Old farmer lost his touch. Please help.
- Thread starter jblwired
- Start date
In the immortal words of Emily Littela on Saturday Night Live, "Nevermind". 
SRY so long. UPDATE towards end.
Thanks for all the responses so far guys and gals. Thanks for addressing that cigarette smoke question PoodleBud. It's the first time anyone has tried to answer that for me. Lol. I've ALWAYS figured it has to be VERY bad for them, so I absolutely try to keep it away from them, and I NEVER smoke around children, PERIOD. I wont even walk through the room for even a second with one that's lit, but I ask because I have to slip in the door to that room quite a few times a day, and I do smoke in my house in the far rooms. I have the rest of my house ventilated as well though, with two bathroom exhaust fans ALWAYS going, and the entire house sort of under vacuum, as to prevent smoke from seeping into that room which always has the door shut.
Calibob, my seed starting area is just a couple of inches short of being 3' x 3', and is made of wood paneling painted white. It's been bleached then aired out very well before tring to start anything in there. The light is enclosed with a 6" vent sucking air through it with a squirrel cage type blower, blowing the warm exhaust into a 12' x 12' air conditioned room, and the other end of the light open to the grow area for fresh air ventilation. BTW, my humidity with the light on gets down to 30-40% sometimes, and that has had me concerned before. Should I be worried about that humidity level?
tightpockt, I have not ever fed any of my seedlings anything. The levels I put in my first post were from the run-off of some of the soils I've tried, BUT, I think you and NutesandNugs are on to something. I think I have been both nute burning them with the medium-hot soils, and with just SLIGHT over-watering.
UPDATE: I have a new batch of many different things going now, with almost everything in some un-modified MG seed starting mix(mostly peat moss I think), and things are doing a little better this time around. I've FINNALY made it a couple weeks now WITHOUT seeing any burnt or yellowing, lower leaf tips, YET, lol, and I'm actually getting to where I am getting my second nodes to grow in decent, BUT, most, but not all, seem just a little stunted, slow, and droopy. Everything I've started, is in those larger, 18 cell, nursery seed flats, and so far, I see NO root tips trying to come out the bottom yet, so I don't quite think it's time for a transplant. They get what I would call a "shot-glass" worth of water about every ~3 days or so. If I stick my finger up in the bottom drain hole, it feels just BARELY moist, even shortly after watering, and I always wiat for the mix to get mostloy dry about an inch down before watering. I've been wondering if I should water a little more thoroughly, but less often? Going with the info that was on the different bags of potting soils and the seed starting mix, my new batch is in a much less ferted, MG seed-mix now, and that seems to be the key here, but should I get all the seedlings in an even lighter, perlite enriched mix NOW?
This first net pic I downloaded here is ALMOST a perfect comparison to what I have going on with most of the babies, with the droopiness and color, as with all the different stuff I am TRYING to get started growing better. Also, My leaf edges have shown a slight curl upwards on some things, just like this second web pic I found, which is almost a perfect comparison to a few of the seedlings I have. So, what do you think of my technique my fellow gardeners? What can I do different to get going better?
Reminder: The pic in my eighth post here shows what I WAS going through, but now, this is more where I'm at.
BTW, Booms, I'm still praying your wrong about an infection in my room, cause I'm wore out with the cleaning. Lol Seriously though, I think it might actually be trouble with the last soils I was trying, with not draining well enough, and being too hot.
PLEASE guide me grow masters, and TY SO MUCH for all that all of you have helped me with so far.
????????????
Thanks for all the responses so far guys and gals. Thanks for addressing that cigarette smoke question PoodleBud. It's the first time anyone has tried to answer that for me. Lol. I've ALWAYS figured it has to be VERY bad for them, so I absolutely try to keep it away from them, and I NEVER smoke around children, PERIOD. I wont even walk through the room for even a second with one that's lit, but I ask because I have to slip in the door to that room quite a few times a day, and I do smoke in my house in the far rooms. I have the rest of my house ventilated as well though, with two bathroom exhaust fans ALWAYS going, and the entire house sort of under vacuum, as to prevent smoke from seeping into that room which always has the door shut.
