Mysteriously slow growth for a Nirvana Northern Lights!

Discussion in 'Sick Plants and Problems' started by lousygardener, Apr 20, 2010.

  1. #1 lousygardener, Apr 20, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 20, 2010
    First, the name, rank, and serial:

    What type of medium; Soil.
    What brand and type of soil? Fafard Organic potting soil
    Indoors or outdoors? Indoors
    What strain? Nirvana Northern Lights ferminized
    How old are the plants? Twelve days since sprouted
    What type of lights and how many watts? 3 26 watt 6500-K CFLs, 1 26 watt 2700-K CFL
    How far from the lights? Two inches away
    What is your watering frequency and source of water? 4-6 days; tap water left out for 3 days. 1 tbs hydrogen peroxide added per gallon, with lemon juice for ph.
    What, how much and when was it fed? None!
    What is the medium/runoff pH and PPM if in hydro? 5.7 ph (see below)
    What are the temps and humidity in the room? ~ 70 degrees / no way to measure yet
    What size pots? 3 gallon pots (ALSO see below.)
    Any bugs? Look real close. None!
    Any other pertinent info? Yes.

    Look at this plant! Isn't this the saddest plant you've ever seen?
    This is my first grow, and up until a week ago, it was going great. The seed germinated quickly and sprouted the day after I planted it. Three days into the grow, it was a picture-perfect little seedling. Green and growing fast. It was up to an inch in four days. I was growing under a single 6500-K 26-watt CFL.

    Then came Bad News.

    On day four, I took some lousy online advice: I misted the seedling with water. See that heat damage in the picture? That's what happens when bright lights combine with water droplets. One cotyledon was pretty much destroyed, the other was burned pretty bad, and the two regular leaves got some heat damaged spots.

    What made it worse was that I'd added three other CFL bulbs (see above) that same day, and then the fan - misplaced. BUT. It seemed to recover fine. No drooping, no real problems.

    A week into the grow, I noticed it hadn't really grown in height (the first leaves, however, had doubled in size.) Checked the bottom...
    Already root bound! There was an enormous taproot wrapped around the bottom of my starter container. Which seemed weird, as the plant was still pretty tiny. That's when I made mistake two: I put the seedling (still less than an inch tall) into a 3-gallon pot. In my defense - I had nothing smaller, and figured it was the lesser of the two evils. That was a week ago today.

    Second set of leaves appeared very soon after I put them into the new pot, but were incredibly tiny. Since then... well, you can see them in the attached pictures. They're maybe a fifth of the size of the regular leaves, and that's all the growth they've had in a week.

    Other things of note: see the way the leaves are pointing in a Y configuration? They've been doing that for a week and a half now. Sometimes, they point nearly completely up. I know the plant is still growing, as I moved the lights a little and they've followed it without any problem. But... I'm nervous about this extremely slow growth. The plant's nearly two weeks old and only an inch and a half tall; that's absolutely RIDICULOUS. The only growth in the past week has been the main leaves (increased in size by about a third) and the new leaves (still tiny.) And it looks to me like the cotyledons are getting ready to fall off.

    One fun last thing to note - the last time I watered (I use tap water left out for three days to get rid of chlorine), I found out the FUN way that my PH meter wasn't calibrated correctly. I added a little too much lemon juice and brought the ph down from 6.5 to 5.7. Planning to get some PH-up to fix this the next watering, but I was afraid to overwater this guy. No nutes have been added yet.

    Lights are about two inches away from the plant, and there's an 8 inch fan blowing (on lowest speed.) I've cut two 2-inch holes in the top and bottom of my cabinet for air flow / ventilation, and I'm using the oscillating fan to push the air out of the top of the cabinet.

    Any ideas? Suggestions? Should I just keep waiting? I'm hoping it's not irrevocably messed up.

    EDIT: Because I'm a meddler, I went ahead and got a quart sized pot. I watered it thoroughly with 6.7 PH water before replanting. The process went fine - weirdly enough, the root system on this thing is pretty extensive and stout for such a tiny plant...
    Thanks, everyone!
     

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