Quote Originally Posted by PlainJane
Oooooh, I see what you mean. Yeah I definitely don't want to wear out my HPS and ballast.


Thank you so much for the help and the ideas. Very appreciated.

The white piece of paper as a light filter is inspired genius. :thumbsup: I'm going to do that. I will use a small clear tub of tupperware for the humidity dome and tape the paper on top of that. Fortunately things stay pretty humid here so that shouldn't be a problem but it keeps them from being hammered by the HPS and fans at this early stage.
I think this plan instead of the window sill may be better because I worry about temp control by the window.


*gulp* going to get those starter cubes and little sprouts into soil and ready for light.

Leave the cubes the way they are they don't need more soil yet. Your better off to leave them in the miffin cups and to wait till some roots poke out the bottom and sides. If your place is already humid then instead of a humidity dome just find some way to let the air flow but still suspend the paper above it some how. If ssedlings are too moist they sometimes suffer dampening off and the stem gets mushy at the soil line and they flop over. You spent the money on feminized seeds so you don't want that to happen.

If you look at your picture you'll see the stems are a little curvy, that's because if they would have been under the light they would have grown towards it strait up, with no light they only had gravity to help them guess where to grow. You'll also see that they are just a little stretched but that to is because when there isn't enough light they need to stetch to find some.
Don't worry about it, I'm just telling you so you understand a bit better. Once they are under the light they should straiten out pretty well and even if they don't once they get bigger you'll never notice.

Just don't over love them or over water them(#1 cause of dead seedlings) the cube should be evenly moist and only watered once the very top starts to dry out. A seedling in soaking wet cube will drown and damped off. If you really want to help just gently breath on it and give them some CO2 and a slight breeze. but don't worry you'll get sick of that quick.