thcJoes's First *Newb* Soil Grow (Teach me Yoda's!)

Discussion in 'Indoor Grow Journals' started by thcJoe, Mar 11, 2012.

  1. This is my first time for everything here guys, don't be gentle and feel free to shout dumbass newb when needed, I wont take offense.

    So I'll start at the top. I have no background experience aside from dropping some seeds in the soil and letting nature do its thing. Any help you guys can give me I'll greatly appreciate. I'm not gonna b.s. anyone here I killed my first 5 seeds and this is my second attempt. I'm using bag seed and 1 of my freebies "Black Russian" The Black Russian is 6 days old, my bag seeds are 4 days old. I'm not touching my good strains until I nail down these bag seeds lol.

    I'm germinating with the papertowl/cheesecloth method and distilled water with a P.H. of 6.7. Once the root starts forming I take my 1.5" rockwool cubes and soak them nute free in my distilled water for a few moments, then carefully place my germinated seed root facing down into the rockwool. Now I've tried gently pinching the small hole shut on some of them to try and keep the root in darkness but I'm not sure if I should be doing this, some of them I have seemed to kill doing this so I stopped doing it for the second grow, which now worries me because I can look down in the center and see the root. I put them back in darkness and check on them daily looking for the stem to pop out.

    The next day 4 of my ladies are reaching for the sky looking for light. So I take them and place them under my 4 foot T5 Fluorescents. The T5's I'm using are rated at 20,000 lumens total. I place the hood 2 inches from the top of the plant and keep a close eye on them. Now I'm not going to pretend I know what I am doing, but I have the plants in a rockwool tray with the cubes sitting in it. When it comes time to water I fill the bottom of the tray to where the rockwool is just barely resting in water so they can absorb what they need. The tops of the rockwool stay pretty dry but the bottom half inch is staying damp to moderately soaked. I allow the cubes to get fairly light and dry and then repeat the process. This is usually and every other day thing so far. On the day I don't water I lightly mist the dome and place it over the tray for about an hour or so until the droplets are gone, then lower the lights back to 2" from the top.

    My room temp is staying at 71F-76F, Humidity 50%.

    So everything has seemingly been going pretty good this time around until today.

    I'm 4 and 6 days in, and it seems like vertically my growth has stunted. They have not grown over 2 inches tall yet. I see other journals on here and their plants seem much larger then mine at this age already? I know I know, perhaps strain and other things factor in. But she's still producing leaves. The leaves are curling down a bit which I'm assuming is an over watering issue? But also noticing yellow tips on my first set of leaves. So I'm at a stalemate, and feel I have to be doing something wrong so I'm looking to you guys to set me straight!

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    I should mention my room is well ventilated but this T5 is putting out some heat and if I don't keep an eye on things these rockwools are completely dry in 24 hours and I'm left with a dryed out tumble weed before I know it. Which was my biggest problem trying to seemingly start in soil rather then rockwool.

    This is the black Russian that is 6 days in, its been doing great seemingly but its half the vertical size of my bag seeds that are only 4 days in. This is the one I was some what worried about the leaves curling down. I see on some journals that people say this is normal, my book says I could be over watering so just wanted to double check with you guys on this!

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