Question
QUESTION: Hi my sarracenia and venus flytrap seedlings are growing in a pure peat moss and  now there is a ton of algee over the entire pot can i stop this and is it bad or harmfull to them?

ANSWER: Hi Ean,

Once the algae starts, it's hard to stop.  Prevention is better than cure.  If you can scrape some off that will help.  Be sure you're using only distilled water.  Try some aggressive rinsing, and don't keep them overly humid.  Here's another example where excess humidity causes problems.  If the seedlings are large enough, try to transplant them out into fresh media.

The best prevention I've found is to treat the peat with boiling water before sowing seeds.  This will kill algae spores.  Algae is harder to treat for than fungus since it's not killed by fungicides.  It's not harmful once a plant is larger.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: My seedlings are not in high humidity and all of them have about two to three pitcher on them. are they ok to repot and i am using distelled water.

Answer
Hi Ean,

Those are easily big enough to transplant.  Just lift them out gently with a spoon handle or something similar, carefully clean off the algae and transplant them.  After that try to scrape off algae before it forms a thick layer.  Sterilizing the soil as I mentioned before will help also.

Good Growing!

Jeff Dallas
Sarracenia Northwest
http://www.cobraplant.com