In article ,
enigma wrote:

my 7 year old is doing a science fair project on capillary
action. he's doing the usual dye a celery & a white flower
thing, but he's also trying to grow seedlings in different
colors.
he's using white stemed swiss chard as his vict^^ test
subjects. he put the seeds in Jiffy pellets & waters them with
food coloring. he has one control plant & one each yellow, red
& blue. he's doing this at school & there seems to be a
problem with damping off and/or mold growing on the Jiffy
pellets. i was suspicious that the mold might be growing on
the food coloring, but the control is also getting 'fuzz' on
the peat pellet. anyway, if the plants keep damping off, he
can't really prove anything with his experiment.
the peat pellets are in an 8" x 8" tray, so they are not
touching. the tray is not covered. the pellets were watered to
expand, & are now only given one drop of food color (or water
for the control) per day.
any suggestions to get the poor things past seed leaf stage
gratefully accepted.
also, has anyone ever tried starting seeds in that polymer
gel crystal stuff that is sold as Soil Moist? i was thinking
of trying some white radishes in dyed crystals...
lee

Try again but keep the tray covered. If you are using the same tray that
had mold before, then clean tray and then soak in 5% chlorine
(bleach)(if you can smell the chlorine in the water, it is strong
enough). Soak for 20 minutes. Rinse tray throughly. Re-plant and cover.
Only remove cover to water.
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Billy

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