Well.... A few of you kind of know me at this point. Haven't been around in a little while. Went out of town, took on more hours at work. Had seeds that just weren't working. So, I kind of went all in on germinating some seeds. 2/3 worked. Had a Special Kush and a WWxBB. Started them out in the pods that you would use for tomatoes. Left them outside the tent for about 3 days before I stuck them inside. So, first day, they're fine. Looking all perked up, second set of leaves is starting to come in. Lovely. I go to close the tent up for the night. The stem is looking oddly purple to me, but I just kind of ignore it and move along. Humidity is always right around 50%, which is kind of low. So, I grab a small mist (not spray) bottle and mist up the sides of the tent to try and boost the humidity up. That didn't do anything to the humidity. Temperate has also been sitting right around 70 degrees. So, I put a space heater outside the tent. Apparently, temperature reached a high of 88 at some point. The 400w is at least 3 feet away from the top of the seedlings, if not more. I come back in the morning to find that the soil in the little pods is just totally dry and the little plants are flopped over like limp noodles. Can't really check the pH on a seed pod, so I can't give you details about that. But, I added some more water last night and, now, today, one of the two plants has perked back up a liiiittle bit. Let's say it looks like it's lifted it's head up from the pillow after a major surgery. The other hasn't changed. To me, the second one looks like the stem was too narrow to receive any water after it wilted the other night. Obviously, the seed pods aren't ideal, but I've heard more often than not that pot is like a tomato, and I'd just had such crap luck with my bag seeds that I went for it. So, tell me the various ways that I f'ed up.
I can't really see anything drastic, having a 400w ( hid?) Over the top of them may be a bit strong but not unheard of, I just managed to butcher about 40$ worth of my last good genetics, kind of the same way, I sprouted them in solo cups, worked great, threw them in my veg cab under low power CFLs, then at night when the flower tent would kick on I would throw them in there, ( 400w Mars II) for the night like 3.5 feet away from the light, don't wanna burn them up right, it was working fine for like 3 days then I went to grab em out of the flower tent one morning to put em back in the veg cab and they were shriveled up and toppled over, they were to little for that kind of intensity I guess Anyway, I hope you get it sorted, best of luck Boom Check out my marsII 400w grow report https://youtu.be/XrqtYNDulSc
The quote tool seems to be messed up for some reason.... Anyway, thanks for the reply, Boomboom. The light is a metal halide. Have it on 18/6 time schedule. Is it possible that I was making them try to stretch out too much, putting the light that far away with stems that weren't strong enough to support it? Maybe I should wait until they're a bit more mature to put them under the lights? Maybe the tomato pods have a bad combination of nutrients that just caught up to the little ones? I don't feel like the soil drying out or misting the tent should have hurt them, but perhaps it did? Obviously I'm not an expert, but I think the Special Kush is totally done for. The WWxBB might still have a chance if the stem isn't kinked too badly. I went ahead and propped it up with some tooth-picks. Guess I'll hope for the best with the good genetics while waiting on some more advice, and just toss some more of the seemingly worthless bag seed into the tomato pods and cross my fingers.
The metal halide light is super intense and it gets hot. It's better to put them under a CFL for a few days until they get some sort of stability about them. The only time you really have to be careful with them is when they are just sprouted and in the process of developing some roots. Normally I take clones which take me about 7-9 days to root. Once rooted, they go into Solo cups with Roots Organics Original and are watered in with properly pH'd water. The first night or two I put them on the floor....about 4 ft. below a 4 tube T5 that we use for veg. After a couple of days, I put them up close to the light because I don't want them to stretch. But once they go into soil, all I have to do is wait till the cups dry out to give them some more water. They typically stay in the cups under the CFLs for about 8-9 days...or until the plant is larger than the cup it's in. They get repotted into a 1 gal. pot into fresh soil....notice no mention of nutes yet. They stay in the 1 gal. pots for 3 to 4 weeks...until they are larger than the pot they're in, before getting repotted again into 3, 4 or 5 gal. containers for flower. I've been experimented with flowering container sizes so that's the reason for the different sizes. Usually, I don't have to start nutes until the plants are in the containers I plan to flower in...and several weeks after they get transplanted into those. If you use good soil and you're smart about how you bring them up from a little plant, you can grow healthy plants without having to pour chemicals to them all the time. Once I start nutes, I keep them going until I harvest. I usually give a very diluted dose with every watering instead of a water, water, feed schedule. I can do this and keep all my plants that pretty lush blue green from clone to harvest. You've just got to use some common sense and be patient. The plant is going to do things on it's on time. Keeping the root space confined as they come up from babies makes the foliage grow as fast as possible. They develop a root system before anything else so the less space they have to root into, the faster it happens and the plant moves on to growing foliage. The more you grow, the better you get at it and the more you learn about it. Read all you can because good solid information is your friend when starting out. No sense in killing the plants when you don't have to. There are several threads in the absolute beginners section dedicated to new inexperienced growers. You need to know the basics to be successful. If you give them good soil, understand how to water (and not over water) along with making sure the pH of any liquids going into your plant is adjusted to the proper range (6.3 to 6.7 for soil grows), you should be able to at least veg some nice healthy plants. Good luck! TWW
The halide is in a cool tube. I can put my hand about 1/2 inch away from it and there's no heat. So, would the idea of the halide being too intense still apply, particularly given that it's about 3 and 1/2 feet away from the plants, and the temperate inside the tent is sitting at about 75-80 now? Humidity in the tent has dropped from the 50% range down to about 30%, so I'm going to have to figure out a way to boost that back up. Don't have any mother plants, wish I did, but cloning is out of the question for this newber. Definitely not planning on using any nutrients on them for a while, at least 3 weeks, probably closer to 4-5, since I don't know what's in those tomato pods. Next time, I'll probably just go straight for the solo cup, or maybe a shot glass. At this point, I'd say the two biggest mistakes were putting the seeds in the tomato pods, not because I don't know exactly what's in them, but because it's confined the roots and perhaps forced the plant into stretching the stem out. The second big mistake would be putting the plants under such intense light so quickly and putting the light at such a distance. I assume that those with more experience would suggest transplanting into a solo cup and either lowering the light or raising the plant immediately, right? I won't do it until someone with more experience confirms, but that's the two big take-aways that I've gotten so far.