Chicago: Gardening Emergency- read at your own risk!

What do hydrogen peroxide, chamomile tea, a knife, and a dryer all have in common? I will tell you. But I won't tell you right now. First you must read my story.

It was a dark, dank, and lonely night...except it wasn't lonely because Joe was here, but just for added drama pretend it was all three. Joe and I had just settled in for our nightly bit of "I'm too tired to do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV when a shriek rang out. "EEEEEEEEH" It was me shrieking because THERE WAS A FUNGUS ON MY BABY PLANTS!!!

Noooooooo! Were my babies doomed to be smothered by a nasty white fungus or could I save their sorry souls? Acting quickly I called Dina...maybe that wasn't the best action to save the plants but I needed consoling before I could really think. Being the resourceful gardeners that we are, we immediately googled "nasty white fungus on my plants."


The solutions before me were: 1. sorry your screwed why did you water your seedlings so much, geez! 2. put a fan near your seedlings to give them some air 3. spray with diluted hydrogen peroxide 4. water with some chamomile tea, it acts as a natural fungicide. Realizing that I didn't have enough time to check to make sure these sources were legitimate I decided to try ALL the solutions. Would this solution result in dead plants? I had no way of knowing.

And so I steeped some chamomile tea (see, being a tea snob comes in handy), mixed up some diluted hydrogen peroxide, took that knife and scraped off all that nasty fungus. There was only one problem: I don't own a fan. Solution: run the dryer and keep the seedlings in the laundry room. The idea was just crazy enough that it might work!

Thanks to some thorough researching, a little resourcefulness (mostly on Joe's part, I was freaking out of course) the seedlings were saved!!! And now you know what hydrogen peroxide, chamomile tea, a knife, and a dryer all have in common. They were the tools necessary to save my plants. Lesson learned: don't keep your seedlings so wet, they won't be the only thing that grows. Other lesson learned: don't kill.........plants.