Starting my first plant!

Hello everyone!

This has been a long time coming, but I finally have everything I need to begin Well, except my fan and filter, but those will be coming in about two weeks!

I soaked a rockwool cube in 5.5PH water tonight, took it out and gave it a good shake, then placed my seed in it! Northern Lights Blue Auto from Delicious Seeds - it was a freebie, and an auto, so I figured id use it as a starter plant since it wont be easy to clone from. Ill just grow it to completion, and put the experience I get towards whatever strain I decide to start on.

I currently have the rockwool cube sitting in a clean bowl, and over the top of that bowl I have another clear glass bowl to keep in humidity. I plan on opening the bowl nightly to change the air around, and its not weighted down so there should be at least a little air flow happening through the day.

I have the bowl in a cabinet with a small fan (2inch desk fan) and a CFL lamp - both are currently on, and I plan to keep them on till the seed sprouts. The main thing I am worried about is temperature, and white mold/mildew growing on the cube!

I have the light on, but mostly to keep the cabinet warmish - the bowl is covered. I have used rockwool in the past for outside veggies and some of the cubes developed a white mold/mildew looking material that covered the tops. I started fanning the cubes directly then, and that seemed to at least stop the growth from spreading. Is this a common problem? Does that mildew spread because of light? poor air circulation? a combination?

TL;DR - Newb just threw a seed in a 5.5PH rockwool cube and covered that with a clear glass bowl to act as humidity dome. Covered with a dishtowel to keep light off cube while seed sprouts, have lamp for warmth and small fan for air circ. Plan on opening dome nightly to swap out air for a few seconds. Will that work to sprout my seed?

Being my first serious attempt, im a bit anxious xD Does it sound like I covered all my bases?

Thanks!

Anyone? put my poor newb mind to rest and ill make sure to give out a few free samples of my lady should all end well!

*edit*

Headed to bed, work in the morning! Will check back, so feel free to leave any helpful tips for me! G'night

ditch the humidity dome, i've never heard of one existing in nature, and i've never needed one. just put the seed in a pot of soil and put it under a good light with good ventilation and temps around 75-80 F. good air circulation and low humidity will solve most mold/mildew problems.

Thanks for the reply I'll try it! Had just read that humidty was good for seedlings just starting out

You can germinate seeds in rockwool.

Simply place seed on soil and cover lightly. Water it in a little. Wait 2-3 days. When soil is dry, water area around seed again lightly. When sprout is visible, get a 23 watt cfl over it (1-2") and begin vegging

Yea, I think soil wouldn't have me worried as much, rockwool has me on edge though lol. I'll keep updating this as time passes, just excited to say hello to my NLB lady

Once she's sprouted amd stable, I'll be bringing up some mushie friends for her to play with as well!

Why does rockwool have you worried? It's a medium just like soil. Are you growing hydroponically? If you are, why would you use soil? Just leave the seed in the pH'd rockwool until it sprouts. It's stupidly simple. Just keep it somewhat warm as seeds will take longer to germinate below 75F.

Just overthinking things really. Seeds are hard to get where I am, took attitude three tries just to get them through customs. Want to make each one count!

Hello again,

My NLB auto sprouted on the 20th, a lot faster than I expected! Since this is newbie section, figured I would drop this info off for anyone looking for seed times.

Also, I noticed that my stalk turned a reddish brown early on. This had me worried, but the plant has suffered no ill effects. I looked around on the interwebs and it seems that some plants/strains just do this early on, and that the stalk will turn green as time goes on. I hope thats the case for my plant, anyhow

I may update as my girl hits certain milestones Thanks for the help!

So, came across my next question today! My plants tap root poked through the one inch rockwool cube and I kind of panicked. My dwc stuff will be set up on my next set of days off and I didn't want the root just hanging out in the open. So, I put that one inch cube into a three inch growblock I had sitting around. I plan on putting that into my dwc and surrounding it with hydroton. Will that work? Just not sure if the bigger block will hold too much moisture or mess anything up.

Thanks in advance for any insight

When I know I won't be able to transfer any earlier and the seedlings/cuttings are rooting like crazy I'll place the plug inside a plastic cup filled with whatever growing media I have on hand (hydroton, perlite, growstone, coco). If it's already in a rockwool cube I just sit it in a bed of growing media. Make sure they don't dry out, and your roots will be fine under CFL, T5, or 400w.*

** I mean that the roots are chillin inside the growing media, and not sitting out in the open exposed to light.

Oh, I didn't even think of using verm or pearlite >.< I'll def use that in the future Daveyloco, thanks! After reading some more it sounded like using the bigger blocks wasasking for too much trouble, so I had the one inch cube taken out. Thankfully the roots hadn't grown into the larger cube yet. Ill be speeding up my plans and moving her into my dwc bucket tomorrow when I make it home.

I plan on leaving the water about an inch or so below the main tap root, figure the bubbles should keep it wet enough and give it a goal to grow towards ill keep you posted. Thanks again for the tip!

Well, looks like I need more experience :'( my seedling died today. sad day.

We werent attentive enough to keeping the rockwool moist, and one day it wilted slightly and didnt recover. From now on ill be keeping a humidity dome over the seedlings until roots pop and they go into the DWC bucket, otherwise the rockwool fluctuates way too much. Ill be practicing on tomatoes with my DWC for a while until I get a system down that works, then ill come back to my girls. For now though, I dont want to kill any more.

Thanks for the help in this thread.