Best Michael!! I have never had good luck with anything other than mint, or coleus seeds Don't know why

The only luck I seem to have is with the Winter Sowing method. I start the milk jugs the end of January or into February. I have never had fungus or mold with this method.
I would try Julia's idea of using cinnamon.

I just misted and then sprinkled cinnamon on the soil - smells good at least...the mold is a greyish-white webby structure on the soil surface. The only green so far are the two tiny seedlings...

Can you take a close up photo for us Michael?

Will try tomorrow at daylight!

I never plant my seeds until late in the winter as I don't want them to come up too early. If you try to grow them inside they get very etiolated I find, at least under my lighting conditions. Just plant the seed in pots on the top of good sterile planting mix and keep them wet (no problem here in Oregon in the winter!!) and you'll have a BUNCH of seedlings. Start rowing them out when they have at least two sets of true leaves.

I have experimented a bit with putting a LITTLE sand on top but I didn't see much difference other than cutting down on the ubiquitous moss here in the Pacific NW. Be sure you keep out any stray weeds. Bittercress is a problem here in Oregon.

Kevin

Enclosed a foto of a seedling that must now be about 2 days old!
It's a really tiny seedling more or less in the center of the foto. My camera had some difficulty in capturing it.



I meanwhile found a total of 4 seedlings, but as I started numerous seeds I actally expected some more - but it's now only 1 week that I started - there will hopefully be some more in the next weeks...

Is that sand on top of the soil? I don't see any of the of the mold. The little seedling looks very encouraging. Keep up the good work.
Did the cinnamon make the mold disappear?

Yes, there's a thin layer of sand on the soil - as I said I first misted the soil before sprinkeling cinnamon which made the mold far less visible. The area in the foto contains few flower debris hence less mold than other areas.
Cinnamon is on for 24 hours now - I don't expert wonders - mold is still present.

Hopefully it will be one of the harmless molds.

Or maybe the mold will create a monstrose type of semp!!

Most probably a "whitish, webby" type of monster! Others would call it S. arachnoideum.... ...

It looks like mold is lethal to semp seedlings! If I ever saw some green coming up it disappeared after two days. As I considered this test a failure I put the tray outside. Now it's about 2 weeks that I can observe 2 or 3 tiny survivers - and no mold so far! Next trial will directly be started outside!

Thanks for update Michael

Michael,

I have never had any luck growing semps inside but others have had luck with the technique. Don't plant them until March and they'll come up nicely.

My project today is to clean seed from the seedheads. Good rainy day project for the garage. There are over 100 bags of seed from this years' crosses! YIKES!

Kevin

We all learn much from our experiments, and the experiments of others. Thank you for the update.

I have some of my seed heads are cleaned and packaged. I still have about 10 more to go. Nothing like your count Kevin.

Blossoms, capsules, seeds and seedlings of Sempervivum

Great photos Wolfgang. How do you get such wonderful closeup photos of the seeds? That is an amazing photo.

Wolfgang,

Those are BEAUTIFUL. Do you think that I could use them for my book?

Kevin