I’ve been spending the last month trying to figure out why my seedlings are dying. I’ve only had a couple ofseeds out of around 30 fail to take off ever before this. At first I thought it was damping off due to cold temperature, so begrudgingly popped 2 more with extra perlite, only bottom watering etc.
Those fell victim again with dry top of soil, warm climate, plenty of light blah blah blah. The stem and roots of the plants didn’t really look rotted, so I started examining the peat I was growing them in, dumped out one of the freshly murdered plants and saw this:
times 10000. I have a couple videos of these fuckers running around in the peat moss but can’t upload here. They’re very difficult to take a picture of. They started showing up last grow and I have a sneaking suspicion they may have been the cause for the early fade I experienced. The roots of the seedling I pulled up were just a taproot until like 4 inches down. Smooth with no hairs or branching when I know the whole pot was wet enough to grow roots everywhere Then underneath the long skinny taproot there was minimal sickly root hair branching.
I thought these little beetle looking dickheads were just harmless decomposers when they first showed up months ago, but now by the sheer numbers of them in the dead seedling pots I’m thinking it’s more serious.
Anyone have experience with these pieces of rat garbage? I can upload the video somehow I’m sure if more info is needed.