Hi guys. This is my second indoor grow ever so bare with me. I'm going to try to be a thorough as possible: - 5 day old seedlings - Germinated in Promix organic seed starting soil - Two 24 watt t5 sunblaster 6500k run 24 hours a day (6-7 inches under light) - Temperature stays between 77-81 degrees F - Humidity hovers between 40-50% - 2 days ago I started watering with a very dilute mixture of DISTILLED WATER, liquid seeweed, (0.1-0-5) and muskie fish emulsion (5-1-1). The bottles say mix 5ml per liter, I'm using 2ml per liter - The next day I noticed some slight twisting occur in one of the seedlings. - Today I checked on them and now the other strains are experiencing some slight twisting of the leaves. The seedling that started twisting yesterday has now developed some brown spots in the middle of the leaves - I do not know pH, need to buy a pen I TRIED searching for the answer and found a lot of conflicting information. One person alleging its a cal mag deficiency (seems unlikely for a seedling). Another person said light burn (also skeptical). I have a feeling I caused this by over feeding nutrients to such a young plant. Also, for what its worth... I noticed the little stem that runs through the center of the leave appears to be brown on the seedling that are twisting. The non twisted ones are normal whiteish-green color Hoping yall can give me some advice. I'm a hash maker not a grower so please don't blast me too hard. I'm trying to learn.
i think the key thing is to relax, take a deep breath, and keep in mind you are dealing with a real living thing. dont over fertilize those young plants. i germinate in 3/4-filled one pint containers and routinely grow the plants to three full sets of leaves before i transplant and the mix is nothing more than peat and ewc. there are plenty of nutrients in that alone such that fertilizer isnt required until the plants are transplanted to their final resting place, which is the only transplant i do (one time). no offense to you intended but generally speaking so many growers first starting out make the same mistake of over fertilizing their young plants to the point of problems. dont over fertilize and dont over water. let them grow. they look fine to me and most of us routine growers have seen a lot worse work out just fine.
Agree with everything @Possuum said. Seedlings typically don't any nutrients until about 4th set of true leaves emerges. You could literally grow them in a rockwool cube with just water and light until that point. For now just LITFA (leave it the fuck alone). Typically plants this size wont need to be watered more than once a week (or twice if in a very hot and dry environment) so take care not to over water them.
Please, no offense taken! My very first grow I learned not to overwater the hard way. (Damn near turned all my lower leaves yellow.) I am very mindful of this now. I'm going to let them dry out again and water with only distilled water until they become much more developed. I had a feeling I was flying a little to close to the sun, so to speak. Thank you for the reply.
For those that are still interested, I'm pretty sure this is my problem... Going by this chart my VPD is in the 1.5 range, it should be ~0.5kPa. I watered yesterday and by noon today they had transpired all of the water (weighed the cups before and after). Brown spots have become slightly worse with 3 more plants starting to develop them and another couple beginning to twist. I'm really doubting it's (solely) an overfeeding issue now. The only other thing I can possibly think of is that the distilled water I've been using is too acidic. Although to me this seems less plausible as a pH of 5.8 only slightly inhibits the uptake of most nutrients (except Phosphorous but I don't think the symptoms are indicative of such a deficiency) Going forwards I will be watering with dechlorinated tap water and increasing humidity inside the closet with an ultrasonic mister on a timer
relax, you are overthinking and overworring on this. It's normal, everyone does it when new at growing. thinking we have to do EVERYTHING for that tiny little hopeless seedling that depend you YOU for life, right. h*ll, if you don't give it every bit of attention and worry and fussing over it it's sure to die. it must with out you. right??! sorry. that plant will do better the more you LITFA (and I see your have newly learned LOL ). Seriously, it would grow like a weed without your help, your fussing over it is doing more harm than good. It's like someone as a new parent, that first kid is fussed over like crazy, every tiny cough or wrong head turn and it's at the doctors to check on it. by the third kid you throw it in a room to take care of itself! LOL LOL growing is the same. leave your plant alone. it will be fine. don't worry about vpd range - your 77-81f and 40-50%rh is just perfectly fine and where mine is 90% of the time. and you are in soil so PH isn't going to be an issue for you, especially this young of a plant as long as you aren't feeding fertilizers. (BTW, preferably you build a nice soil mix and forget the bottles stuff altogether....) follow instructions very carefully to save your plant!!! 1. put down the ferterlizers 2. step away from the fertilizers! 3. for now put away the VPD and PH charts. 4. step away from the VPD and PH charts 5. close tent 6. step away from tent 7. LITFA 8. LITFA 9. LITFA 10. check on plant. say hello to your darling. talk nice to it. IF you have a fine mist sprayer you may give a light, fine mist of your distilled water. After that say goodnight. Close tent 11. step away from tent. 12. repeat steps 7 thru 11 for next 7 days.
Yeah well the soil came back at <5pH when I tested it. Been foliar spraying 800 EC of calmag at 6.2pH and watering with 7.0 pH water...the plants have really taken off! They are also transpiring a lot less at 60% relative humidity with the ultrasonic humidifier theorizing =/= overthinking