Losing My Grow Virginity

[Stinky Snid]

Yikes!

The other two both have small white fibrous looking hairs around the stem; I wasn't sure if I should chalk it up to more mold or if this was somehow a part of the young stem. If the other two plants begin to show similar symptoms I may need to scrap this spare potting soil and the cups and wait till I get quality soil to germinate some of my new seeds into a better pot.

Something I was thinking about as I read your post is the bag of soil I had "sitting around" was in my cellar, unsealed and I am sure if microbes/small bugs wanted to make their home there they could have.

It may also be a good opportunity to clean the inside of the box with diluted simple green and then once the ac/dc adapter arrives actually finish the box construction so I am not doing this sub-par.

The bad news about this is I think I only have two remaining "bag seeds" that have been slow to germinate or have not germinated at all and if I am still making adjustments I don't want to germinate my quality beans that I spent hella $$$ on.

I do have the small bag of Mykos as well but I was planning on saving it for my quality soil. Would something like this help protect the seedlings from malicious bacterium and possibly small bugs too?

Definitely the soil man. It probably even has an expiry date, they put mycorizal in lits of Potting soils, and there's a good chance it was infested with micro bugs that feasted on your seed. Get yourself a fresh bag and you'll do fine for those last 2 seeds. For now you can try and treat your seedlings with a mild food grade pesticide. Hope you keep trying and trying until you can confidently grow some premium seeds. I did the same thing, as many of the folks here also did. No worries mun

KiG cheers

Ps.. Edit: the hairs on the stems are totally natural though.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

hydro and Snid.

Having a community like is such a big deal. I am glad I decided to put my roots down on this forum.

There have been a few things to gain from this initial trial just in the mistakes I have made. Watering, soil freshness and having your equipment ready to rock are definitely quintessential and they are going to play a major role is the success of these beans that recently arrived!

The strains that came were Afgooey, 2046, Super Silver Haze, Power Plant, Quick One, and Ace mix. Of this group any recommendations on which two or three to start with? I also have white widow on the way and 2 bonus beans form seed supreme.

I'm looking forward to getting the box completed and in the interim I will see how long #1 and #2 can endure.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Well I made the executive decision to give up on #3. I left it in the box to naively hope for the .001% chance it may improve and well...f*ck its dead.

Day four for #1 and day three for #2 respectively. I really should consider naming these seedsters but I don't want to get too attached in case they break my heart

They may be showing signs of distress from possible light burn, or it could also be the fact that I went a few days without giving them a drop despite all of my urges to do so. As you can see in the pics both #1 and #2's hats are gone! I gave #2 some assistance in doing so but it came off without any resistance or struggle.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Another newbie tangent question is I noticed that all of my gallery photos are rotated 90* counter clockwise. I am sure there is an answer somewhere in the Gallery FAQs but alas I have not found such answer.

 

[Noob4x4grow]

It happened to one of my pictures but the rest loaded up the right way. It was weird. Have you checked all of the stickys to make sure there isn't something in there to explain? Sorry I'm not much help. I'm new here too.

 

[Noob4x4grow]

I want to know why my picture isn't showing up on my posts but its on my profile.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

I dunno but patiently adjust head tilt when looking at my photos

I propped each solo cup on top of another upside down solo cup to get the seedlings closer to the lights and to help them avoid weird cool/hot spots from the plastic container that surrounds them. I also placed a cup of warm water inside to help boost the humidity.

 

[ShiggityFlip]

If you are taking the pics with a phone you must keep the phone oriented horizontally. If an iPhone keep the volume buttons on bottom. Phones store the orientation that the pic was taken. You can fix it before uploading by right clicking on the pic in the folder and rotating the pic.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Shiggity strikes again with another pro tip! I think volume button down was my mistake last time.

I mean it's great to know how to do it right but rotates photos is sort of my trademark...if I go posting correctly oriented photos people might confuse me with someone else

 

[Noob4x4grow]

Looking good Kyu. Are you worried about burning your girls with the LED light that close? I thought there needed to be a certain distance during the seedling stage to avoid burning the leafs. I love the ingenuity of your grow

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Looking good Kyu. Are you worried about burning your girls with the LED light that close? I thought there needed to be a certain distance during the seedling stage to avoid burning the leafs. I love the ingenuity of your grow

Yeah after I was reading up on Rtk and Jbizz's second grow journal and the fact that they maintained 24" on their auto seedlings with twin spiders had me pondering this exact question all day at work. I decided to remove the cups from their stands and pull the stupid plastic container out of the box altogether. This is a photo of the most recent setup in the Krunk Trunk:

These photos I took earlier tonight to show progress and give updates on the temp and humidity swing.

The temp is staying closer to a 20* flux rather than the 25/26 I was showing yesterday! Also the humidity is now getting up in the high 60's in my cooler temp range and staying mid to higher 30's when the light is on.

I have decided to nickname these two rascals because I feel it is plain unlucky to simply call them #1, #2 like some kind of Nazi Scientist conducting experiments. SO I have decided to nickname these rando seedlings "Thing 1 and Thing 2".

