For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
stop using cinnamon for this plant problem
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If you start a lot of seeds indoors, one of the most underestimated gadgets to add to your setup is a fan. Not only does it help seedlings develop strong stems, it helps with another problem that (mostly) happens with seeds sown indoors: damping off. You've probably seen it at some point: happy healthy seedlings one day, then wizened stems and floppy seedlings the next. Damping off disease is actually pretty common, especially when you're starting seeds en masse and especially if you're using a humidity dome, have a heavy hand with watering, let your seedlings get super tall or all of the above. It's a condition that makes seedlings keel over and die overnight, which means it's near impossible to treat by the time you notice it. But damping off can be prevented, and quite easily at that. If you struggle with weak, wiry-stemmed seedlings that stay abnormally small, you may be dealing with damping off. Now, let's talk about cinnamon. I feel like this ranks right up there with coffee grounds and banana peels as far as "miracle" garden ingredients go. 🙄 One of the oft-touted remedies for treating damping off is sprinkling cinnamon on the soil around the afflicted seedling. Heck, even I've tried it. But cinnamon's success rate is spotty, and while it does have antifungal properties, the cinnamon you keep on your spice rack probably isn't the right cinnamon for the job. At best, it probably worked because it helped the soil dry out (since excess moisture is one of the main causes of damping off). So no need to waste time with it—just follow my simple tips to prevent damping off from happening in the first place. P.S. Cinnamon isn't the cure for damping off, but these 9 tips will help prevent your seedlings from keeling over suddenly. P.P.S. After 15 years testing (and breaking) all kinds of hand tools and gardening gear, this is what I think is worth buying (once). Be sure to use my exclusive discount code GARDENBETTY10 for 10% off all purchases at Gardener's Supply. |
Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."