Leaf mold

“ If grown in pots, prepare a rich soil of sand and leaf mold. If impossible to get leaf mold, use a sprinkling of bone meal. Place some pieces of broken flower pots or pebbles in the bottom of the pots to drain the water off, or the bulbs will mold. ”

“ Soil for the seed bed is sifted to remove pebbles and debris, and mixed with equal quantities of sharp sand and peat or sieved leaf mold. To prevent “damp-off,” a fungus that chokes off stems at the soil line, soil should be sterilized if at all possible. Small quantities may be baked in the oven. Special easy-to-use fungicides are also available; follow label directions.
Rocks, water, and planting—an effective combination of all the elements of a rock garden. (Mr. and Mrs. Norman Cherry)
Most seeds are covered to the depth of their diameter ”

“ They need to be frequently sprayed and it is well to immerse occasionally the entire plant in water so as to wet the under surface of the leaves. The water ought to be tepid, and indeed for all plants in cold weather. To keep the dirt from falling out when the plant is plunged top downward, something can be wrapped around the pot. A mixture of turfy loam and sandy peat is best, but when not available, leaf mold or a rich mellow soil mixed with silver sand will do. ”

“ The upright threads with the balls at the end contain many tiny bodies called spores. These spores have been formed by the division of the protoplasm making up the fruiting bodies into many separate cells. When grown under favorable conditions, the spores will produce more mycelia, which in turn bear fruiting bodies.
Physiology of the Growth of Mold.—Molds, in order to grow rapidly, need oxygen, moisture, and moderate heat. They seem to prefer dark, damp places where there is not a free circulation of air, for if the bell jar is removed from growing mold for even a short time, the mold wilts. ”

“ The mold or mildew which gathers on the surface of preserves is a plant of exquisite beauty when viewed with low magnifying power and by reflected light, for what appears to the naked eye only a soft, white, woolly crust, becomes a glittering forest of graceful stems and branches, standing like fine spun silver upon the dark background of the supporting surface. ”

“ Good hot sun and dry wind will kill the mold. The spores of such a common mold are waiting everywhere, so that your fruit would mold anyway if conditions were right. Still, scalding the trays for cleanliness and a short trip through the sulphur box for fungus-killing is commended.
Killing Moss on Old Trees.
I have some Bartlett pear trees that are covered with moss and mold, and the bark is rough and checked. I have used potash (98%) , 1 pound to 6 gallons spray. It kills the long moss, but the green mold it does not seem to affect. The trees have been sprayed about one week. ”

“ Keep the storage areas clean and free of decaying fruit and vegetables; otherwise, molds and bacteria will spread to your sound produce.
If you store nuts (especially peanuts) , soybeans, other dry beans or peas, make every effort to prevent growth of molds. Moisture, temperature, and time are necessary to promote their growth. A harmful toxin may be produced if mold growth is allowed to progress. It is important that storage areas be regularly checked so as to avoid this type of contamination. ”

“ All the nuts that I have ever had any dealing with seem to be very susceptible to mold growth. If the moisture content of the nuts is above a critical level, mold growth takes place in the shell at a very fast rate. The only thing we can do in a case like that is to get the kernels in to St. Louis and destroy the mold growth or spores on the surface before it can grow so that the fungous mycelium is visible to the eye. The black walnut and pecan, if you examine them under the microscope, all seem to have mold growth on the surface of the kernels. ”

“ Molds feed upon all cakes or breads, upon meat, cheese, and many raw vegetables. They are almost sure to grow upon flour if it is allowed to get damp. Moisture seems necessary for their growth. Jelly is a substance particularly favorable to molds for this reason. Shoes, leather, cloth, paper, or even moist wood will give food enough to support their growth. At least one troublesome disease, ringworm, is due to the growth of molds in the skin.
What Mold does to Foods.—Mold usually changes the taste of the material it grows upon, rendering it "musty" and sometimes unfit to eat. ”