Here are some of the photos from earlier-

In the box:

Thing 1

Thing 2

Outta the box:

Thing 1

Thing 2

The Things seem to be hanging in there despite me trying to drown and burn them in their first few days of life. I am going to try to stay strong and not water until Friday night which should put each at about 6/7 days out of the soil. Any advice on just how much water I should be delivering to these solo cups would be huge help.

And thank you Noob4x4grow for complimenting my grow. I thought using a trunk for a grow box would be different as I had never seen or heard of anyone doing so.

 

[StillANoob]

Hi Kyu nice setup mate!

Just a small tip, when you go get the new soil avoid Miracle Gro stuff at all if possible, even their light soil is too hot for cannabis plants

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Hi Kyu nice setup mate!

Just a small tip, when you go get the new soil avoid Miracle Gro stuff at all if possible, even their light soil is too hot for cannabis plants

Thank you StillANoob! It is definitely a work in progress and there is much I still should do to improve the Krunk Trunk. I realized when I first published this that I said I thought I had MG light potting soil but it is actualy Scotts Moisture Advance Light Potting Mix. When I repot these Things I am strongly considering picking up 1.5 cubic feet of Fox Farms Ocean Forest and mixing about 2-1 with course Perlite. I may just save the FF for my fancy beans i.e. white widow, super silver haze, afgooey, power plant, etc. rather than using it on these unkown "Things".

 

[Noob4x4grow]

I have read that the Ocean Forest might be a little hot for seedlings. They say to use the Fox Farms Happy Frog. I mix mine with perlite too. 4/1 soil/perlite.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Well I have made some bigger impulse purchases this afternoon but it was for stuff I kind of need for my bonafide attempt anyhow.

I made the plunge and bought nutes in the form of the Fox Farms Dirty Dozen starter kit on Ebay for right around $100. (Thank Shiva for Paypal bill me later).

I found an an AWESOME garden supply store, Greener Gardens, for my soil. I opted for 1.5 cu ft Fox Farms OF for the repots and 12 qt HF for seedling cups. I will mix some of the course perlite into both stages. In total the soil was 29.93 out the door which is super competitive pricing!

An added bonus is not only do they offer full-service online shopping with multiple shipping options but they have a brick and mortar location in the Twin Cities too which is pretty much fully stocked! The people there are super nice and quite knowledgeable regarding horticulture and they are definitely worth checking out for garden supplies.

I should be picking the soil up from there in the next coming days.

Well I will check back in tonight with updates on how Thing 1 and Thing 2 are doing.

 

[ShiggityFlip]

Things are coming into place. Good job Kyu!

 

[Noob4x4grow]

I feel you on the impulse purchases Kyu. Amazon makes it too easy sometimes. I love my local grow shop. They are the kindest people ans the customer service is second to none.

 

[StillANoob]

It might have been impulsive but you got the good stuff and in a micro setup it will last you for several grows, good call

 

[Kyu Maengun]

I feel you on the impulse purchases Kyu. Amazon makes it too easy sometimes. I love my local grow shop. They are the kindest people ans the customer service is second to none.

Amen Brother. And I can say that I truly want to support my local, Greener Gardens MN as much as possible. They just opened up a year ago and business has been slow going as they are relatively unknown. I may have suggested that one of the partners join an awesome and supportive community such as

It might have been impulsive but you got the good stuff and in a micro setup it will last you for several grows, good call

My thoughts exactly! I figured if I follow the FF nute feeding schedule on 2 or three plants in my Krunk Trunk it should stretch out for quite some time.

 

[Kyu Maengun]

Tonight's update on my mystery seeds, Thing 1 and Thing 2:

I was pleased to see that my humidity is slower moving upward day to day and my temps are stabilizing as well. Thing 1 is showing some different pigment than Thing 2 for sure which is not surprising as they are most likely totally unrelated strains but who knows. The first couple of days wild temp swing may have triggered whatever pheno is in Thing 1's gene pool.

Another impulse buy I made at Greener Gardens MN was I picked up a 6" hurricane clip fan. My strategy is to plug the fan into the other outlet of my timer and clip it to one edge of the opening aimed at my Things so they can wiggle and shimmy some. I figure this should help Thing 2 strengthen up some and hopefully straighten up as well. The good news is this should a) decrease overall temps while the lights are going as well as increase RH and b) it should also circulate more carbon dioxide around the leaves of the Things so that they are encouraged to grow some more.

The airflow from the hurricane fan is also overlapping the cup of water so I decided to top off the cup that had evaporated roughly 25% of its contents since last night with some freshly boiled water via my electric Kettle. Due to the hurricane placement the trunk door is propped open just slightly more. I believe in the morning when I wake up I should see higher humidity and lower temp fluctuation from the diffusion of the air in the trunk to the closet and the closet to my closed office.

I'll shut up now and post some pics of night six for the Things:

Thing 1

Thing 2

The Things together in the box (fan not included in this shot)

Now back to the worrying...I have concerns that I absolutely did not add enough soil to my solos before dropping the seeds. As you can see in the photos Thing 1's leaves are reaching to nearly the diameter of the flippin' cup. Not sure if there is really much I can do about it for now. I toyed with either cutting the section of solo cup that is not contacting soil but leaving a small lip of roughly a 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch.