Hey grasscity, This is my first post and my first grow! I sprouted my seeds just fine and transferred them into 6" pots last night! I am using a tried and tested soilless mixture from a good friend of mine but after I put them into my growroom I turned the lights on is that bad? It hasn't been 24 hours yet only about 18 or so but I turned the lights of now and I am hoping that I didn't fuck them up because I realize now that I you do not need light on the soil to sprout them! the temp in the grow room is 81.3 and humidity is 43.5% I also have a carbon filter pulling air out w/ a 4" fan pulling at 2168 CFM or something like that! I know its over 2000 CFM and my room is 2'X4X5'
Thank you... I have been reading none stop and I have now taken them out of the humidifier dome and made sure that the soil mixers damp and warm.
I don't really understand what's happening. Have they broken the soil surface yet? The light won't hurt them either way but the heat from the light can dry out the soil too fast so if they haven't broken surface that may be a consideration. It's best to keep the temperature about 25℃ for fast germination
Hey UK grower Thanks for checking up on my thread! Yes, at around 4pm about 9 had broke the soil and when I got home from class tonight a 9pm 17 have broke the soil. It is so interesting to watch them form their first leaves. Most are in some stage of the process, some moving along quicker then others. The ones who sprouted first are very green and have beautiful formation and they are standing up straight. a few are coming out of the soil sideways but I think they want to move toward the light. one of them has yes to form any leaves but its a green stem and the seed is firmly in soil; while the stem is standing up straight. My LED light makes it difficult to see without the glasses! I am trying to post pictures of what I built over the weekend while they were germinating. I am still new to the site, trying to work out the kinks with my photo sizes. I am noticing that a few of them are having trouble breaking the seeds shell all the way is that ok?
If they aren't ridding the shell, sometimes a few sprays of water can help, this can soften it enough for them to split it properly. It's because they weren't sited deep enough and they have dried out before they had a chance to break it off. If it's needed it can be carefully prized off, but be careful you don't decapitate them. How many seeds have you started?
A 4" fan won't pull over 2000 cfm, much larger fans don't pull nowhere near that. Your fans probably pulling around 200cfm. I run a 6" fan in a 2x4x5, its max is 440 cfm
Hey Killset, I was mistaken, my fan has 171 CFM! I am obviously new and I thank you for pointing that out to me. Hey GoldGrower, I started 20 seeds. Two AlphaKronik Strains ( CHeddarwurst 2 and AlphaDawg) and (The DawgFather - CHemdawg D and Sin City Kush) And I have successfully sprouted them all. I know that I am now in the most critical point in the lives of my plants; What is your routine for the first two weeks of a seedling's life? How much water do they need? - I am using a soilless mix and I would like to grow organically, do I need to buy expensive nutrient concentrates or anything like that? My other question is I have finished building my Veg/Mother Room and what I am planning on doing is mothering at least one of each variety! my veg room is only 2 1/2 ft tall, there is not much information about caring for Mother Plants. Do you have any ideas of resources that I can read that will give me the information I need to make sure that I can keep my plants on a continuous cycle and I can begin learning how to Breed! Thanks for your help!
I do not think you have your fan rating correct. 2000cfm would likely suck your tent inside out! LOL!
Is this your first grow? 20 plants is going to be a nightmare to look after. For the first couple of weeks I like to keep the soil very lightly damp by adding small amounts of water regularly. It's very important you don't keep the soil wet and also don't let parts dry out. But once they are a couple of weeks old I give them a good wet/dry cycle to enable to soil to get enough air. Air to the roots is extremely important and the amount of air makes a huge difference to the yield. If you are growing in a soilless medium then that means the soil has no nutrient value. You must add nutrients or the plants won't be able to grow and will eventually die. I prefer growth technologys ionic grow and ionic bloom but there are lots if good nutrient brands out there. If you want to go organic that's a whole other thing and you will need an array of fertilisers that you mix in to the soil before potting up. You can use organic bottled nutes but they lose any advantage that raw fertilisers provide. If you are a beginner I would suggest forgetting about organic, learn how to grow plants first before making it more complicated. You plan to have 20 mother plants? How many clones are you planning to take off these? Just 10 off each is 200 plants! Do you really need that many mother? You are better off picking out your favourite 1 or maybe 2 and just use them. You can take hundreds of clones from 1 mother plant per couple of months. Mother plants are treated the same as any other plant but you just don't flower them. You can prune them now and then to keep them short and bushy
