hi. i have planted my seeds directly in the soil in my indoor room and been under lights 24h for 3 days. should i turn the lights out? what is the perfect heat degree in my case. or should i keep the lights on?
A seed does not require any light to germinate...the soil however needs to be kept warm and moist. Perfect temp? Hard to say unless you know the exact strain but even then there won't be a perfect temp, a perfect range perhaps. I read an article recently (might have been by Marc Emery, hard to say considering how much of an info sponge I've been lately) that said germination rates can be improved by adjusting soil temp. Some species don't germinate so well at "regular" temps if they are from hotter geographic areas but increasing the temp above "normal" resulted in increased germination rates. Most people have good success with putting them on top of a refrigerator, on an electronic device such as a router, or where ever allows the soil to stay warm from ambient heat. Also be aware it can take 1-2 weeks for a seed to sprout depending on how old it is and how well it was stored...sometimes longer.
So did you soak the seeds first before planting them? How deep did you put them in the soil? Everybody has their own method of doing things and you will find yours. All I can add here is that in my expereince, seeds seem to do best in the 75 - 78 range. Keeping the soil a little warmer will help speed things up a little, but extreme heat, and I learned the hard way, will kill the seeds. You didn't say what kind of lights you have them under but I wouldn't recommend you running a 100 watt MH - that is the kind of heat that will kill.
Also, depending on how deep you planted them, they may not ever prout because the little ones only hvae so much food to get started with. I go about a quarter inch once mine have actually sprouted in a napkin.
Hope this helps a little
Good seeds will sprout in just a few days and I agree with the others here. Keep them warm. I like to hang a CFL just over the cups, which gives off just enough heat to kickstart the germination process. If you plant them too deep, it can take awhile for them to push to the surface, if they don't die. I loosely scatter around 1/8"-1/4" medium over my seeds when germinating. Then spray the top down well with RO water.
My seeds germinate almost every time using the paper towel method. We cover the plate with plastic wrap until the white tail appears. After that we put the seed into whatever we plan on growing it in and cover it with plastic wrap until we see it sprout. That seems to keep the temperature very warm and warm up the soil a bit.