Pygmies under mosses

[Tom]

Hi there,

Any experience this problem? When sowing the pygmies in a standard peat/sand mix, tiny mosses begin to grow on the soil, and begin to overwhelm the plants, and making the soil surface really harder to break through (for roots, plants growth, etc).

Any solution to this problem? By putting a thin layer of pure peat on the soil surface? Sand? Kind o rock? Eliminating all mosses with tweezers as they appear? Sterilizing the soil to kill the mosses spores? Any hints are welcome!

 

[eplants02]

I would try pulling them out by tweezers.

 

[Pyro]

Hey Tom,

I have dealt with this in many forms. Here is what I have done and my results

1) I had a pot of pygmies, moss and algae started growing and I didn't like it

So I started top watering every day. This flushes the micronutrients out of the media and the moss and algae can't grow. These plants are doing fine.

2) I had a mystery pygmy show up in a pot of D. binata forms. My media here is live sphag and the pot is undrained. All I did here was pluck a strand or two away as needed. These plants are growing very fast and are super vigorous.

3) I had another pot in which moss sprouted. I was feeling lazy and so didn't do anything to tyr and stop it. Now there is a full carpet of moss. The pygmies in this pot are somewhat smaller than their counter parts but grow faster than the others. They have produced more gemmae this winter than any of my others and the gemmae are sprouting and growing fine.

 

[Tamlin Dawnstar]

I find that mosses will colonize substrates that have some micronutrients available to them. This can be a result of some moneral dust in the sand that is used, or even from the moss itself. I always rinse the sand until the water runs clear. Moss I keep outside where it is rained on over the summer, leaching out any possible nutrients. Since certain algae can fix atmospheric nitrogen, if rain water is collected, care should be taken to cover the barrels so that there is no light to encourage algal growth. After sowing gemmae, I spray with distilled water daily. Occasionally, in spite of my efforts, a flush of green will start on the surface of the pot, and this is a warning sign that without remedy I will soon have a nice pot of moss! I spray the surface until there is no sign of the green flush, and after some time, it does not return. Any mosses that do form, I remove with tweezers. The gemmae appreciate the moisture too.