never seen this before
 

Alright.... I think it may be dampening off, but I've never had ANYTHING like this before. My baby maters (3 of them so far) have wilted right at the point where the stem meets the potting mix. These are not true babies, as they have up to 5 sets of true leaves. I tried to look up symptoms of dampening off online, and came up with zilch. I re-potted the plants right up to the leaves, and will hope for re-rooting, but...Any ideas why this happened? All tomatoes are in prep for transplant in a week and a half. They've all been hanging out on the patio table, in their 4" pots with miracle grow moisture control mix, mixed with pearlite(Bryan's idea, never had any problems with it before). I suppose the other possibility is that the birds could have bent the stems while trying to get a drink. It happened to three different varieties located at three different places on the table.

many thanks
laurel-tx - feeling hopelessly blond and clueless at the moment..........

Does the stem look brown at the point where they wilt? Or does it just look indented? With 'moisture control mix' does the potting mix retain more water than without whatever they added into it do you know? I'm pretty sure perlite helps hold water to its irregular surface, or is that the other white stuff? :P I'm wondering if the mix is too moist?

I think with damping off the affected part of the stem goes brown.

PP

It sure sounds like Damping Off to me. And the post-emergent kind of damping off can occur with seedlings up to 4-5 inches tall, it doesn't have to be just the newly emerged seedlings.

And as Patrina said one usually does see a brown constricted area at the soil line but I've also seen the constricted area that wasn't brown.

There's loads of info about damping off on the web, so I'm not sure why you couldn't find any, as you commented.:)

Doesn't matter though, b'c here you are.:)

If outside conditions have been wet and a bit on the cool side that could do it.

Most soilless mixes have far fewer of the spores of the three genera and species that can cause damping off but they are not all devoid of such spores that lead to fungal vegetative growth.

So too wet can encourage those specific fungi as can coolish temps as well as lack of good air circulation, and all of that at any time from the point of when you sowed the seeds.

Fiddlesticks......One of them was a grow out project, too. Could a good dosing of Daconil help prevent the others from going down?

laurel-tx

[quote=Bryan24;47750]Fiddlesticks......One of them was a grow out project, too. Could a good dosing of Daconil help prevent the others from going down?

laurel-tx[/quote]

No Daconil won't work b'c that anti-fungal works by covering up the attachment sites on the leaves so as to prevent foliage diseases; it doesn't work that well against free pathogens.

What does work is Benomyl so if you want to get some of that and mix it up and use it as a drench that might help.

Commercial farmers will sometimes use a Benomyl drench just as routine practice.

At this point I think it's too late to even discuss the more unorthodox treatments, never proven, of chamomile tea or peat moss, etc.

Laurel, do you have even a clue as to why this is happening with your mix, whose name I've now forgotten and I'm too lazy to go look to remind myself?:)

Laurel, the moisture control potting mix you're using is what's probably causing the problem.