If you already see tap root there isn’t any need to place in paper towels. Just use sterile tweezers or gloves and place tail up about 1/4-1/2" below surface and cover. If by coco plug you mean the compacted disks i would go straight into rinsed and buffered loose coco.
I soak my coco in full strength jacks prior to using, but half strength will work.
Eventually, but plants won’t require feeding twice per day until they are quite a bit developed. Once per day at lights on will be plenty good for a while. Your first couple of feedings may even last longer than a day.
Doesn’t matter what brand you use. And it doesn’t take a lot either. 2-5ml per gallon is more than enough. Also you don’t HAVE to mix this first, but will probably be easier for you to add it first.
Went with less silica. Same exact ratio of the Jacks, though. So now my PH was 5.8. But my EC was just over 2500 when the target was 600-800. I already added 1 gallon of RO, brought it down to 1900-ish, is this normal?
You can keep adding distilled or RO water, as long as it is virtually 0ppm, and the only thing about your mixed solution that will change is the ppm. Your pH will stay the same.
Yeah, I’m already seeing just how much easier this is with Distilled &/or RO! My PH is staying put and it’s gonna end up being about 35-40% strength. Which makes total sense since we are talking about seedlings. Following EC rather than just following PH and “guessing” at a strength makes WAY more sense now!!
Plugs are small and dry out really fast, I would go into the pot but put a dome over it to hold in the moisture.
I really prefer a starter container, but this is complicating things.
In regards to your water why arnt you using tap water? What’s your tap PPM?
I’m not familiar with fox farms 70/30…is it coco peralite mix?
I doubt you need to buff it, but that would be a quick phone call to fox farms and asking them how they treat their coco.
You will want to water it once anyways when you drop seeds so I personally would probably water until a bit of run off and the drop my seed and put my dome on. Seed should sprout before you need to water again.
Mixing a concentrate, then adding it to a larger reservoir and Then adding water until the ec is right… Yes that’s the way to do it. Remeber silica is to be added to water first, then PH’d to 7 or slightly lower. Then mix your Jack’s. To avoid dropout (that you can’t see with your eyes), when chemicals bond as Jack’s is mixed with silica water that’s higher PH than 7.
You want to add 100ppm increase to your tank of silica, so you’ll have to do the math on how big your reservoir is and such but often the manufacturer instructions should be fairly close…i would double check though.
My tap water is terrible. I skipped the plug and went straight into the 5 gal. I germinated an extra one just in case and of course I I got 100% germination, so the extra one I put in a plug within a small container. Figure I’ll use this one as a bit of a Guinea pig. I build and maintain rain gardens in my regular job, so it’s this early seedling phase that makes me the most nervous. I know up-potting isn’t as stressful as just transplanting, but I’ve seen so many healthy seeming plants of all sorts be ruined by transplanting I just felt more comfortable avoiding it my first indoor grow.
I’ve been using GH for the last 3 grows in hydro, it’s been good, I just use GH 3 part Flora series, GH Diamond nectar, GH Koolbloom, silica & Hydrogaurd in one tent and GH FloraNova 1 part, and the rest same above in the other tent.
Pics were taken day 8 from when I flipped the switch to 12/12.
I got everything written down in my notebook, I’ll double check when I get home, but our water is full of chloromines and we are perpetually in construction throughout the summer, huge fluctuations. It’s a headache for my day job plants, especially the sensitive ones like hydrangeas. I’ve been putting off installing a filtration system for our water anyways, (our yard is my “lab” for water/pollinator gardening. Ppl don’t have the patience for 5-10 year garden plans, lol)
Actually, here’s last year’s municipal water report…
I would save your money and your health by staying away from RO and just get a catalytic carbon filtration system
Put it under your sink and run a separate tap or just plum it into the cold line of your kitchen sink like I did years ago.
Way cheaper, and you get to keep important minerals in your drinking water, your pets drinking water, and your plants drinking water.
That’s actually what kept me from just getting an RO system @ home. Yeah, don’t want the chloromines, but the minerals, etc are still necessary.
Just got me first lesson. The FF Cultivation nation 70/30 should absolutely be thoroughly rinsed. After all the mixing and adding RO (6-7 gallons) and getting an ideal PH & EC on my input I never bothered to test my runoff. Checked it this morning… over 8000! Nuked both the seeds. But the 3rd seed I had put into the plug popped (plug kept it out of the FF) of course it has helmet head, but I’m gonna give it til this evening to do it’s thing before helping.
So I mixed another batch and am running about 4 gallons thru the pots. Brought down the runoff EC to 1300 The input is 1005. PH is 4.9 from 5.5 input. Hope this is better. Dropped another seed in the water, gonna give it another day in court!