“ The color is an unnatural red, has not faded, and the odor is good. The microscope showed the presence of much refuse, and large quantities of fungi, whole colonies of molds, the filaments distorted, many yeast cells, and bacteria. The red color was not confined to the red crystalline bodies, as is the case in ripe tomatoes, but the whole of the protoplasm of the cells, including the nucleus and nucleolus was red, as were also most of the mold filaments and yeast, indicating the presence of considerable artificial coloring matter. ”

“ Fungi never have the green color of ordinary plants, always reproduce by spores, and feed on living matter or matter that was once alive. Puffballs, for example, are found on rotting wood or dead twigs or roots. Some fungi grow on living plants, [Pg 126] and these produce plant disease by taking their nourishment from the plant on which they grow; the latter plant is called the host.
The same blue mold that grows on bread often attacks apples that have been slightly bruised; it cannot pierce healthy apple skin. ”

“ In the natural process of decay to which the roots are subject after death, and which also affects the leaves, twigs and trunks falling on the surface, the vegetable matter suffers a transformation which must be considered more in detail hereafter, and results in the formation of the complex mixture of dark-tinted substances known as vegetable mold or humus; the remnant of vegetation that imparts to surface soils their distinctive dark tint. Its functions in soils are both numerous, and important to vegetable growth ”

“ This is one of the low forms of plant life belonging to the molds, and grows from microscopic cells called spores, which in the economy of the mold serves the purpose of seeds. These spores are produced in great abundance, and, being carried by the air, alight upon the fruit and there germinate and grow into a colony or speck which is all the time feeding upon the substance obtained from the skin of the apple. ”

“ TOMATO-LEAF RUST.—The leaves of the plant attacked by this disease rapidly become covered with a dull brownish velvety mould, or fungus, known as Cladosporium fulvum. From the mouldy spots and patches thousands of spores are readily carried by a slight current of air to the surrounding healthy crop, and unless prompt measures are taken to check the pest the whole house is rapidly involved. Excessive atmospheric moisture encourages the mould, and it is spread extensively if diseased plants are sprayed with water in the presence of healthy ones. ”

“ Wood, leaves, herbage, left a long time in contact with air and moisture, undergo a slow combustion; in other words, they rot. The result of this decomposition [27] is a brown substance called humus or vegetable mold. The heart of old hollow willows is converted into humus; it is the same with leaves that fall from the trees and rot on the ground. Humus from the remains of earlier generations of plant-life nourishes the plant-life of to-day, and this in turn will become mold from which future plants will spring. It is in this way that vegetation is maintained in places not cultivated by man. ”

“ Butter is not well suited to the growth of mold, but the paper used for lining the tubs, or wrapping the prints is an excellent medium for mold growth. The wood of the tub also furnishes ample food for this type of life, especially where the wood contains any sap. One other essential condition for mold growth is a supply of oxygen. The mold spores are widely disseminated, and are always to be found on the butter tubs and on the paper. ”

“ Molds, yeasts, spores, and bacteria are very tiny plants, not animals. They are so small that they can only be seen by the naked eye when there are very large masses of them together, consisting, in the case of bacteria and yeasts, of hundreds of 52millions of small individual plants, and in the case of molds, of many individual mold plants closely massed together. ”

“ Spores The spores, then, which are found in tomato products are of three different kinds, namely, mold spores, yeast spores, and bacteria spores. The greater number are almost always mold spores, since the mold plant produces spores under all conditions, while yeasts and bacteria only produce them under unfavorable conditions. ”

“ The condition of the soil should be mellow but inclined to moist. If wet it can only be used clumsily and spread with difficulty; if dry it can be spread easily but not made firm, and on ridge beds can not be put on evenly. But when moderately moist it can be spread easily and evenly on flat or rounded surfaces, and made firm and smooth.
How deep the mold shall be put upon the bed is also [Pg 106] an unsettled question. ”

