First grow... bagseed 100% perlite hempy

Please forgive my brevity, but starting the journal from my phone. Yay Android app!

Here's my first 2 seedlings under CFL, have 4 more in paper towels germing. About 2 weeks behind the seedlings.

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You stretched them pretty badly. Move those lights closer.

Ahh much better to type on a keyboard.

My two seedlings are stretched, but its because they spent first week hanging out in my bathroom on a shelf near the CFL bathroom light. I know that's way less then ideal, but I started on a whim and have only really setup the grow closet in the past couple days.

I'm going 100% perlite hempy buckets. I bought some 5 gallon but since I'm germing more seeds, I'm going to go all 3 gallon to conserve space.

The biggest pain in the ass about hempy is the draining. Trying to think of an elegant solution. I guess I'll install tubing/pvc valve on the drain holes and just dump into a bucket. No wet vac here, so a big drain tub would just be a headache.

Planning on putting the 2 seedlings into 3 gal buckets today or tmw. I'll have to grab some nutes from local hydro store soon, since they must be running low on seed fuel by now.

You can see my preparations for a ScrOG in the background. I need to frame it with some wood.

I'm not really sure if I should bother ScrOG...any advice would be good... the closet has a little less than 6 feet from floor to shelving. Its about 2 feet deep and 6 feet wide.

Right now they are about 3-4 inches from the lights...much much closer than they were prior to yesterday.

What effect on the plant as it grows from that initial seedling stretch? Is it going to be a problem over lifetime or just in seedling stage having trouble getting those first few sets of leaves?

You might want to wait to transplant them. Transplanting this early will probably kill them if you make any mistakes. They are really fragile. Give them another week or two, until they start to get bigger. You'll want to transplant when the roots cover the inside of the cup mostly, it makes it super easy to transplant that way. I transplant when I usually have 2-3 leaf sets, not including the cotyledons.

The initial stretch won't be a problem, don't worry about it. You'll just have an extra long stem before any nodes start.

Against advice I put the two seedlings into their permanent homes. Only reason I rushed it was that one of them was leaning bad and I wanted to bury the long stem. So I put them in their pellets into the perlite.

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Thinking of the future...

Is there any problem transplanting rooted clones into a hempy bucket?

I'll probably veg my six plants for 4 weeks and then clone the strongest female to replace any males that I throw out.

So 1 of my 4 germinated seeds that are waiting to sprout has some white wispy mold on it (the Jiffy cube does, the seedling still hasn't broken the surface).

Did some googling and ended up sprinkling some cinnamon on it and taking the dome off. Sounds like its a pretty harmless mold.

Second leaf sets visible on my seedlings in the perlite buckets, they've definitely appreciated the transplant/increased light in the closet.

Today I need to grab some mixing containers and see what else sparks my interest at the hydro store. My amazon Flora nutes arrived on a Saturday morning from Fedex! I'm gonna hold off another week on feeding the seedlings though.

Side note: In the future, I'm not going to use Jiffy cubes. That peat does not give up moisture at all, I'll use the coco based cubes I used for my two seedlings.

Ok, a couple days later and the germ'd seeds still haven't sprouted from the jiffy peat cubes. Possible reasons include me not germing the seeds long enough in paper towel (biggest taproot was like 1/2 inch and 2 of the four had just split) and maybe I packed them too tight/deep in the peat.

Oh well, just some bag seed.

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So here are my 2 seedlings. Slow but steady growth. I'm sure the roots are the main growth trying to get down to the rez.

So bad news the past few days...

There are browning spots on both seedlings non-cty leaves.

After mad googling, its probably something they're getting from the water. No nutes yet, but I had a mess the other day.

My humidity was like 20% and for pre-flowering, I was trying to raise it to 40-60%. So I put a humidifier in my closet for an hour and it went way up to 60%ish. But, my ventilation is still not properly rigged, so I got tons of condensation on the ceiling. The drops coming off the ceiling from the condensation were yellowish, so I'm pretty sure my pots got dripped on a lot by whatever that was.

Before giving up entirely, I tplanted them to small half pepsi bottles with clean perlite.

It'll be a miracle if they live. I'm not too bummed, just chalking it up to learning/getting my closet right.

Good to see another Hempy grower, welcome!!

In the future, I recommend you use bigger perlite. It gives the roots more air, and I think it's a little easier for the roots to find their way around bigger chunks than a bunch of smaller ones.

Don't give up on those plants man, they can recover. As for drainage...yeah, that's pretty much the ONLY thing that sucks about Hempys. I put mine in the bathtub whenever I feed/water.

1 day after abandoning the tainted perlite and tplanting to smaller containers.

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Good luck with the hempy, I tried and did not have very good luck, I figure it was a noob thing, so back to my soil less medium. I took the one I had in hempy and transplanted, although still on the small side, still alive.

I've had great luck with mine, way better than soil IMO.

Well, they're not dead yet, but cotyledons are dried up and the first set of leaves is half dead.

I know I'm not supposed to feed seedlings, but with the coteys gone, they need food from somewhere. I prepared my nutes, but going to wait until later today to feed (need to get some PH down to get nutes near 5.8-5.9...currently at 6.8).

For comparison, this is just as I fed them. We'll see how they look in a couple days.

Poor bastards will probably herm if they live.

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Side note: this experiment has been totally enlightening at the very least. I did at least a half dozen things wrong in seedling/germination that I will never do wrong again. So that's good!

So 2 days after the early feeding and skipping on watering them yesterday they look much improved.

Thanks to ganoo for watering advice.

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