Hey Gold, Thanks again for all your help. I definitely have no business having 20 mothers! haha I am not starting a genetics company! lol I don't even think that I have enough room to flower all of them comfortably. I started all of them because I am going to be giving a few to my buddy who is somewhat of a mentor to me but he is not a great communicator so It is hard to get good answers to my questions! He knows what he is doing, just not what he is saying! lol He has been growing indoors for about 5 years and has his grow in his is remodeled "shop/Garage". UPDATE* 19/20 sprouted and all but three of them look really good. the other 3 are misshaped a little bit( yellow leaf tips. this morning when I woke up the soil on the surface looks dryer then last night but directly under the top layer is damp to the touch ( when I apply pressure to the top of the w/ my finger it feels slightly damp. Its hard to tell though because when I first put the soil in their respective pots, the soilless mixture was damp already, so its hard to tell when the soil is dry. I check on them twice a day and so far every check up the soil seems dry to the touch but moist on my finger tips when I pull away. Does that make sense? I have a spray bottle and have been spraying water onto the soil but just enough to dampen the topsoil. (sticking my thermometer down into the soil brings up nicely dampened soil that has stayed like that since I potted them and watered them and planted seedlings in them. I just worry that they are not getting enough . As far as my plans for these girls (and hopefully a boy or two) is to find two healthy moms of Alpha, and A healthy mom of the Cheddarwurst.My ultimate goal is to learn how to cross breed, create hybrid strains, even learning how to alter phenotypes to create whole new strains! But I'll stick to reality, I want to learn how to keep a continuous grow so that every harvest is followed by more plants moving into my tent to flower, But I am also trying to be realistic. That kind of efficiency is going to take time; but I am eager and that kinda worries me. Because I know when I am being over zealous with learning something new and exciting I tend to make a lot more mistakes! There is so much I don't know and so many questions that I have a had time putting into words out of ignorance of gardening and basic plant knowledge. Which is why I am here.( If I wanted to document my first grow here in this community, would I post it here? or is there a specific thread that is for? ) Is there any other advice you would give for "early plant life" care? lastly, what does it mean to hold off on beginning a feeding schedule of nutrients until the plant has produced its first spiked leaves? Cheers Mate Thanks for all your help man
Yo, so I realized that what I did was mix up the RPM # with CFM #. Because I was trying to point out that I had a fan with high enough RPMs to recirculate my tent with fresh air at a much faster rate then a normal fan. A friend of mine actually pointed out to me that a fan must a have a minimum required RPM rate to replace all of the air in a space and then wrote out the formula for how that works!
I've never heard the rpm thing. We all go by the cfm around here. 1st you need to find the cubic feet length x width x height = cubic feet. In the case of our tents is 40. I want to be able to turn my air over 5 times a minute, so 40x 5= 200. So I want a minimum of 200 cfm. I go bigger and use a speed controller, so the fan can be quited down and have better temp control
In addition to regulating temp you must consider RH. (Humidity). With forced air ventilation comes fluctuations in humidity. My experience tells (personal compiled data) that when I run mentioned to cycle air my humidity drops. If the RH is already low (ie. Grow room/area, local weather..) then the rh in the grow area can dip too low, thus causing plants to asperate faster, forcing them to survive instead of growing. Humidity too high? Same thing in reverse, kinda, except the plants are kinda drowning in their own air. With high humidity, the leaves become wet, then they cant asperate. This is fine for new cuttings, since they have no roots yet they draw on the moisture on the leaf, until it can establish roots, when it does establish roots, it then can go back to breathing and drinking the right way. but adult plants need to gradually reduce down in humidity the closer to flower they get. Problems with high temp and high humidity is MOLD! The cfm info is valid. The reason for the high exchange rate, is to replenish the Co2, not oxygen. Plants exhale oxygen and consume co2...hence co2 enrichment products. ¡Spoiler alert! **** Co2 enrichment is NOT required to grow cannabis!!! Normal Co2 levels in ambient air is sufficient to grow with as long as you replenish in a confined area.
