Chris I can understand your frustration. I dealt with it for years and years but it all boils down to moisture levels. Peat and other seed starting mediums would just soak moisture out of the super humid air here and no amount of fans or fungicides would prevent damping off except during those very rare times when the humidity would be lower. I used to plant whole trays of just one variety in order to get one seedling and sometimes that didn't even work. I knew I was in trouble if after a few days the surface wasn't dry in my containers. I ended up setting them outside if possible just as soon as they started sprouting to get the drying benefit of more sunshine and wind but even that wouldn't work when the humidity stayed around 100% or it was rainy.
The first time I used UltraSorb I was very skeptical and over planted as usual and lost almost no seedlings to damping off. I was still not sure of it until I had planted numerous times when conditions were ideal for damping off and yet I still rarely saw it except in the cases I mentioned in the above post. Another thing I noticed was far higher percentages of germination especially with difficult to germinate seed like spinach and cilantro.
Bill
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