A: The most likely problem is that you sowed the seeds the way you sow most vegetable seeds, covering them with one-eighth or one-quarter inch of potting soil. Both petunia and snapdragon seeds require light to germinate and if they are in the dark, they will never sprout. Both of those seeds are also very fine, so even if you put them on top of the soil watering the pots may have carried them down into cracks in the soil deep enough to be dark.
Flower seeds are much fussier to get started than vegetable seeds and don't all require the same things. Unfortunately, different cultivars of a plant may require different growing conditions from others. You can't learn a few general rules about planting flower seeds; you must look at the requirements for each kind of seed as you plant it. Usually, the fine print on the seed packet will tell you the requirements for that particular seed. If the packet does not say, "Needs light to germinate," it probably will say "Sow on the surface."
With any fine seeds, it's a good idea to do all your watering from the bottom because even if they are ones that don't need to stay on the surface, a spray of water may bury them so deep that the seed doesn't have enough reserves for the sprout to reach the light.
Personally, we like to do all our watering of seed trays from the bottom until the plants are established. It's easy to set the pot or tray in a container of water for a couple of minutes and then let the excess drain off. You will know that you have watered the entire block of soil when the top turns dark in addition to knowing that you are not moving the seeds around.
If you grow perennial seeds, you also have to look for instructions that say you must give them a specified amount of time in the refrigerator after planting and before bringing to room temperature. Refrigerating the seed packet is not the same thing. They have to be planted and watered first.
Q: I had a lot of problems last year with seeds that came up and then died. All of a sudden the little seedlings just keeled over and died. Did I do things wrong?
A: Probably your baby plants were the victims of damping off disease. It is a fungus that kills plants, especially tiny ones, by clogging up the plumbing system so the water can't get from the roots to the tops. They just keel over as if they had died of drought. That's exactly what happened but the drought is internal, not internal.
Damping off fungus is always around. To combat it, try not to have growing conditions that encourage the fungus to grow and thrive. The fungus likes soil that is cool and damp. Seeds germinating require dampness, but not wet soil so you want to keep the potting soil just damp. Don't ever let puddles form in the saucer or tray.
Not too much can be done about the cool temperatures but there are a few other techniques that seem to help avoid damping off. You might want to add whichever of them seems like the easiest for you. You can cover the seed with a very thin layer of peat moss. Peat moss seems to have some natural fungus-killing properties. Or, just before you sow the seed, you can spray the surface of the potting soil with boiling water. The heat should kill fungal spores that were lying there waiting to grow. The third thing you could try, just after planting the seed, is to dust the surface of the soil with powdered eggshell or powdered limestone. That should increase the calcium available to the seedlings and make them less susceptible to any fungus. Or you could wet the potting soil with a diluted fish emulsion, let it stand a week and then sow the seed. The emulsion is supposed to build populations of soil microorganisms that fight off the damping off fungus.
Whatever you do to prevent the disease, if you see it occurring somewhere in a seed tray, cut off the diseased plants. They are going to die and nothing you can do will save them. Do not give extra water thinking that they are too dry. The wetter soil will only encourage more fungus.
Master gardeners Molly Hackett and Georgianna Taylor, whose motto is "Never trust a gardener with clean fingernails," welcome your questions. Send them to: 191 Eastside Highway, Hamilton, MT 59840; call 961-4614; or e-mail tenrecs@aol.com. Please include a garden-related subject line in e-mails.
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