Noob Problem

I apologize if this has been posted already but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I started with 7 seeds in wet napkins and 3 of them broke open with half inch tails on them within 2 days. I planted those first three one a piece in 3 gallon buckets filled with fresh nute-free potting soil. Each bucket has its own source of light, because I'm a noob and not quite sure what will work the best I had a CFL, Halogen, and a 75 watt standard light bulb. 5 days later, nothing has happen with those first three. So I noticed another 2 had sprouted so I planted them in 2 litre bottles filled with the same fresh potting soil and placed them in the same grow environment.

Out of all those planted only one broke through the dirt and now it has completely dissapeared. Any advice?

i would think it would be your lighting,,plants cannot grow under normal house lightbulbs or halogens,,

you need to read up on what lighting will suit you best for your growspace and size

goodluckeace:

put that halogen light outside where it belongs, through incadence regular bulbs in trash. cfl are fine for growing MJ. but you need more than one or two.

if you had the holagen or incandesent to close it could have burned them up. good luck

How many CFLs should I use for growing about 3-4 plants?

when growing with cfls the more the better, you need 3000-5000 lumens per sq. ft. of growing area...

Yo Ho Afternoon Delight,
Please allow us to be generous, and giving first !!!!
Allow us all to welcome you to this house of delights, desoils, deseeds, dewaters, and degreenery, LOL
We are glad to have ya here with us. Please do take a few moments to peruse the site rules as they work well for all of us. You will find that this is a place where you can read up on what is hot and what isn't. How to do it yourself and what not to do, as well as growing techniques that are rather unique to say the least.
We also welcome your thoughts and knowledge, and hope that you will feel comfortable enough to share laughter and fun.
Welcome again !!!!!

You want to solve this question before you waste more time and coin. I would consider starting over, but not untill I had given up all hope. I would want to be certain that the soil is right for starting out with. NO FERTS to start either. good moisture and good lighting. Try to get your temps as close to around 76-78* as is possible, but don't panic if you slip off the mark a tad, it is after all a weed, and a pretty hardy one at that. Some folks don't use the paper towel method as you can get paper towels that have been made with contaminants in them such as bleach, dyes, perfumes, etc. etc. I once grew a weird fungus that was pink and round and flat all over my paper towel, and I am sure that this didn't help at all.

I like to use peat plugs as they seem to do real well for me. This also gives me the chance to observe the containers of soil in case there is something like an infestation of fungus gnats, and I did have that very thing happen.
You will find a great deal of help is right at hand and a good sense of Ha-Ha sure does help too.
Lighting is a great deal of what you want to be in total control of. I vegged using grow lights that were for very large terrariums. 6 of them at 48 inches each, and my plants went nuts growing for me.
Good Luck

smoke in peace
KingKahuuna

When germinating seeds they should be planted pretty much as soon as they break open and the tap root starts to grow. The seedling has enough food stored in it to grow a tap root and stem. If the tap root is too long when you plant it in the ground, too much of the self-contained food is used up making the tap root grow, not leaving enough food for the stem to develop and sprout above the ground, and the sprout dies. If you let the tap root grow to about half an inch before planting it, there's a chance that it won't sprout, because too much food was used up growing the tap root and not enough food remains to grow the stem.

Also, don't plant the seeds too deep. I believe about 1/4 inch deep is a good depth to plant them. I think that they can be planted up to an inch deep, but an inch seems a bit too deep to me, I'm not sure.

Thanks everyone for the advice as this is helping me out a lot.

When the seeds sprout do any of you take off the seed casing before planting? I'm hearing a lot of people do that and it seems like you would actually be doing more harm than good.

Afternoon Delight said:

Thanks everyone for the advice as this is helping me out a lot.

When the seeds sprout do any of you take off the seed casing before planting? I'm hearing a lot of people do that and it seems like you would actually be doing more harm than good.

Click to expand...

Thats a bit delicate, Id leave it on because im sure the first sprout is attached to it and will just drop it when its not needed, Nature has a good way of taking care of that

Ok as of now I've reconfigured my set up to be all CFL. I also checked my napkin setup and found that another seed had sprouted, so I'm planting it with the new set up. Hopefully I get something out of the 6 seeds back there. If not at least I've learned a valuable lesson.

Keep them warm at this time of year. You've been using very little light but what struck me about your notes, was that they didn't break the surface after being planted.
Possibles:
** you were too rough planting them
* you planted them with the wrong orientation
** the grow temp was too low
** the seeds are not good
* a soil problem

I also had difficulty this year with germination and for me, what worked best was soaking them for 24 hours and watching for them to split, then very carefully planting them in damp coco in the correct orientation, and keeping them warm.