Calibob, my seed starting area is just a couple of inches short of being 3' x 3', and is made of wood paneling painted white. It's been bleached then aired out very well before tring to start anything in there. The light is enclosed with a 6" vent sucking air through it with a squirrel cage type blower, blowing the warm exhaust into a 12' x 12' air conditioned room, and the other end of the light open to the grow area for fresh air ventilation. BTW, my humidity with the light on gets down to 30-40% sometimes, and that has had me concerned before. Should I be worried about that humidity level?
tightpockt, I have not ever fed any of my seedlings anything. The levels I put in my first post were from the run-off of some of the soils I've tried, BUT, I think you and NutesandNugs are on to something. I think I have been both nute burning them with the medium-hot soils, and with just SLIGHT over-watering.
UPDATE: I have a new batch of many different things going now, with almost everything in some un-modified MG seed starting mix(mostly peat moss I think), and things are doing a little better this time around. I've FINNALY made it a couple weeks now WITHOUT seeing any burnt or yellowing, lower leaf tips, YET, lol, and I'm actually getting to where I am getting my second nodes to grow in decent, BUT, most, but not all, seem just a little stunted, slow, and droopy. Everything I've started, is in those larger, 18 cell, nursery seed flats, and so far, I see NO root tips trying to come out the bottom yet, so I don't quite think it's time for a transplant. They get what I would call a "shot-glass" worth of water about every ~3 days or so. If I stick my finger up in the bottom drain hole, it feels just BARELY moist, even shortly after watering, and I always wiat for the mix to get mostloy dry about an inch down before watering. I've been wondering if I should water a little more thoroughly, but less often? Going with the info that was on the different bags of potting soils and the seed starting mix, my new batch is in a much less ferted, MG seed-mix now, and that seems to be the key here, but should I get all the seedlings in an even lighter, perlite enriched mix NOW?
This first net pic I downloaded here is ALMOST a perfect comparison to what I have going on with most of the babies, with the droopiness and color, as with all the different stuff I am TRYING to get started growing better. Also, My leaf edges have shown a slight curl upwards on some things, just like this second web pic I found, which is almost a perfect comparison to a few of the seedlings I have. So, what do you think of my technique my fellow gardeners? What can I do different to get going better?
Reminder: The pic in my eighth post here shows what I WAS going through, but now, this is more where I'm at.
BTW, Booms, I'm still praying your wrong about an infection in my room, cause I'm wore out with the cleaning. Lol Seriously though, I think it might actually be trouble with the last soils I was trying, with not draining well enough, and being too hot.
PLEASE guide me grow masters, and TY SO MUCH for all that all of you have helped me with so far.
????????????
MXW3LL. Yes. My fairly new Hana combo meter, with the handheld probe on a cable, stays calibrated very easily, and seems to be VERY accurate and reliable, with very little maintenance. I check it about every two weeks, and it's always spot on, with the 4.0 PH test solution, and the 7.0 solution. Right now, I've been watering with purified bottled drinking water, and it's about 6.4 PH, right out of the bottle, and is absolutely pure at 0.0 EC.
Going with a pour-through and test method, what's the average to max EC/PPM you would want to see in soil for 2 week old seedlings? I'm starting to see a lot of dying tips on my first set of true "spear" leaves again, now that I'm getting my 2nd-3rd nodes started coming in, with the first leaves still being the largest. 
In both the cactus mix and seed starting mix. I need to check again, but I think that seed mix is just 50-100ppm after a pour through test. I only pour enough distilled water through the seed cup to get enough to test as to not dilute the test sample.
In both the cactus mix and seed starting mix. I need to check again, but I think that seed mix is just 50-100ppm after a pour through test. I only pour enough distilled water through the seed cup to get enough to test as to not dilute the test sample.