Mold. Is there anything it can't ruin? Is there any such thing as a good mold? What is the evolutionary purpose of mold? Other than penicillin, does mold do anybody any good?
Obviously, I have mold in my hot house sprouting kit again. Or still, I should say. I was hoping that by frequent rinsing, I could delay the mold enough to give the seeds time to sprout. Today, however, when I checked, there was green mold on A. suarenzis White mold is fine; green mold, I've never seen it on my plants before, but I'm guessing, not so much.
I decided on an extreme remedy: boiling the seeds a second time. It might kill the seeds, but it might kill the mold first. Or not.
Now one thing I know, thanks to the fact that we get a boil-water order every year in spring, is that you have to boil water for a minute to defeat the germs, so I figured, if I boil my seeds for one minute, they should be mold-free. But I didn't have a clean pot available at that moment, so I decided to microwave some water. Water can become super-heated in the microwave, so that its temperature is in fact above boiling but it hasn't undergone phase transition yet. So I figured if I just throw the seeds into super-heated water, by the time the water cools down, the mold should be dead.
As it turns out, however, I didn't microwave the water long enough. My old microwave was very powerful; the one I have now, which I rent along with the apartment, is very feeble. So not only the water wasn't super-heated, it wasn't even boiling. But since you can't tell the difference to the naked eye, I only found this out when I put the seeds in.
Crud...
The white mold was promptly removed by the hot water. The green mold wasn't. But then I noticed something else. So I drained the water and looked at the seeds, and...
two of them had actually starting to sprout.
Boohoohoohoohoo!!!! I'm so sad. Why oh why didn't I rinse them in cold water first? Then I'd have known. And A. suarenzis is one of the two, which means I didn't even really need to worry about the green mold. Two more days, we'd have been fine. And the other was the kwyjibo seed, which is really hard to sprout and had no green mold, and really didn't need this treatment at all.
How sad... I might have killed two perfectly good sproutlings.
Or, maybe not. When you think about it, the water wasn't boiling, and they weren't in it very long. Both sprouts were still white and firm to the touch after the bath. Maybe they're still alive. I put A. suarenzis in one of the pasteurized geranium pots, and kwyjibo back in its cell. Maybe they'll live after all.
If not, at least I got experience. As the saying goes, "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." I'm getting quite a bit of experience in sprouting stubborn seeds, if nothing else.
Obviously, I have mold in my hot house sprouting kit again. Or still, I should say. I was hoping that by frequent rinsing, I could delay the mold enough to give the seeds time to sprout. Today, however, when I checked, there was green mold on A. suarenzis White mold is fine; green mold, I've never seen it on my plants before, but I'm guessing, not so much.
I decided on an extreme remedy: boiling the seeds a second time. It might kill the seeds, but it might kill the mold first. Or not.
Now one thing I know, thanks to the fact that we get a boil-water order every year in spring, is that you have to boil water for a minute to defeat the germs, so I figured, if I boil my seeds for one minute, they should be mold-free. But I didn't have a clean pot available at that moment, so I decided to microwave some water. Water can become super-heated in the microwave, so that its temperature is in fact above boiling but it hasn't undergone phase transition yet. So I figured if I just throw the seeds into super-heated water, by the time the water cools down, the mold should be dead.
As it turns out, however, I didn't microwave the water long enough. My old microwave was very powerful; the one I have now, which I rent along with the apartment, is very feeble. So not only the water wasn't super-heated, it wasn't even boiling. But since you can't tell the difference to the naked eye, I only found this out when I put the seeds in.
Crud...
The white mold was promptly removed by the hot water. The green mold wasn't. But then I noticed something else. So I drained the water and looked at the seeds, and...
two of them had actually starting to sprout.
Boohoohoohoohoo!!!! I'm so sad. Why oh why didn't I rinse them in cold water first? Then I'd have known. And A. suarenzis is one of the two, which means I didn't even really need to worry about the green mold. Two more days, we'd have been fine. And the other was the kwyjibo seed, which is really hard to sprout and had no green mold, and really didn't need this treatment at all.
How sad... I might have killed two perfectly good sproutlings.
Or, maybe not. When you think about it, the water wasn't boiling, and they weren't in it very long. Both sprouts were still white and firm to the touch after the bath. Maybe they're still alive. I put A. suarenzis in one of the pasteurized geranium pots, and kwyjibo back in its cell. Maybe they'll live after all.
If not, at least I got experience. As the saying goes, "experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." I'm getting quite a bit of experience in sprouting stubborn seeds, if nothing else.
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