Also try this for the slow germinating seedlings:
Add 3 baby aspirin (the uncoated, chewable kind) to a gallon of water. Mix well and put some in a spray bottle and spray it on the top of the soil where your seeds are planted. This is supposed to greatly help germination, and I tried it and all of a sudden the ones that have sat there for 18 days are popping up!
It is useful on the plants themselves, too. Salicylic acid (aspirin) is produced by plants when they are stressed from disease, environment, whatever, but often they cannot produce it fast enough to overcome what ails them. Use the same concentration above on plants showing disease or stress and it is supposed to help them fight it, kind of like when we take antibiotics to help get rid of something our body didn't fight off well enough.
This is my first time trying it, but I saw results posted that researchers got near 100% germination using it and were able to slow down and stop some diseases. They sprayed it also as a preventative every 2 weeks and saw much less disease and more vigorous growth. I don't know if it's true or not, but it seems to have really helped my late germinators, and aspirin is cheap so why not? I plan on trying it in the garden as well, I always have some pathogens in my soil, and I can't rotate planting sites so I have to just deal with it. I'm hoping this will help!
Anyway, just thought I'd let you know...
Andrea
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