1st Grow, 2nd Try CFL's... Help Appreciated

Well, after a failed first attempt due to overwatering, poor quality soil, and ph problems, I have germinated and planted four more of the seeds I got in Hawaii. This time around I used a light mixture of sphagnum peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite for the sprouts. When they are ready to be transplanted I will be putting them in Fox Farm soil, since I have searched online and found a place that sells it that isn't too far away. This should solve the soil problem I have had thus far. This morning the first two of the sprouts were showing, then when I checked this afternoon one more had popped out. One thing I found interesting about this go around is that when the first two were showing this morning they already had, in addition to their round leaves, their first set of real leaves. Hopefully I can avoid messing these ones up by using lessons learned the hard way. Wish me luck haha.....

 

Yeah, I have the CFLS really close. I will add more as they grow.

 

Hey,

It is now day 5 for these little babies, and they are all looking ok. Better than my last attempt at least. The only thing that seems wrong is that 3/4 of them are droopy I don't understand how in the WORLD they could be though. I planted the germinated seeds last Wed. and because I had overwatering problems last time I made sure I waited until the soil was dry and the cups were very very light to water them, which I did today. The plants were looking a little droopy before I watered them, but now about 5 hours after I watered they seem to be just as droopy, or maybe more. At least they are not changing colors like the last grow (green --> yellow) but I want don't want them to head that way. There is a hydro store opening soon nearby so I will be able to get foxfarm soil and person to person advice from them. I tried to buy a soil ph kit, but it sucked and did not work... so I returned it. I watered today with tap water that I had left sitting for about 24hours to let the chlorine evaporate out. I decided to stop watering with distilled water since that did not help at all (and maybe hurt) last grow. Let me know what you think about the droopiness and if there is anything I can do to fix it. Here are the pics:

1st pic: one of the droopy plants...

2nd pic: pic of the droopiness of the plant from 1st pic

3rd pic: my non-droopy plant

4th pic: fastest growing plant but w/ droopiness

I am going to make another post with 2 more pics of the last plant (one above and one side) I only know how to post 5 at a time.

 

Here are the other two pics of the 4th plant. Why are they droopy and is there anything to stop it?

Edit: Although I have no idea how.. I guess they must have been overwatered, but not to the point where chlorosis occured. Just droopy leaves. They are now perking back up. If a green thumb is good for growing, my thumb has got to be black or something.... Maybe one can learn the ways of the green thumb, I guess we'll see haha.

 

I transfered the plants into fox farm ocean forest soil today. They were looking pretty good, so I was excited to see how they would like the new premium soil. As I was filling their larger new pots, TWO of my damn cfls fell for the first time and burnt the shit out of two plants. It is only one of the larger leaves of each plant, but I still couldn't even believe that happened. The other two non-burnt plants are looking great though. One of them is a really dark green color as compared to the others. I hope that the other two that got burnt get better I will post pictures in a day or two when they get settled into the new soil. It says on the bag of the foxfarm soil that it could help you become a green thumb grower... only time will tell haha

 

Hey,

Just thought I would put some new pictures up since the plants have made a lot of improvement. The foxfarm soil has really helped. It seems like everytime I look at the plants they have grown. The only bad news this time is that the two plants that had the lights fall on them are not looking good, but thats why I grew 4. I guess getting 2 for 4 isn't bad. All I really need is one female. Here's the new pics:

The first and second pics are 2 views of the same plant. The last one is the plant that I said earlier was greener than all the others.

Let me know what you think, no one has posted on this forum but me for over a week....

 

Quick update of my set-up as of now. I decided to ditch the two burnt plants and stick to just the two healthy ones. This allowed me to put 4 26 watt CFL's on each plant. 3 of those bulbs are 6500k, 4 are 2700k, and one is 3500k. I split them up best I could, but at least they are getting a full spectrum of lights (I know that all 6500k would be best, but the other ones were on sale and I dont have much $$ at the moment) I put them in a emergency blanket tent to keep the light concentrated down. This tent has a fan blowing throught it from below the light to a hole shown in the second picture that exhausts the heat of the lights. Temps ranging from 74-83ish depending if its night or day. Humidity is around 50 most of the time. What do you think?

 

Sorry I forgot the pictures. For some reason, I have no memory these days

 

Hey,
Thanks for the replies... its nice to know someone looks at this haha. its_420, the stuff I have over the lights is a tent of that reflective emergency blanket to keep the light more concentrated. Because I blow a fan through the tent from bottom to top, it keeps the heat of the lights off the plants. I think it should be safe, the heat is blown out of the tent. I decided to post new pictures of the plants. They have really grown A LOT faster with the fox farm soil. I think the addition of lighting really sped them up as well. They each have 104 watts of various spectrum cfls (see above) Heres the info of the pics:

The first two pictures are the plant that was the 3rd picture of my last post. I think to make it easier we'll call that plant 1. I took two pictures with different camera setting to see if I could get that purplish color from the center growth to show. I think I did if you look close.

The second two pics are plant 2 from the first two pics on the last pic post (for comparison). It is a lighter color, but grows a lot faster than plant 1.

I am excited to finally have some plants that are growing like they should. I just keep reading more posts and learning, so I hope to get better at this as time goes.

How are they looking? It is now about day 11 or 12.

 

Thanks again for the comments guys....
Thought I would post pictures of the hopefully girls 2 weeks after they first popped out of the soil. It doesn't seem like its been 2 weeks already, but time really does fly. They seem to be doing pretty good. They are growing faster and faster. Plant 1 is looking really good, so I thought I would try to slowly LST it a bit.. as shown in the 1st&2nd pic. Plant 2 (pic 3) has a bit of what I am guessing is nute burns, but not much and it still continues to grow very fast. I haven't used any nutes so far, only the foxfarm soil, so I don't think I can do too much to help with the burns. The ph should be fine, since foxfarm soil is ph adjusted to 6.5 or so. All in all I think things are going good.

I tried to make this post last night, but it wouldn't let me post pics due to a database error. The first 3 pics are right on week 2 and the last two pics are a day later just to show progress.

Some questions: If, because of time constraints for various reasons, I would like to have the plants done flowering about 1-2 weeks into april, could I start flowering (12/12) them in about a week to 10 days? Assuming everything goes well. This would give them around 8-9 weeks for flowering. I am obviously not too worried about yeild, but am a little worried about time. Just wanted to get some opinions. Also, how is the LST looking? It is kinda scary doing it, because it feels unnatural, like I am hurting the plant, but I think shes taking to it fine. Someone that knows more let me know please....