Slime Mould

  • Slime Mould

    Posted by MelonFarmer on October 18, 2024 at 1:54 am

    Hi Crew, first time poster MelonFarmer here.

    I love what you guys have built, the show keeps me company at work and in the garden and now I’m coming to the crew for help. I promise I’ll jump in and try to answer some questions too but today I’m looking for advice:

    I have this beautiful Slime Mould growing in my living soil bed. I’ll attach some pictures, the first two are an hour apart just prior to lights out, if you look at the white Blumat tensiometer cap you can see it spreading already. The third photo is about 8 hours later. (Couldn’t upload the pics without internet, I’ll attach them later)

    Now I know Slime Moulds eat decaying matter so it shouldn’t spread to my growing plants, but my ladies are about a week from harvest and I don’t want them covered in spores of any kind when the Slime sporulates.

    Does anyone have any advice on managing this situation? I’ve thought about covering it in mulch or something to block the spores. Maybe just scrape it up and remove it? I obviously don’t want to harm my soil with fungicides.

    One more spicy detail: my power is out, possibly will be for 24 hours. Light’s aren’t supposed to be on for another 4 hours but the humidity is up around 85%. I’m not sure if that will accelerate the Slime or not.

    Any input would be valuable, otherwise just enjoy the photos!

    Cheers

    MelonFarmer

    MelonFarmer replied 3 weeks, 5 days ago 4 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • MelonFarmer

    Member
    October 18, 2024 at 1:58 am
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    Power came back on just as I hit send, here are the photos!

  • jmystro

    Moderator
    October 18, 2024 at 9:57 am
    AdministratorFree MembershipDGC Executive Producer

    The humidity is obviously too high. Lowering the humidity will kill the mold. Hot and humid is what it wants.

    • frogslayer

      Member
      October 18, 2024 at 6:18 pm
      Free Membership

      Yup 100 percent. And while this mold is not really a threat it is a great indicator that your environment is too moist and too stagnant and you’ll be susceptive to other undesirable things as well. Out in the wild I see this when it’s really humid usually on the down wind side of a house in the wood chips. I have seen it start eating the wood siding going up the house but I think most people kill it with bleach or just wait. I’ve sprayed it with multiple fungicides just to see what happened and never seen any results. The bleach works though lol. But I’d just change your environment and then physically remove the dog vomit and you should be good to go.

      • MelonFarmer

        Member
        October 19, 2024 at 1:07 am
        Free Membership

        Thanks for the replies guys. Appreciate it.

        So heat is definitely an issue for me atm. I have a portable AC but haven’t hooked it up as I’d like to seal the room and need some more gear to make that happen.

        Humidity in the canopy is good. Below 50%. The bed has quite high sides so it must be a fair bit higher at soil level. I’ll try to tuck it down or maybe add another small under canopy fan.

        I’ve had a hard time keeping it evenly moist with the Blumats so I’ve been doing some extra hand watering. The tensiometer was reading nearly 200mbar while all this was going on which is pretty dry for anyone that doesn’t know.

        I’m happy with the flowers, other than a bit of light and heat stress from growing into the lights.

        I ended up scraping it out and chucking it on the compost. It was cool to see anyway!

        Thanks again for the help.

        • frogslayer

          Member
          October 19, 2024 at 5:51 am
          Free Membership

          You must have a micro climate under the canopy. I run 5 fans plus the extraction fan in my tent. Moving air is a good thing.

          • MelonFarmer

            Member
            October 19, 2024 at 2:08 pm
            Free Membership

            I have a 30cm box fan on the floor blowing up through the canopy but I’ll get another one or two clip fans and add them in.

            Cheers

  • oldestschool

    Member
    October 18, 2024 at 10:21 am
    Free Membership

    Dang, there’s a first

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