Thanks for the advice! I finally was able to download the app which is letting me post photos. They are 7 days old after planting and 4 days after sprouting. 19/20 alpha kronik seedlings. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
Breeding is great and as long as you have the room to grow out high numbers of individuals you really can make your own strains. It takes a lot of time and work and considering the sheer number of strains already available, most people don't bother. But there isn't many things so satisfying as toking on your own strain. It sounds like you have the dampness of the soil sorted. As long as there is some moisture in the soil the roots will grow down and thrive amongst it. You can continually update this thread if you want, or you could start a new one in the grow journal section. People put their journal threads in almost any section on here lol Young plants require a very low nutrient concentration, and as they grow they prefer a stronger and stronger concentration until they plateau when big enough. Also, the soil will contain a small amount of nutrients, or indeed a lot, it depends on the soil you use. It's usually best to let the plants deplete this nutrient content before adding more. Small plants are easily over dosed with nutes and will not only slow growth but eventually kill them if it's strong enough The RPM is how fast the fan blades are spinning, so this figure has no bearing on the amount of air that is moved. Bigger fans will move more air than smaller ones even though their RPM may be the same. Also, inefficient fans may spin much faster but still move less air than a good quality fan. the CFM is the amount of air that is moved when the fan has no load. Unfortunately when you add ducting and a filter, and make the fan not only take air out of the tent but also passively draw air in to the tent also the CFM rating means nothing at all. Better quality fans will handle heavy load better than lower quality fans. I gauge my fan size on how much heat is going to be produced. The size of the tent has very little to do with it. If the same heat source (light) was used a smaller tent would need more air movement than a larger tent due to the heat building up. But usually the bigger the tent, the bigger the light you would use so there are many factors to consider It's commonly agreed upon that it's best to buy a fan that may be a bit bigger than you need and then use a dimmer to slow it down. This has two advantages, the first being it will be quieter as it's slower, the second is that you have a little extra power in reserve in case you get a hot spell in the summer and need to raise the ventilation efforts
Here is after my 9pm check up! They have accelerated growth by about 50% it looks like! But that is from an untrained eye! I am concerned about the two fruit flys i found in the tent! I am curious if any of these chewed leaves are from them or some plant related issue!? I found two bugs that were tiny, black in color and an iridescent shine on their backs which look to be wings!? I did have some old bananas lying around that we made bread with!? Is there anything I can do to keep them from reproducing in there? Humidity is fluctuating between 38-42% temp had been right around 79 until today when it dropped to 76. I am not sure if this is correct but I am noticing a pattern between the growth of the plants and the temp/humidity it's going down slightly as they grow taller..? Grasscity Forum
1. I am most excited about developing techniques which will help me to create my own strains. I live in Portland, OR (Oregon being the third state in the U.S. to Legalize recreational use) and a friend of mine (whom I am trying to get to join on here) and I are thinking about starting a seed company/ personalized medical cannabis strains. Our state has in addition to legalizing the recreational use of Marijuana also legalized the recreational growing of no more then 4 plants per household. I am a medical patient and am allowed up to 18 in veg and 6 in flower. I have been bitten by the natural urge to grow and cultivate something into life and what a symbol of freedom it would be to make a living at something you love to do. With the industry so fresh it is basically open to whom ever has the fearless mentality and wants to take risks. Anyways I am digressing! 2. I am thinking I might but I am worried about it now a bit, yesterday I bought a small 4.5" Axial Fan and set it up ground level about a foot from the seedlings blowing gentle air across the pots to help strengthen their roots. ( A tip I read somewhere on here I think) But I when I checked on them tonight the soil was unusually dry already and I so I sprayed the top soil with a water bottle and got it damp but didn't stick my finger into the soil to gauge the dampness. But I did also give each pot about 2-3 tablespoons of filtered water. Upon thinking about that small detail about 2 hours later I quickly rushed back to check them, like a young eager grower would probably do. I found that the soil that I had sprayed earlier was now a bit more dry then it was prior and when I stuck my finger down into the soil I could feel a bit of dampness but it didn't seem to be a whole lot of moisture in there. LONG STORY short; I am now second-guessing my decision to water them a second time. There was a bit of dampness but it was about 3- 4" down in some of the 6" pots and the other ones that did seem to have more I gave less water to. Every 3 - 4 days watering schedule is about right? they have been in the pots for 4 days now and I gave the soil a thorough watering before planting the seeds and the soil was pretty dry tonight. I am just afraid that the fan might have contributed to that too and now I don't know if I should keep a fan in there or not until they get a little bigger! I don't want to dry the soil out to much unless that isn't going to hurt them. I don't want to end up over watering them. Finally, thanks for the tip about the fan I like that Idea, I actually read that a few different threads on here! and I didn't really understand what they meant but now I get it! Cheers PG
Hold on, I just caught that you have 20 plants in a 2x4 tent. That's way way too many, unless you want really tiny plants. Even if they're not feminized and you throw half away for being male, its still going to get crowded and your not going to be able to cram enough light in there. 2x4x5s are kind of a weird shape, don't get me wrong I love mine. As the plants grows you won't be able to effectively get the light down to the ends, because you can't raise the light high enough. 2 lights are way better then 1 in those tents. Two 250watt hids will blow a 600 watt out of the water. I run a 600 and currently have a 400 watt led. Its kind of a pain, but once a week, I've been flip flopping the led and sliding the hid to the other end. Before I was running the 600 in the middle w/ supplemental lights on each end. I sgrog 2-4 plants in my 2x4, depending on the strain. A couple properly scrogged plants w/ 2 lights will yield way more then 10-20 light starved plants. With only 1 light in that size tent about the 1st 8-12 inches on each end will be very airy. Having it crammed full will make it worse. Remember those plants are going to get big.
Would watering with H2O2 help or harm seedlings? Of course at a very high dilution like less than three percent, but I'm just curious if this extra oxygen in the soil could in turn help them out with quick root growth and avoid root rot? Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum Sorry for asking a question randomly on a semi relevant topic, but I don't know where else to ask it ahahah Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum