These seedlings have been in soil above the dirt since October 7th. I’ve been using an LED grow light that has 3 different grow settings! The stems are 3 inches long and they have there 2nd set of leaves. This is a Blue Dream Autoflower.
I feel as though they should have a lot more leaves! I’m not using a grow tent because I don’t have an extra $400 laying around. All the specs for the grow lights I’ve added to my pics.
I currently have a grow light above each plant set on (seed to seeding). I also bought a 2 ft. LED Grow Light that I was going to use after the plants began their vegetation stage.
Is my lighting enough? These plants are indoors so do they require a heat lamp for plant and soil as well as grow lights. This is my first grow and I really don’t want to mess it up considering that it cost me $124 for 10 of these seeds!
If anyone has ideas or suggestions on how I can get these autos to start growing I’d appreciate it!
Looks like low light. You want around 400 Par for seedlings up to 1000 for flower. By the looks of your graph it looks way under. With that light you could move it a lot closer to the plant. That what I like lights with a dimmer.
Those lights are totally inadequate for growing cannabis. Thus the stretching. Seedlings are better off with a clear dome over them to provide 100% humidity as there is no tap root yet to pull water from the medium.
You are going to have all kinds of issues with your grow unless you seriously up your lighting game.
I paid under $100 for mine…
Save your money for lighting and will state that almost every light for sale on Amazon is not worth the money. HLG or Spyder Farmer or California Lightworks or CHILled Tech are the ones to look at in that order. If money is an issue; good old MH/HPS is much less expensive but will need to find a way to remove excess heat.
You want everything right down the middle when growing autos so definitely need a PH and TDS meter to maintain steady growth.
It would be nice to know what soil you are using as well.
Thank You for the suggestions on lighting. Unfortunately it will be at least 3 more weeks before I can afford a better set up. I checked out the grow lights on those websites and decided to go with a grow setup on the Spider Farmer website less than $500. It has everything I need with a sf1000 grow light.
Will that be enough lighting?
I just hope my seedlings live long enough for me to get my kit.
The pic with the narrow leaves has a red stem and where the leaves join at the stem. I’m thinking that poor little fella is going to die soon.
The pic with the thicker leaves that one gives me hope!
I also dug them up in order to put them deeper in the soil, unfortunately while doing that I broke a very small piece of root on the red stemmed plant last night. That is another reason I think the red stemmed one is going to die.They were 3 inches above soil, really stretched but now are 1 inch above the soil
So here is a quick update. The last 2 pics of my little ones is the current look of my autos.
After hearing everyone’s thoughts and careful consideration of my problem with inadequate lighting and stem stretching, I think I may have come up with a temporary solution to keep them alive until I can get a complete grow kit ( I hope anyway). Please tell me what you think.
For the stem stretching I just put them deeper in the soil.
I put some straws around each plant and put a sandwich baggy over each seedling to try and create some humidity by spray misting them until they have a good tap root to absorb the soil nutrients.
Even though I have soil with slow release nutrients, I think right now that will help sustain them until I get my grow kit.
To help with lighting I wrapped foil around each pot and have the lights directly above the foil, and if that isn’t enough I can actually drop it down in the foil.
Here’s some new pics. Tell me what y’all think. Don’t laugh too hard it’s the best I can do right now and I am a newbie.
Depends on the type but general potting soil that says feed for 6 months. Not ideal.
They store nitrogen in pellets and these cause nitrogen overload at time but people have grown with this soil before so its possible if it’s all you have.
Biotabs would be the way to go if you want slow release nutrients in soil that you only need to water.
Anything else nutrients will be needed.
I’m not laughing at al I’m very impressed, well done. Your really being creative and learning lots.
Good job with the stems, that’s exactly what you should have done. Cannabis can grow roots like tomatoes out of basically any part that is under soil per say.
You should be looking into a fan of some sort, when i started I went to a second hand store and bought one. Got a used tower fan for cheap but really anything will work.
The wind will give the plants strength, so look into that.
After that your lighting is what you need to save for 100% because come flower you need much more powerful lights to get bud.
The good thing is if you get bud you might be able to recoup your investment if you have some friends
So here is another update. So everyone that has been trying to help me knows about my previous lighting issue. One seedling died and the one that lived I almost killed. On October 26th I tried putting my plant in better soil and also had sprinkled some 2 1 2 on top of my soil for my seedling. I added nutrients because she just wasn’t growing and I was trying to keep her alive until I received my grow kit.
Well I noticed some burning on the lower leaves and tried flushing the soil, 1 day later she looked worse so I decided to gently rinse all the soil from the roots and put her in some organic soil without slow release mutes. By the 29th she was looking a lot better!!