“ Mold can grow on virtually any organic substance. Most buildings are full of organic materials that mold can use as food, including paper, cloth, wood, plant material, and even soil. In most cases, temperature is not an issue; some molds grow in warm areas, while others prefer cool locations such as bread stored in a refrigerator. Often, more than one type of mold can be found growing in the same area, although conditions such as moisture, light, and temperature may favor one species of mold over another. ”

“ These plants—the Colorless Plants, we may call them—are the molds, the fungi, and the bacteria, or germs. You know how a pair of boots put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in the cellar, will become covered all over with a coating of gray mold. ”

“ This slimy coat below the mold layer is made up of diverse species of bacteria and fungi that are able to grow after the acid is reduced by the blue mold. The organisms in the red slimy coat act upon the casein, producing an alkaline reaction that is unfavorable to the growth of the blue mold. Two sets of organisms are, therefore essential in the ripening process, one preparing the soil for the ferment that later produces the requisite ripening changes. ”

“ The fungus, which is chiefly within the leaves and stems, seldom emerges through the firm upper surface of the leaf; it commonly appears as a white bloom or mildew on the circumference of the disease patches on the under surface. It grows within the tissues from central spots towards an ever-extending circumference, carrying putrescence in its course. As the patches extend in size by the growth of the fungus they at length become confident, and so the leaves are destroyed and an end is put to one of the chief vital functions of the host plant. ”

“ They are part of the natural environment and play an important role in the environment by breaking down and digesting organic material, such as dead leaves. Also called fungi or mildew, molds are neither plants nor animals ”

“ In the first stages molds are white or light gray and hardly noticeable; but when spores develop the growth gradually becomes colored. In fact, the conditions of advanced growth might be likened to those of a flower garden. The threads—mycelium—might be likened to the roots of plants and the spores to the flower and seeds. ”

“ The bacteria spores, like mold spores, have a tough surface which gives them high resistance, and they contain the germ of bacteria life which can reproduce the species when favorable conditions for growth are again encountered. The bacteria spores, therefore, float through the air as do the mold spores, remaining in the dry state without nourishment for months at a time, and as soon as they light upon a moist surface containing the elements for growth, even to a very small degree, they reproduce the rod-shaped bacteria form, which begins to multiply itself again by the simple division method. ”

“ If the atmosphere is charged with the seeds of these fungi, floating there like the dust of a puff-ball, they would be indiscriminately scattered, and no one particular spot be more affected than another; the first shower of rain, or the first fog that fell, must precipitate the seed with an equal and an even vengeance, attaching it to every straw in the field. I cannot but suspect, therefore, that the plant is diseased before the fungus seizes on it, and that those stems which are in sound health resist its advances, or counteract its activity. ”

“ Should they reach a barberry leaf, however, they will germinate, penetrate the leaf and grow for a period. Eventually the fungus appears on the lower surface of the leaf in beautiful structures called cluster cups. Under the microscope, one of these cluster cups forms a lovely object. The leaf skin is split and below the ruptured skin may be seen a flask-shaped hollow filled with chains of minute golden-yellow spores. The spores break away, one by one and favoured by fortune, are carried to a wheat plant where they germinate and give rise to the familiar rust. ”

“ The filaments are attached to the surface of the leaf by suckers, which are not so readily seen in this species as in some others. A mildew growing abundantly in autumn on the garden chrysanthemum, however, shows them very satisfactorily if a bit of the epidermis of a leaf on which the fungus is just beginning to grow is sliced off with a sharp razor and mounted in dilute glycerine, or water, removing the air with alcohol. ”

“ If mold and clay are in good condition the vase will fall forward to be supported on the fingers of the right hand and steadied by the thumb. The half mold is now laid down and the vase taken in both hands, set gently on a plaster bat and put aside to dry. It often happens that the vase leaves the mold with reluctance. If the slip be very new, or the mold either damp or hard or worn out there will be some difficulty in effecting a separation. ”