So after a long time, I decided to try another grow, and ordered some Apollo-11 seeds. I sprouted them and they started growing in soil, but they're looking a little strange and so I thought I'd post and get some opinions on whether or not there's a serious problem. They're just a couple of weeks old, about 1-2 weeks after breaking the soil. I'm sorry about the low picture quality, but I'm still using my cellphone camera for this since I can't afford a decent one. These are two shots from different angles of the same leaf on the same plant, to demonstrate what I'm talking about. This one is probably the worst photo of the bunch, but you can sort of see the twisting towards the tip. Here's a side angle shot, and you can see that the leaf has twisted almost 90 degrees. Here's a different plant, and you can see some of the twisting/curling on some of its leaves as well. The discolorations are from a nutrient deficiency that occurred a day or two before I started adding nutes to the water (I hope, at least). Here's a third plant. Especially on the leaf at the top of the shot, you can see the curve of the twist in the leaf. Note: The horizontal leaves aren't curled, that's just the shape of the tip. It should be noted that the twisting of the leaves has pointed the upper part of the leaves towards the nearest lights, and so I'm hoping that they're just moving to get the most light possible and it happens to be on one side for now, and there isn't any serious problem. As for specs of the grow, they are as follows: Soil: Plain, nute-free Creekside brand topsoil Lights: 4 26watt CFL's (and only two of them are near the plants until I can get some new pots to transplant them into) Nutes: Miracle-Gro 24-8-16, mixed at 1/2 teaspoon in a gallon of water. They've been fed with it one time so far. Temperature in the box has fluctuated a bit due to unpredictable weather, from as low as 65 degrees F to about 80. The average temp is in the mid 70's. So do my plants look like they have any serious problems? Or are they just maneuvering themselves to get the most light they can?
The twist is called pH twist, time to test the pH of your water and the run off, which should be done before feeding anyway. A little early to give them nutes as well. Your soil has no perlite also.
Not the pic i wanted to show you for an example but anyway Anony is right. This pic is a little more advanced with a bad PH but yea that soil looks dense. You do have drain holes Right?
Yes, there are drainage holes in the bottoms of the cups. I've only got crappy pH testing equipment at the moment, which makes a proper runoff test very difficult to do, and I can't really afford a decent meter (I haven't got $150!). My Rapitest mini shows a pH of around 7 right now, some cups are closer to 7.5 and some closer to 6. I'd bought distilled water to use, but I guess I was too trusting. As for the perlite, you're right Anony, I confused this soil with some old soil that I used before which did have perlite. Since I'm going to transplant in the next couple of days anyways, I'll just buy some perlite and mix up a better batch to transplant into. I know that it was a bit early to add nutes, but the leaves were already yellowing even though the temperatures weren't very high. I can't believe I forgot to check for pH twist! I'm really rusty. So my plan is a transplant in the next two days or so into soil mixed with perlite, which I'll test the pH of in advance. Then I'll adjust the pH using some pH down. Does that sound right?