OMG. There are way too many comments on here and most have nothing to do with the original post. I’m use to this forum and understand what is being said but for a beginner, this thread is scary. Maybe the mods can tidy it up a bit or break it into different segments because it is really hard to follow.
For the OP (original poster/ person who started this thread). The plants in the pictures are tiny for 4 & 6 week old plants. This small size can be caused by lack of nutrients or lack of light. You mention you start fertilizing at 10 days. I got much better results using fertilizer from day one. As soon as I plant the seed, I give the pot a good drink with half strength fertilizer water. I then leave it without water until the soil starts to dry out. I test the soil by putting my finger in the top of the soil and see how dry it is. If it’s damp in the top inch then it doesn’t need anymore water. If it’s dry, then water it, preferably with some fertilizer. When the plant is a month old, you can use full strength fertilizer.
Salts in fertilizers are not bad for plants. Salts simply refer to minerals that are in a chloride form. You use sodium chloride (table salt) at home on food. The chloride part isn’t that bad for you, the sodium part is. Too much sodium is bad for people, animals and plants.
Plant fertilizers are either natural (manures, worm castings, mushroom compost, etc), or man made. Man made are usually made from mineral salts like ammonium nitrate, phosphorus and potassium chloride. The NPK is the letter/s used for each element (N is for nitrogen, P is for phosphorus, K is for potassium). These are the 3 main ingredients in plant fertilizers. However, there are also trace elements (minor ingredients in fertilizers) and some of these include calcium chloride, magnesium chloride or sulfate, iron chelate, etc. The chlorides aren’t anything to worry about as long as it’s not sodium chloride. Chlorides are used in lots of fertilizers because they dissolve easily in water. Water soluble fertilizer is easier for the plant to take up.
Plants also need lots of light. Your plants appear to be outside in the sun, although you mention some are indoors under artificial lights. Young/ baby plants should get 16 hours of light per day and 8 hours of darkness. When they are a month old you can increase the lighting time to 18-20 hours of light and 4-6 hours of darkness. Most people use 18 hours of light and 6 of dark. If the plants don’t get light for long enough, their growth will be slowed.
A lot of people are saying don’t water near the base of the plant, this isn’t normally an issue as long as the soil can dry out before you water it again. If the soil is constantly wet, then bacteria and fungus can affect the base of the plant’s stem where it comes in contact with the soil, and the plant can get an infection and rot and die. This is more common with baby plants less than a month old. It doesn’t normally happen to older plants. So you can water a baby or adult plant so all the potting mix/ soil is wet but the soil needs to dry out before you water it again, and you need air pockets in the soil so the roots can take in oxygen.
When you water a plant in a pot, you water it until the water runs out the bottom and all the soil/ potting mix is wet. Then stop watering and let excess water drain out.
Don’t let cannabis plants sit in a tray of water because that causes root rot and they die.
Air pockets and better drainage can be achieved by adding coconut coir to potting mix at a 50/ 50 ratio or by adding perlite at a 70/ 30 ratio (70% soil to 30% perlite). The ratios are measured by volume not weight because perlite weighs next to nothing. To make up the ratios, use a plastic container and take 7 scoops of soil and 3 scoops or perlite and mix them up.
If you use perlite, it needs to be wet/ washed before use because it has a fine dust in it that can damage your lungs if you inhale it. The easiest way to wet/ wash it is to poke a few small holes in the bottom of the bag of perlite. Then make a small slit in the top of the bag. Do this on the lawn so the dust washes into the soil. Put a garden hose in the top of the bag and turn the tap on a bit. Rinse the perlite and inside of the bag and let the bag fill up with water. Let the water drain out and then you have wet/ washed perlite. You can fill the bag and rinse it several times if you’re really concerned about the dust. Use the perlite while it’s damp.
You can touch the plant leaves when the plant has 4 sets of leaves and it won’t affect the plant. If you touch the cotyledons (first small round leaves that appear when the seed germinates) you can damage the plant so avoid touching leaves until there are 4 or more sets of them.
Oils on our skin have nothing to do with damping off/ rotting plants. The biggest issue with people touching seedlings is they physically damage the seedling and it isn’t strong enough to deal with that and doesn’t recover and dies.
Plants that have been over watered and don’t have enough air for the roots will have droopy leaves and the potting mix will be damp.
Plants that have been under watered will have droopy leaves and dry soil.
They both have droopy leaves but the soil is what you need to check. If the soil is damp and they have droopy leaves, they are being over watered.
It’s pretty hard to over fertilize cannabis plants. They love nutrients and you can give them a lot and they won’t show any signs of getting too much fertilizer. Having said that, you don’t want to overdose them. So just follow the directions on the fertilizer packet and you won’t over feed them.
Plants suffering from nutritional deficiencies will usually have spots or patches on their leaves or faded pale leaves. They also grow slower and have smaller leaves in general. The nice green plant in your picture is not suffering from nutritional deficiency.
Seeds aren’t normally a problem. If you are buying seeds for modern/ new strains they can be harder to keep alive and you might want to try some of the older strains like Afghan, blue dream, northern lights. They aren’t as potent but are generally much hardier.
You can re-use soil if the plant didn’t die from a disease. However, you need to break the soil up and add more nutrients to get it into better shape for the next plant. You can also add compost or worm castings when you break it up and before you put a new plant in it.
The main issue with re-using potting mix/ soil is the more you use it for the same type of plant, the more likelihood of a disease occurring (usually fungal or bacterial but can also be viral).
Flipping a plant is where you turn a photoperiod cannabis plant from its growing vegetative state into its flower state. You normally do this when the plant is 3 months old or older so it’s sexually mature. You simply reduce the light to about 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark.
Cola is the main stem that has the main flower.
Auto flowering plants are considered easy because you don’t need to flip them and can leave the lights on 18 hours a day and the plant flowers when it wants to. They usually have Cannabis ruderalis ancestors and they can tolerate colder wetter conditions than most photoperiod plants.
Colloidal Silver is a liquid drink sold in health food stores. It’s made by dissolving silver in distilled water. Some people think that it’s beneficial to their health to have low levels of silver in their blood. This goes back to several hundred years ago where rich people used silver utensils and lived longer so people assumed it was from the silver. It was more to do with eating well and regularly and if you have too much silver you actually turn grey and it looks weird.
Colloidal Silver is used by some cannabis breeders to turn female plants into males so the seeds are all female (feminized). Feminized seeds only produce female plants.
