Paper towel method has failed me with broken taproots and other failures, bought these pellets. I soaked the pellet in filtered tap water for 12 hours until it was fully saturated, and then put a dry easybud autoflower seed in 1/4 inch deep. It was under a humidity tray dome for 24 hours until I started reading that I may be rotting the seed from too much moisture. An hour ago I took the dome off and have it exposed on top of my wifi router as a heat source. It's still heavy and saturated. Should I stay the course and let it go from here? Try and rescue the seed and re-plant it in a pellet with less moisture? I know it's early I just hate to lose a seed
Seeds do well at 75 to 80 degrees which is the temperature of most of our houses - there's no need to make them any warmer. There's no heater in nature.
I use the jiffy things too. Be patient and give it 5 days or so to pop through. I also like to remove the screen on the jiffy before I transplant. Make sure it's moist before you do so it doesn't crumble.
I use the pellets as well but I submerge in warm water for about 5 mins then fluff them up. Put my seed in ,humidity dome it with a small heating pad underneath on low with a towel over the heating pad and have sprouts in 3-5 days.
Thanks freedom, that's encouraging. I'm new to these so it's hard to get a sense of overwatering or under-watering, but my understanding is if there's enough moisture and the temperatures aren't too cold or too hot, you should see the little guy pop in that timeframe. It will be 2 days in a couple of hours. I'll make sure to update so those reading the thread will (hopefully) see everything is fine Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I went away for the weekend leaving it alone, as I had it in my original post, and came back to a stretchy bastard. Amazing what happens in 2-3 days. But it worked! No humidity dome and no additional watering. Now I am going to bury it in soil as far up the stalk as I can
I buried it about halfway. I have a 5 gallon smart pot and couldn't bring myself to lose 3-4 inches of root space. Pic below:
I could be wrong about this, I've never had to bury the stem before, but if my 5 gallon pot is 12 inches tall, and I bury the current peat pellet so that the top of the pellet is 3-4 inches below the surface of the soil, as the roots grow out...they aren't going to grow "up", they are going to grow down and from side to side. So the top 3-4 inches of soil in the pot will be wasted, and the roots will have less room to grow in. That's how it makes sense in my head anyway..
That thing looks like it might not pull through. Don't transplant to a pot that big until the plant has some size. I start in the cube but wait until you get some serrated leaves before you mess with it. Then it goes in about a 20oz-1/2 gallon pot until it's fill that up with roots. From there it's a 3 gallon for the rest of veg. Near switch to flower mine either go to a 5 gallon or 7 gallon smart pot depending on how large they are. Only autos go right to a large pot size. The small plant will have a hard time exhausting the moisture out of such a large pot and may suffer from lack of air to the roots if the pot stays wet too long. Mix in generous amounts of perlite. You want about 20% perlite with whatever medium you use. It aids in aeration and keeps a more consistent moisture level from it's water storage capacity. It also resists compaction being so light.
The stem will sprout roots out the side, not just the bottom where the roots are starting, so you're not wasting anything.
Probably common knowledge to most but plant and soil science 101 for me, I've just never had to deal with this - thanks for schooling me!
Thanks Tbone, this plant is an Autoflower which is why I planted directly in its final pot. It's Easy Bud from royal queen seeds.