of white cobweb (think it snuck in in the micropores of the cocopeat component) but went away real quick. germ rate is around 4 in 5. Everything got enough of a nuke to do the job too.

The tubs were watered in using a 500ml cheapie spray bottle, with 1 ml in total of essential oils (half of that a 15 percent ti tree solution,goanna brand, and the rest pure thyme oil). They have one supplementary drink using the same sprayer, but made to only half the original strength, after that those couple spots of mould have disappeared. Nothing seems to be popping up mutant or aborting etc.

Bloody treehuggers...

GD

[Evil Genius]

Hi Greendreams, you can use coarse sand for seedlings as it is a medium that makes no fungal problems. Don´t sow out too many seeds in one container as too many seeds on one spot tend to get moldy. If you have cobweb, let the soil dry out copletely and water again. Don´t use fungicides, they are very difficult to handle. Not just during the treatment but also afterwards. Fungicides contaminate the soil and stay there very long. Imagine you´d accidentially inhale a little bit of this contaminated soil! Not good; i just say cancer. I wouldn´t use chinosole too though many people do. From what i´ve seen, it´s not effective enough to take the risk of getting cancer. I´ve read some tests that said it´s safe and some others said it isn´t. Just a few seedlings survive the seedling stage in the desert. You´ll always lose a few but if you let the soil dry out between the watering cycles, you can have a 80-90% Success Rate. Sometimes even more but that´s not a must. bye EG

Edited May 28, 2007 by Evil Genius

[Vertmorpheus]

Ah well I have I few different ideas on fungicides in general... most of the ones you can readily get hold of here in australia aren't all that nasty that we know of (yes, I know ....) but given people talk of using say mancozeb at 1/10ths the normal rate of application, as a one off application to the substrate, with no plans to eat the critters in question until they are almost incalculably larger... I think there is little chance of most cactophiles ending up with some exotic cancer. Or maybe there is. But I can almost guarantee they are ingesting more of the same much more often from tomatos, bananas, whatever.I consciously try to avoid all the above, but that is mainly to try and balance out that I can spend 9 hours at work some days spraying mancozeb, oxycarboxin, copper sulphate, lime/sulfur, any of those happy characters... it's all relative, most of you here are safe. I will probably grow a second head one of these days haha.As long as over half of what my girl eats is good, natural food it doesn't bother me all that much, as most of MY upbringing was on Real Food and Water :D Like global warming, there are people making good income off telling us we are going to get cancer from just about everything.Which might be true... but a few microns of leftover sulphur in a 5 foot cactus isn't going to make you too sick I reckon. Ever seen what they spray on strawberries? What they pest treat your house/dog/kids nits with?Much scarier.

I am more concerned that use of biocides at such low levels will lead to people breeding up resistant strains of various things... like those dodgy antibiotics in africa and india etc. Wouldn't be all that concerned but as a person that tends to get the odd bag of seeds from kind donors, I wouldn't like to start thinking that I HAVE to use questionable chems just to eliminate chance of being overrun by giant mutant forms of fungus.

for all I know spraying oils around in there is a hassle too, further down the line... but just my observations so far.

take care guys

GD