![]() While it’s important to keep your garden clean and free of weeds, using herbicides can kill or damage young corn seedlings.Įven if you don’t use herbicides on your vegetable garden, if you use them on your lawn, the chemicals can drift over to your young plants and cause damage. Herbicide Damage and Mineral Deficiencies You can learn more about corn seedling blight in our guide. Water seedlings with clean, room temperature water – 68-77☏ is ideal.Keep the seedlings in optimal conditions: give them enough warmth, enough sunlight, and just the right amount of water, and avoid adding fertilizer until they have at least four true leaves.Use fresh potting mix and avoid using garden soil if you’re starting seeds indoors.If you are reusing trays or containers, soak them for 30 minutes in a solution of 90% water and 10% bleach first, to kill off any lingering fungi.Always clean your gardening tools between uses.Damp conditions can increase the likelihood that they will emerge and destroy your young crop. These disease-causing pathogens easily overwinter in soil and on previously used gardening equipment. ![]() The most common fungal culprits that cause damping off species of Fusarium, which cause red-brown lesions on the young plants Rhizoctonia, a tricky pathogen that shows no aboveground symptoms until plant death but that causes cankered, rotting roots and Pythium, another “invisible” killer that causes dark lesions on the roots, which then rot and kill the plant. The only way to know for sure what killed your plants is to send them to your local extension office for testing. It can be nearly impossible to tell exactly which type of fungus is causing the infection, and sometimes, multiple types of fungi might be responsible! If your seedlings turn yellow and wilt, or if they simply flop over and look damp and rotten at the base, they might be suffering from a fungal infection. This is referred to more specifically as pre-emergent damping off. It’s important to note that these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, although seedling blight more commonly refers to issues a seedling has once it has emerged, while damping off can affect seeds before they emerge. Planting corn in cold, wet soil makes it an easy target for fungal diseases, including damping off and seedling blight. Those of us in cooler, wetter growing zones get to deal with more fungal diseases than those in warmer, drier locales. I’ve started maize indoors since then, and it’s flourished because I adjusted a few light-related factors, including moving that grow light a lot closer. I’m pretty sure lack of light was the issue that struck my seedlings back when I first tried to grow them indoors as a novice gardener. Also, you’ll want to give the plant about 12 to 16 hours per day with a grow light. Make sure you position it just an inch away from the top of the seedlings, adjusting the light as the corn grows. These corn seedlings needed a grow light instead of a sunny window. If you’re growing them indoors, set them near a bright, sunny window and add a grow light to bookend the bright midday hours, since the filtered sunlight won’t be enough, and the corn will grow leggy and weak without enough light. If the newly emerged seedlings don’t receive at least six to eight hours of full sunlight a day, they will suffer. Your best bet is to plant more seedlings than you think you’ll need, to account for potential loss after transplant. The seedlings might not transplant well, but it’s worth a try to be able to harvest corn before the frost hits in the fall. This will probably be around late May or early June for gardeners in these colder regions. To prevent this from happening to your seedlings, especially if you live in Zones 3 to 5, your only option is to sow seeds indoors and wait to transplant them outside until two weeks after the danger of frost has passed. If enough cells are affected, the plant can die. Once the temperature warms back up, the ice melts, causing the ruptured cells to lose water and nutrients. At such low temperatures, the water inside the plant cells turns into ice crystals that rupture the cell walls as they take shape.
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