2 day old seedling cotyledon leaves curling up - too soon?

Hey all,

Most likely being a worry-wart over my newborns, but I'd like some opinions. I personally don't believe the cotyledons should be curling up so soon after sprouting (2 days?), especially since the first set of true leaves are not fully developed.

-Growing from bagseed. (Yea yea, I know). The seeds were several month old.
-Growing indoors under 200 W of LED lighting (2 - 100W black star LED lamps)
-Plants are ~6 inches away, lights on 24 hrs
-Sprouted 2 days ago (the one that is more severly curled sprouted about 36 hrs ago)
-I plan to water roughly every other day, but have watered daily with distilled water, and a MINUTE amount (1/4 cup's worth). I checked the soil with my finger (~ inch deep) and it was dry each time before i watered.
-Using Fox Farm ocean forest soil with added perlite.
-Temps are 80-85 F (i'm working on trying to make it cooler but all I have are PC fans running for now, a good amount of airflow in and out of the PC case. ~50% humidity.

I have three sprouts. The first looks fine, so I didn't snap a pic of it. I pulled them from the intense red/blue LED lighting so you can see the coloration as well.

This one sprouted two days ago:


This one sprouted about 36 hrs ago, so the cotyledons have quite settled down yet, but still.. curling like that?

Yo bro . . .

ime 50% humidity is on the limit for youngsters that age . . . .
Keep the surface of the soil sprayed with water, I use clear plastic bags to put over my seedlings and pots for the first week, the humidity in the bag reaches 90%, when it does, seedlings can not breath too well through their stomata, so it is forced to find oxygen in the root ball, promoting good root growth . . . .

What have you watered them, any feed? The trunks are purpleish, a sign of the soil being a little too hot too . . . . sorry properly read your run down . . . .don't feed them a thing for the first up to a week in a little cup like that . . . . I've not used is but doesn't Ocean Forest have nutes in it to a certain degree?

Not humid enough and too much food to deal with I reckon bro . . .

Totally saturate the soil with 6.5ph water only so there is 20% run off . . . . . then bag em up, see what happens . . . .






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Appreciate the feedback man. I did have some cut off water bottles covering them while they were sprouting to promote a humid environment. I'm going to put them back as you recommended. FFOF soil does have nutrients, but the company does not provide an NPK rating. I've read some other growers' opinions about this soil, and in general they're not worried about using it as a startup soil so I'm betting on that. I'll give them a good flushing in a day or so, depending on how they respond to the greenhouse i'll set up. Thanks again!

Cool,

Think about it though, if there's 1.0 to 1.5EC in the soil already (the standard levels of fert in a non lite mix), limits for a seedling . . . and you've fed them already????
I'd get PHd water through now, so the soil is soaked and flushed a bit, then put your bottle tops over, the damp soil will be trapped creating a better more humid environment.



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Plan is to soak them tomorrow morning and have the bottle tops over them. They look the same today, but have grown a bit. And I'm not sure if I mistyped something earlier, but I have not fed them anything except distilled water.

Ahhhh this confused me . . . .

I plan to water roughly every other day, but have watered daily with distilled water, and a MINUTE amount (1/4 cup's worth). I checked the soil with my finger (~ inch deep) and it was dry each time before i watered.

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1/4 cup's worth of ??????




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How they looking bro? You keeping the top 1/8" of sol moist to keep humidity up?




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Ah I see the confusion there, I should have said 1/4 cup of distilled water. Absolutely no added nutes. And I did some further research and found this:

-Some 'reputable' sites say that FFOF soil can be a bit harsh on seedlings due to nutes, but once they grow a little the nute burn isn't an issue.
-I'm using 200W worth of high quality LED lighting and had them sitting ~6" away from the lights on a 24 hr schedule. Well, LEDs have been known to be pretty intense for seedlings and the plants can experience some light stress.

So this morning, I gave a good watering with distilled water, and kept the water bottle tops over them. This afternoon, after finding out about the light stress, I moved my plants to about 12" away from the LED's. I'm also considering switching to a 18/6 light schedule, but will research more before I do so. It makes sense to move away from a 24 hr light schedule because that's not 'realistic' for plants, but let me look into it further.

STOP LOOKING!!!

I know there is a fine line between NATURE and intensive growing . . . . ..

BUT STOP YR 24HR CYCLE my bretheren . . .. . . . . . there isn't a plant ON OUR EARTH that does this . . . . it's not in it's GP . . . . .





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Got a little update man. Here's a pic of them (5 days old). They don't look like they're in the most amazing shape, but honestly they look ALOT better than they did yesterday, so I believe the light intensity was just too much for them. The leaves were kind of drooping yesterday and they've definitely moved upwards and uncurled a bit. The one on the far right is in the worst shape, but I'm confident they'll catch themselves and be just fine.

Top few mm of soil looks a little dry . .. it'll help keep humidity up if it's kept moist



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Yea agreed. Gotta go find a spray bottle from walmart or something.

The finer it can mist, the better, don't want to disturb them

Runagi said:

Yea agreed. Gotta go find a spray bottle from walmart or something.

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