Which way is up?

[herbaltivo]

Yeah, my local home depot was pretty much out of those things, but these outdoor spike models will work for now, I'll figure out some other way to mount them to the container rather than staking them in the soil soon, but I wanted to deal with the stretching now.

Added 8 100w CFL's (1600 lumens each) in the various sockets. Threw in some pics to show the current configuration. Can't wait to get my other MH in there.

It's getting so bright in there now i have to wear sunglasses to look down at the plants. Good times!

[herbaltivo]

That makes 26,800 lumens in the room right now and when that ballast gets here next week look out we'll be over 40k lumens, which for like a hundred bucks total investment isn't bad. I can't wait to lower the metal halides, I'm sure that things will take off then.

[herbaltivo]

I only had a minute to take this, and the fan was still on, so the little sprouts were moving, so this is the only closeup that is in focus.

I have one sprout that was laying on its side this am, watered it (and the rest) and it seems to be returning to vertical.

QUESTION: if you look at my containers, you can see that there is an inch to and inch and a half of space i could fill with soil. Should I, given the stretching that has occurred? It seems like you can knock these sprouts over just by looking at them...

Thanks!

[mc-blaze21]

to deal with stretching u can plant up to the coytolodens i think thats spelt wrong lol but there the first leafs that came out of the seed and what u covered will turn to root it just gets rid of the stretching helps make tham more stable as well i hope that helps man peace!

[herbaltivo]

Yeah, I can't get them quite buried, but I think when I get home I'm going to add some soil up to 1/2" from the lip of the container. That'll at least give them some more support for now. They definitely seem to have stopped stretching, but they're already pretty darned tall compared to other examples I've seen online. Last thing I want them to do is fall over.

[dutch.lover]

i am answering your question about your fallen over sprout in this thread, cause you made it sound like you looked at this one more often. I think the seedling just fell over cause it was stretched out too much, and the stem was weak. put a small fan on them, and get more light on them. i propped my sprouts up with bobby pins when this happened to me (when i first started growing...not too long ago mind you). Also, I am going to suggest that you not water them every day, every second day would be fine, but make sure you water the entire container and not just around the sprout. If you only water right where the sprout is, the roots won't be encouraged to spread out to look for water. if you water the whole container, i think it would promote a better root system. Also, by watering everyday you run the risk of root rot or damping off (which someone mentioned in the other thread). If you are constantly keeping the stem of the plant wet, there is a really good chance it will rot and fall over. It doesn't look like this happened to yours as your plant still looks very much alive, but you were lucky. So keep your eye out for overwatering, k?

[herbaltivo]

OK, reading you loud and clear. Been doing 2 things totally wrong water wise.

I've been watering right over the sprout. Duh. One long, weak root.
I've been watering once a day at least, probably twice a day. I'll stop doing that.

I'll just give them a reasonable amount every other day, I'll get a soil water and ph meter online, if they don't have one at my local wildflower shop, which has lots of goodies including the fox farms fertilizers I plan on introducing on or around the 24th of jan.

I'm glad I didn't mess them up too badly right off the bat. I did fill the containers up to about 1/2" below the rim, as I read about burying the plant up to the small round initial leaves, which I wasn't able to reach on each plant but at least there will be more mass underground and will help to stabilize the plant, or at least I surmise it will.

I have a vornado fan blowing in the room not only to give the plants a breeze but also to keep my ballast which is on a high shelf, cool. It causes the plants to wiggle a bit. Nothing hurricane like.

I need ventilation. I can get the air from down low at the door threshold but I'm not sure how much of a strain that is going to put on the heating situation in the room as the surrounding garage is 40 degrees fahrenheit. It's cold here. The air coming in would be cold. I could steal warm air from a hole already existing from the kitchen into the veg area.

Thank you, thank you, thank all of you so much for your insight and attention, I truly do appreciate it.

[herbaltivo]

Some pic updates, day 7.

The first 2 are just good and happy, the third is the pic of the runt (which is actually one of the nicest looking right now) and the fourth is one that has some little browning on the tips of the 2 big pointy leaves (actual scientific terminology used there) :/

Any thoughts on the browning? I'm using this soil called Supersoil from Home Depot that has a ph reportedly in the 5.5-6.5 range and pretty minimal nutes (i think).

0.14% N
0.09% Phos
0.02% Potash
0.25% Fe

Any thoughts would be appreciated on the yellowing, or the growing...

[herbaltivo]

I went to bed last night with plants that had four leaves, minus the little round leaves, and I woke up to plants with 4 new little spikey leaves and a new leaf/stem in the center of some of them. I also noticed that the new bunch of leaves is associated with a node of leaves that seems to have moved upward like 5mm from the leaves below.

YEAH! Growth!

Now for the bummer. The ballast kit I received didn't work. Maybe I broke it, maybe it was broken when it was jammed into the tiny little box it was inserted into post manufacturing, but either way, I'm sad b/c I will be without my 2nd 175w MH. Oh well. Now to see how well the vendors return policy works.

Enjoy the pics.

[stinkyattic]

I like your setup so far with the individual cfls clamped to the pots!
I think you may have some trouble with pH down the line since the soil said it was 5.5-6.5 to START and chemical ferts can often cause pH to DROP over time, so monitor carefully for any changes/drift of the runoff pH!