Very long germination?

So this is my first grow and it seems like it is taking a while for my plants to come up. This is the 11th day and I only have 2 plants up. I started them off by planting the seeds in 1" rockwool cubes and soaked them in 1/4 concentrate nute formula. I've kept them around 78 degrees and refilled the water in the flat misted the cubes if they felt dry, which they really havent. I just put them under my Mh light a couple days ago with 24hrs light to see if they needed to get some light. I cut open the rockwool cubes very carefully to check them and the ones that arent up yet have a little root started but nothing substantial. Root is pure white and looks good. Just seems like taking forever. Is there anyway I can speed the others up? Ill transplant them to a new medium if needed. Thanks for the help!! let me know if you need any more information.

 

Encomium

Active Member
No nutes needed when germinating, in fact adding nutes when germinating might slow them down as the seed coating provides enough nutrients for the plant to sprout. Did you pretreat the rockwool (something I did not do my first time) with ph'd water?
 
Yeah I soaked the rockwool with 1/4 strength nute solution cuz I figured the rockwool has no nutritionally value. If the nutes would slow it down I can transplant them to new cubes for sure. I used 5.5 ph balanced water. Thanks for the info. Anyone else have any suggestions? Like I said they are growing, just like slugs and conditions should be optimal from everything I've read.

I even made sure no light was getting to the seeds so the buggers have to fight for that light and made sure that the cube wasn't super wet so the root would have to have to work to get the water also. The first couple days I made sure the wool was soaked so the seed could aborb water but you think that because there were nutrients in it its slowed it down? Would make sense. Would it be helpful to just put them in rockwool cubes in plain water right now?

Only reason I put a little nutes in the mix was it showed that on the bag for the rockwool.
 

Ledhed

Well-Known Member
The seeds that didn't sprout yet, by adding nutrients before they had even a taproot, you may have fried the little guys. All the plant needs for the first two weeks or so is contained in the shell casing and in the cotelydons(first set of round leaves). You should never feed nutrients to a seedling, much worse is trying to germinate seeds in something that has been loaded with additives. They may come up, may not.
 
well they have started to break the shells i just dunked them in just ph balanced water hoping to flush them and then just putting them in just rockwool with water. im gunna try to save them hopefully. the one that is up seems to be doing fine just growing slowly im gunna dunk that rockwool in just water to try and flush it also. i dont want to try and transplant that one because it has a decent root system started. man i messed up with addin nutes :wall: i know people said not to feed them until they were bigger but i thought id have to give the rockwool something to make it more like soil would have some nutrients in it to start with. I didnt realize the seed shell would have everything i would need.

Worst case scenario i have 4 more seeds still and 10 of a free bag i got with my purchase. thanks for all the info so far guys! has anyone else had an experience with this and maybe some tips to saving them other than what im doing. or is what im doing a bad plan to start? im kinda new to this botany thing lol
 
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