Hey all, I'm a first time grower and I have successfully germinated about 8 seeds so far. The only problem is, I'm a little worried about when they will sprout, it's been 3 days since I planted the first 4 and I see no signs of sprouting, the only reason this worries me is because the growing guide I read specifically told me to water the soil fully 15 minutes before planting the seed BECAUSE it is bad to water a planted seed that hasn't sprouted. Now here's my problem. It's day 3 and I have a total of 8 planted seeds, none of them have sprouted and after ONE day the plants soil seems dry, no moisture at all, but yet I am under the impression I am not supposed to water unsprouted seeds that are in soil. Guess I'm just paranoid and want to make sure my seeds will sprout! Any help appreciated, thanks guys.
allo matey, how far down did ya put the seeds in the soil? about an inch and a half is good. if ya stick your finger in NOT near where ya put the seeds, and feel down a few inches, it should still be wet. also check the weight of a pot with dry soil in it, if its the same weight as the ones that have the plants in it, then they are dry, i watered mine that are in 6.5 ltr pots, with 1 ltr between them! this waas before they sprouted, bearin in mind, I killed one sprout before it surfaced because i was panicing, the hardest thing to learn in this game is PATIENCE! its a killer, and im findin it HARD work! lol, dont worry, mine took 4 days i think to sprout!
Uh oh...I put them in way less than an inch and a half...I made a little hole in the soil with scissors and put the seed inside and covedred it with lose soil, I doubt they even got 1/2 an inch down....Besides I'm using jiffy pots that are a little bigger than party cups and if I put the seed an inch and a half down it would be halfway down the entire jiffy pot lol. I stick my finger down the pot pretty well and i couldn't feel any moisture, I don't understand why they are drying so quickly.
*UPDATE* I weighed out one of my jiffy pots with soil from the bag and it was heavier than on of my jiffy pots from day 1 that has seeds in it, so I defniatly think they are drying out YET some grow guides Ive seen tell me NOT to water unsprouted seeds so I don't know what to do!
are you putting a baggie or saran wrap over whatever you planted the seeds in to make it really humid and keep moisture in? It gets really dry in the air in the wintertime so make sure you keep ur shit covered untill the seed sprouts the cotyledon ( 2 round edge leaves)
jiffy pots suck. they wick moisture away from the soil. if you are using the kind with the jiffy soil, that's bunk too. i've ruined over 20 good seeds trying to grow them in that garbage. it's just peat that hasn't even been adjusted. that stuff can be as low as like 4-5 on the pH scale.
Wow I had no idea...guess I'llstart using party cups haha, what can I do now to save my babies? I have 4 planted dry ones, 2 fresh planted ones uncovered and 2 fresh planted covered ones, should I water the dry ones? I want to save all of them
i'd get them out of that garbage jiffy soil asap. if you do it gently enough you should be able to transplant even the most delicate beginning taproots. seedlings definitely need to stay moist. if they get too dry they won't continue to grow.
do you have another source of soil to put them in? i would probably break up the soil as gently as possible by rolling the jiffy pots in my fingers to get everything loose and then as gently as possible sort through the soil to find the seed/sprout. i've knocked over cups of sprouting seeds by accident and had to do this and i was successful in my attempts to re-pot a the tiny tap root. the way i did it was filled a cup with moist soil up to a point, poked a hole long enough to hold the root and then gently laid it in the hole, covering it with fresh soil. if possible i would use a spray bottle to try and evenly soak the soil without being too violent about it.
I think theres a misunderstanding, I have jiffy POTS not jiffy soil. I have soil that has a tested pH of 7.0 I think tomorrow I'll transfer them to party cups and try to extract the seed itself with a spoon and replant it in new moist soil in a party cup, wish me luck!
oh, right on if you let it dry out enough you can probably just pull the whole dirt cake out of the pots and put them in the party cups. no need to extract the seed if it's in good soil. that would be unnecessarily stressful. just make sure to keep the soil moist. spray bottles rule.
What;s funny is I actually followed the same tutorial and haven't had any sprouting for almost 5 days now. Wet the soil, let it drain. Seed had germinated put it in about an inch. Covered it up and put it under my 4 CFL's with a bag covered. The soil is still moist just no seedlings at all. I read that the roots are sensitive to light but people seem to just be tossing them right in there with the lights on immediately. I decided to turn the light off today and just see what happens. I have an LR2 and AK48 going. Any thoughts? I think I will wait 2 more days then pull the plug and start again.
I germinated 12 beans over the weekend (12/12 with the paper towel method) and chose the best 8 from there. I put them in solo cups, Fox Farm Ocean Forrest mixed with 25 % Perlite, put the sprouts 1.5 inches under the soil and then covered with Cling Wrap with a few holes poked in. I put the babies in my eventual Flowering Chamber which is an 18x8x18 Antec PC Tower with 166 watts of cfl (right now it's got 65k's in it and will continue to run as my veg chamber until the mothers are full & ready for their permanent home in my small 12x7x12 veg pc, then I'll flip the box into a perm flower chamber). Currently, after about 48 hours of 24/0 and ME TOO!!!! worrying about over watering, my soil feeling especially dry just like you've spoken about, I've been watering them ~4 ounces of water every 12 hours to keep the soil moist but not over saturated. Good news is that in the past 12 hours 5 of my 8 babies have broken ground.
I have jiffy pots, however I am planning to use them for when I clone hopefully as soon as in 2 months. Jiffy's are 100% bio-degradable. Your roots WILL GROW THROUGH the jiffy's. So in a nutshell, you could take your jiffy pot now and put it in a solo cup or a 1 liter pot & move forward, there's no need to disrupt the seed and any roots it may be growing at the moment. BTW atsealvl you mentioned 5 days and no ground broken yet, you might want to check one of the seeds(scoop it out) and see what's up, has there been any growth since you planted it? Perhaps you put the germ'd seed upside down and it's growing down? not up? I've read it can take upto 7 days to pop ground, but the fact you have a few seeds going and nothing sounds like something is up. As far as throwing them at the lights right off the bay, my plants are ~12 inches from my cfl's, once they get to be 1-2 inches big then they'll be graduated and moved upto the desired 2-4 inches from the light.