A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Yellow mold

I have a couple houseplants with an odd yellow mold on the top of the soil. It is fuzzy with tiny bright yellow bulbs. Each patch is about the size of my thumbnail and the bulbs within it are about as big as the little tapioca used in pudding.
I live in an extremely dry area and have not been overwatering. The soil is noticiably dry.
Is this bad and if so is there anything I should be doing other than physical removal? Is it a sign of an infestiation?

Thanks,
Plantgirl

It kinda sounds like the soil you have has
some kind of wood product in it, ie; even like a peat moss,
when the wood decay's it sends out a fungus like substance...

Here is a quote by The Plant Doc here...

Picture here of "Slime Mold"

Can you check your type of soil you used
or have it in and let us know????

I have read that it helps to heat potting soil in the oven at 200 or 250 degrees for 30 minutes in the oven. Is that true? Maybe that would prevent problems in the future.

I have heard that, yes...

but I have also heard that that realllllllllly stinks
up your house and oven..

The one person who tired it didn't have a happy wife
afterwards' I guess..
He then went on to suggest, if you want to do that method,
to use your outdoor bbq grill.. dispersed the order better
and you could leave the hood up/open to get the smell out.

Good idea. I don't want to stink the place up. Thanks Weezie.

I have used the oven to cook soil. I wouldn't say stinks, so much as smells strongly of earth/gardens. Personally, I find the heat generated by the oven much more offensive than the smell (the heat just builds up in the room, since it has no where else to go).

I guess I can see not liking it though. I wish I'd done that with my most recent batch of potting soil. Every single pot is infested with gnats now because I didn't.

Boy did it stink!

Yesterday I went ahead and baked my potting soil. I use Garden Safe potting soil. I guess it's ok, but I noticed with the last bag I purchased that I would get these tiny, crawling light colored insects in the soil. Sometimes they'd crawl on top of the soil. Sometimes around the drainage holes. I don't think they hurt anything and I don't know what they were called. Allowing the soil to become really, really dry (as dry as the plant could stand it) seemed to get rid of them though. Recently I bought another bag and noticed the same problem. So I baked my potting soil.

I couldn't detect the smell last night, but this morning I could. My husband complained about it all before work and then called me later and complained some more. I can't bring myself to actually tell him what caused it. All I would say was that it wasn't something we'd eat.