Seedlings sprouting! Now what? Few basic Q's..
OK, so my beans have just started to break the dirt! Very excited! I germinated the seeds with paper towels first (in distilled water), when I saw a sprout, I put them in soil. I have been watering the soil with distilled water.
I am using Scotts Potting Soil (for seed starting) that I got at Home Depot, I mixed in a little extra Miracle Grow Perlite (enriched with Miracle Grow plant food).
I have been moistening the soil with a sprayer bottle with distilled water, what nutrients shall I add to the distilled water? Or should I continue to use distilled water?
I have the seedlings in a tray under a heat pad, shall I take the heat pad away now or still keep it? (plants JUST broke soil) Room temp is 78-80 degrees.
Shall I continue to keep them covered with the dome, or shall I take the dome off?
They are under 4' flors about 3" away with 24/24 hrs of light.
Any other pointers for this phase?
THANKS!!
Seedlings sprouting! Now what? Few basic Q's..
dont use miracle grow plantfood enriched in your soil. that time released food is horrible for our plants. dir around ur plant and take it out of the soil. if u dont wanna keep transplanting, stick em in a 5 gallon buckets (home depot has em, just poke holes in bottom) and they can stay in them their whole lives. buy organic soil with noooooo nutes in em except a whole lot of perlite and plant em in that. btw u still dont wanna feed them for like 2 weeks. giving them nutes at this point encourages ur plant to be a hermaphadite. wait 2 weeks and start light and every week increas dosage till its up to where its gotta be. and dont keep watering them. if u can stick ur fingers 2 inches into the soil and its wet....there fine. also take the dome and heatpad out. they broke soil so no point, unless u have a freezing growroom. and if u can buy an HPS lighting system. they can go for 100 on ebay easily. type in 250 or 400 hps. and u want good air in ur growroom. draw air in from ur house and blow the air out from the growroom outside. (bringing air in form outside will casue problems when growing in winter, when the lights go off and u got that freezing air coming in....ur plants r done)
Seedlings sprouting! Now what? Few basic Q's..
Keep it moist but not wet, root structure will grow more during dry times than wet times. Dont reccomend using Miracle Grow as someone else already stated.
You can pick a variety of mediums to grow them in, SunShine #4 looks like soil, but is actually a soil less medium and tends to be easy on beginners (I found)
You should probably get a high input lamp...HPS/HID. Can you afford a nice little 400 watter? Should be able to find it for around 300.
Seedlings sprouting! Now what? Few basic Q's..
Thanks for the info guys! I am trying to get a few mother plants made, I do have a 400 watter with a MH bulb for veg and 2 1000 HPS/MH for when I am able to take cuttings (MH bulbs for veg and HPS for flower). Just trying to get the moms off to a good, healthy, and fast start.
The perlite I got has very little Miricle Grow in it, I hardly used any. They are still in the 3" seedling pots. I'm waiting for a few more to sprout and then I was going to transplant them into larger buckets and put them under a 400 watt MH and veg em till I can take cuttings, flower them, to determain sex, and go from there.
OK, so I want organic soil with NO nutes. I'm off to HD for pots and soil! :) Thanks guys. Any other newbee info for getting the moms ready?