Slow growing seedlings

eastwood2007 · Post by **eastwood2007** » Mar 07, 2007 3:31 pm

BTW...thanks hostagourmet for the dish soap tip....I will add some today to my watering. Hopefully can prevent algae.

thy · Post by **thy** » Mar 07, 2007 7:59 pm

Dish soap is a sort of fertilizer too

Never... knock under wood here- get fungus for real when I spay a very thin layer of "boiled" chicken grit on the top

Pia

leafmould · Post by **leafmould** » Mar 08, 2007 9:55 am

So many questions

lets start with fungus gnats

Fungus gnats can come from anywhere, mud on a shoe, firewood,other plants in the house.
I have thousands of seedlings going and 0 fungus gnats.

There is a bacteria known as BTi (Bacillus thurengensis 'Israelensis') that kills the larval, immature stage of the insect during its early breeding stage.

The thuringesus bacillus var. israelensis is the variety that works best on fungus gnats killing the larvae. This bacteria is safe and is used in organic gardens.
As you know, it comes in the round floating dunks used to kill mosquitoes larva, but it also comes in a powdered form, 'Aqua bac'.

I crush up one quarter of a dunk and put it in a 55 gal barrel I use for watering/fertilizing seedlings.

From the start, I have added appx. two tablespns of the powdered form (Aqua bac) to each 40 litters of potting mix and mixed it in dry.
I'm sure mixing in some crushed 'dunks' to your water/fert mix will clean them out

hope this helps, here is a pic of the powder form.
Jim from the Hills

thehostagourmet · Post by **thehostagourmet** » Mar 08, 2007 10:34 am

Thanks, Jim. Where can we get the powdered form?

George

leafmould · Post by **leafmould** » Mar 08, 2007 11:55 am

Hi George, I have seen it in many hardware stores here, twenty bucks a large container. It's made in Quebec so I don't know about US availability.
If you can't get it, I would use a crushed up 'Mosquito Dunk' to add to a mix.

JoshS · Post by **JoshS** » Mar 08, 2007 12:54 pm

The dunks really put a dent in my gnat population since I start using it in early January. I just keep a small chunk in my water tank and add more every week or two.

toymr2mk2 · Post by **toymr2mk2** » Mar 08, 2007 5:11 pm

After doing some research I decided to try the tb on my seedlings also. I keep a watering can full so the water is at room temperature. I just leave the mosquito dunk in it. I also started letting the surface dry before watering. I had a terrible fungus gnat problem that has now almost completely disappeared. It took a while for the tb to really kick in but it appears to have worked.
Art

eastwood2007 · Post by **eastwood2007** » Mar 09, 2007 12:39 am

Good news! Thanks y'all!