Experiment in bypassing damp off

Most of my original tomatoes that I started by seed fell victim to damp off.

Aggravating, but many horticulturists suggest not starting tomatoes too early anyways as frost or disease from cold/damp that can occur early from early planting of tomato crop.  Luckily I had some seed leftover and so I've begun again, this time with the luxury of reasonably warm and sunshine-y outdoor weather.  A later home-started harvest, but with luck there will still be a crop!

A very kind friend of mine purchased a good size Bonnie's indeterminate heirloom tomato for me in addition to a smaller hybrid indeterminate (that had 2 plants in it!) so that I wouldn't be without the deliciousness early this year.  Oh us vegetable gardeners and our tomatoes!

But back to damp-off crud:

After I started pulling out the totally damped off seedlings from their small egg carton "pots," I wondered to myself  about the famously well known stem-rooting properties that tomatoes possess and thought that  I might still yet be able to save some.  So I kept one Tropic tomato seedling with a pinched damped off stem and popped it in a small bath of water I was growing a grocery store fennel bulb in, making sure that the damped off stem base was under the water line.   .

Here is the result after a week or so:

(at this point I had discarded the damped off portion that existed below the newly rooted part you can see now)

Now that I have potentially found a way to save damped off seedlings I am slightly smacking myself at not having done with more of the sad looking plants I chucked. 

So, just wanted to share if any of you run into damp off issues.  (There is hope!)

I feel like a weird voodoo priestess or something

GAH.  The seeds in the mini greenhaus have been coming along merrily, even the purple calico ornamental pepper (I've determined ir's that one rather than mixing it up with the tricolore garda, as the leaves are purple), EXCEPT I noticed that last couple days that a couple seedlings keeled over.


GOSH DAMP IT!  It looks like there's some damping off going on.  I've possibly been a little too water bottle spray happy and the cracks in the plastic of my geenhaus obviously have not done a great job venting (I know, not their purpose, but I still had hope).  I also had been gone for a while and got carried away by other household things I probably was not opening up, checking and airing out the seedlings enough as I should.

I've pulled out the sad flopped over seedlings, only 2 and it looks like that they're all purple calico peppers and it hasn't spread too much I hope.

As a potentially too late method to prevent further damage I'm taking one from the Gayla Trail/Martha Stewart advice book (not a collaboration, just things they've mentioned in the past) that I constantly forget to use: CINNAMON.

So, there I was with a palm full of cinnamon in front of my little seedlings just blowing all this powdered cinnamon into the greenhaus box and on the seedlings and surface of their dirt in fervent prayer that this will protect them or heal them and whatnot.  It reminded me of all those cheesy stereotypical scenes from movies that had an indigenous medicine man/woman blowing some sort of mystical powder on their patient or something. 

Everything in there smells delicious at least.

*sigh*  If I had been smart I'd have blown the cinnamon on top of the surface of the pots BEFORE I plant the seeds.  I've never really had a damping off problem before, so I'll just hope that it doesn't proceed to total seedling meltdown.  My own personal tomato/pepper/tomatillo Chernobyl I swear.