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Question

Does anyone no how to sterilise sphagnum moss for seed propagation???
 
A microwave would work for small batches.

Get it wet and put it in something like an 8 x 8 Lexan and fire it up for 5 minutes or so and there should be nothing living left.

That said, sphag tends to be pretty clean in and of itself so...
 
sterilization is bad, it kills off the good bactiria. Try pasturization. What you do is put your moss in a container and add boiling water too it. Let set till room temp and then use it.
should kill all the bad stuff, leaving the good unharmed.
peace,
Zero
 
Ummm... Boiling water is going to kill both good and bad organisms (unless they happen to be thermophiles) since their molecular machinery is the same and therefore susceptible to the same caveats of biology (protein denaturation, DNA melting, etc...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization
 
im with Pyro.........boiling or microwave equals the same result...in all actuality both are doing the exact same thing....good bacteria arent any more resilliant than bad..........i dont sterilize LFS for anything
 
I wouldn't worry about sterilization or pasteurization at all for seeding on LFS, just make sure there is very high air circulation and the light intensity is equally high. The only thing you'll have to worry about bothering seeds is usually botrytis and after they germinate, pithium, both of which can be cut down heavily with high air circulation.
 
Does microwaving actually sterilize? Rarely do I microwave a pot of media for 20 minutes set on high for some special plants or seed, but I was speaking with someone who grows mushrooms and he said you need an autoclave/pressure cooker to really sterilize something.
 
well there is steralized......and than there is steralized :grin: for the purposes of sowing seeds a microwave or the like is good enough.......but what most dont seem to realize is steralized media creates a "vaccume" and nature dont like "vaccumes" so as soon as the media cools down to acceptible levels and you place the seeds in it, bacteria from the air and on the seeds themselves start growing and multiplying in the media......boiling water and dumping it over the media or microwaving it should get rid of weed seeds though...which is good
 
For most "household" needs a microwave works.

For true sterilization you do indeed need an autoclave (or a pressure cooker which is the same but on a small scale.) The ability to pressurize means you can get the heat high enough to kill even dormant spores and the like. One of the standards for testing autoclaves is to see if it will fry out a batch of Bacillus spores (usually stearothermophilus which burns out at 121C, however there are some some strains of other species thsat can survive temps of 130C.)

Those extremes are not usually needed by your typical home gardener though so the microwave does fine for killing off the currently living things. It still allows spores to survive but that usually does not make much difference to us (but it would to shroom growers for various reasons.)
 
  • #10
thanks for the info i will be planting the seeds today
 
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