is it ok to put a light on my plants?

yes the stem will weaken if they stretch..but sunlight wont make em stretch that much i dont think, but dont have any experience growin using the sun...
what kind of light is your desk light..only some types of light will work for growin...cfl, hps and mh...your desk light wont be hps or mh, but it might be cfl..if it is, by all means use it...if not, go to a home depot or something and pick up some cfls, their really cheap so no worries there...

good lck on grow room

 

CFL's are the windy bulbs you see at stores. The higher the wattage the better. And yes most can just screw into any normal socket.(though some of the higher wattage ones need a special fixture) A 42 watt cfl from homedepot is like 10 bucks so even broke people can get afford it.

 

Don't forget : a plant in front of the window with a CFL blasting on it is asking for looks from someone outside....

 

Hey man, I can totally help you out here, cuz i was doing the same thing you did. I had already read up on germinating seeds, so i tried it one day with some decent bagseed...and out popped my plant i have today. The only difference is ive been using a 150watt cfl ( flourescent ) go here :

http://www.homedepot.com/cmc_upload/HDUS/EN_US/asset/images/eplus/017801867602_4.jpg

Thats what it will look like. except, i say go with a 150w bulb, maybe 2. and make sure they are the daylight kind. You can tell because its more blue of a light than the regular witch are orange...or dim. Anyways, then you can just string up a couple of these :

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v180/llockhart/First Grow/SA400042.jpg

They hold a light bulb up to 150w, which is perfect, and hang from the power cord, or you can string it up and hang it, cuz it has a little hook thing on it...the way I have it set up, is the way i think you should set it up if your looking to just grow a little bit in your room, and if you have 10 plants...your chances of getting female plants is higher. take a look at all my pics

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v180/llockhart/First Grow/

oh, i can tell you how i fixed my stretching problem...cuz it sounds like you have a bad one...you should take some pics by the way.my first plant, which is the big one in my pics, stretched a lot because i wasnt planning on it coming out of the soil..actually, it had totally slipped my mind. But i noticed it and it was streatched pretty bad, so i decided to fix it, and went out and got some soil and some perlite. ( get soil that drains well, you should probably even go with soilless mix and 20% perlite mixed in it...workin great for me. And the ph level is at 6.5 which is perfect ) Then when i transplanted it from this pot into its own little cup, i buried the stem down into the soil and only had it sticking out of the soil so much...about where i thought it should be, if i hadnt let it stretch out. ( p . s . im kinda stoned right now so excuse the fuck ups in spelling and grammer and such. )

and as you can see in the pics, she looks fine, well, for the most part. any way, good luck. Let us know what you decide to do.

 

oh i forgot to say, 2 of those lights will cost you 20 bucks, maybe 25...and those reflectors will cost you like 15 bucks.

 

30 seeds in 4 cups -- so you've got 7-8 seeds in each cup? You need to get those sprouts separated into their own containers or the roots will be forever intertwined.

You also ought to get them out of that MG soil, it is pre-fertilized and particularly for baby plants can burn the roots, but also no good for later because it will cause over-fertilization. Get some generic organic potting soil with no ferts.

Looks like you also have a lot of reading to catch up on. Look to the grow guides and other sticky posts at the top of each forum here to get you going.

 

you should get some better soil and then carefully transplant the sprouts into their own containers. that's what you should do. then worry about your lights.

 

Yes. If there are no ferts in the soil it should be fine.