Maple Seedling advice

[Trenell]

Hey guys,
I am still pretty new to bonsai but have read quite a lot about it in the last few months. Recently, I have tried to sprout some Japanese and Trident Maple seeds. I kept them indoors because it can still get fairly cold outside and placed them close to a window, where it doesn’t get any direct sunlight. In the last few weeks my 10-20 Seedlings have died one after another. All of them suddenly stopped growing and just bent down at some point. The little Trident seedling in the picture is the sole survivor of this massacre. Even though he has already put out four pairs of leaves, all of them were about the size of the ones you can see. I really don’t want him to die because Im really excited to start my bonsai journey. Do you have any advice on why the leaves are so small and why the other seedlings started dying?

 

[Sean Walker]

Hmmm the leaves on it look normal for the stage it’s in. But the dying off thing could poss be a soil moisture issue. Do you have any pics of the deceased? What des the root look like on the dead ones?

 

[Trenell]

Hmmm the leaves on it look normal for the stage it’s in. But the dying off thing could poss be a soil moisture issue. Do you have any pics of the deceased? What des the root look like on the dead ones?

Sadly I threw out all of the dead ones already, but when I plugged them out they basically had no roots, it was just a little stump. I also thought about moisture at first, but I didn’t really water them a lot and the soil was never wet for a long period of time.

 

[Sean Walker]

Look up images of seedlings that have died from “damping off” to see if that’s what yours looked like.

 

[Trenell]

Look up images of seedlings that have died from “damping off” to see if that’s what yours looked like.

Ok, I will definitely do that! Thanks for your help!

 

[Shibui]

Damping off is common with seedlings. Even more common with indoor seedlings as there's no fresh air or sun to discourage infection. Outdoors with sun and wind is a much better place for seeds to germinate and survive.
Symptoms are collapse of stem close to the soil, leaves then wilt and the seedling falls over.

If that's what it is it will probably continue to spread unless you can make big changes to conditions or use a suitable fungicide.

 

[Trenell]

Damping off is common with seedlings. Even more common with indoor seedlings as there's no fresh air or sun to discourage infection. Outdoors with sun and wind is a much better place for seeds to germinate and survive.
Symptoms are collapse of stem close to the soil, leaves then wilt and the seedling falls over.

If that's what it is it will probably continue to spread unless you can make big changes to conditions or use a suitable fungicidehmm

It seems like it is already too late to try to save it now. But I ordered about 200 new seeds one month ago because I aready guessed that I would somehow mess up my first batch. They are already outside but nothing has germinated yet. I will definitely be more careful when germinating seeds indoors next time though!