Simply take a teaspoon of cinnamon from your spice rack and pop it into a litre of lukewarm water. Drop in half a 300 mg soluble aspirin tablet, give the mixture a good stir, let it cool to room temperature, and you are done. When it comes to planting time, soak your seeds and cuttings for an hour or two beforehand. This will potentially give you higher germination rates, lower risks of infections and improve the plants' overall vigour. In fact, just watering newly sown seeds or cuttings with this bit of kitchen chemistry may be enough to trigger these benefits. It's like having green fingers in a bottle.
(explains science - aspirin can turn on the genes that express the plant's defence system, helping them stave off infections (ie rotting), while also boosting the growth of roots... Cinnamon is the bark of a tropical tree that has evolved a range of potent natural antifungal and antibacterial chemicals to stave off the rampant growth of pathogens in the tropical rainforest. ...it can work wonders for damping off ... and prevent new cuttings from rotting in the cool conditions and low light levels at this time of year (February).)
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