(Outdoor, 1st ever grow) Northernberry

cool! btw I was actually referring to over-fertalizing and for exactly the reason you pointed out above - I never thought they didn't get enough, I thought that since they have enough nutes to live a few weeks from seed and I planted them in mystery soil that perhaps it was too strong for them if anything.

and here's an update for everyone:
they're still sick and not growing - but they aren't getting any worse, so all 3 could make it but I'm pretty sure their growth is quite stunted even if they do recover. Poor babies are probably damn stressed right now


looks like I'm a killer
...or some sort torture agent anyway

OK I'm not really sure how but it appears by what I called day #14 I was miscounting by 2 days - it was actually day 12 I believe, which means the day all 3 started having trouble would have been day 11 not 13.

Day 17: #2 & 3 are still looking the same as they have for the last 5 days. #1 has actually started growing a wee bit again, and it's leaves aren't as droopy but still a very very light green and it's cotyledons are beige and dry looking. None of them have shown any signs for a 3rd leaf set yet, I think they've all been stunted by whatever gave them trouble starting on day #11. I'm happy to see #1 looking like it may actually pull out of trouble - and of course it's comforting that 2 & 3 haven't got any worse since they initially got into trouble...

#1 seemed to be the strongest of the bunch in the first week, perhaps that's why it's the first to appear a little better even though they were all almost identical by day 11.

I've started germing 2 more seeds, no signs of #4 (presumed dead for a while now) and I don't know where #5 went (a couple days ago the seed shell was visibly emerging from soil, now I can't see it). I have some good potting soil now and the rest will be going in it, so to avoid uncertainty since I'm currently convinced my mystery dirt is the culprit behind the 3 sick seedlings!

hmmmm I just raised the bulb, maybe it WAS burning them afterall. After 4 days of it being on I could touch my finger to it comfortably so I didn't think it could possibly get too hot - but now it burns to touch, strangely enough and it was only about 2cm above seedling #1.

Has anyone ever burned a plant with a single compact fluro before??? lol

oGipRotRe said:

hmmmm I just raised the bulb, maybe it WAS burning them afterall. After 4 days of it being on I could touch my finger to it comfortably so I didn't think it could possibly get too hot - but now it burns to touch, strangely enough and it was only about 2cm above seedling #1.

Has anyone ever burned a plant with a single compact fluro before??? lol

Click to expand...

I've got mine under 4 ft. flouro's and when I added the 2 CFL's I did get one plant too close and crisp the leaves on her. So it is possible, I didn't realize it either. I think it is actually the ballast that gets hot though if I'm not mistaken.
Keep up the good work, and dude, you gotta get a camera.

yeah I know a cameras a must, just kinda strapped for cash lately.

Anyway I've just read for the first time (surprising because I've done a lot of reading on the matter) that the cotyledons are actually supposed to dry up and die so to speak? If this is true, my plants aren't doing quite as badly as I thought - because the most prominent thing they were doing to worry me was lose green in the cotyledons!

Anyway, dry/beige cotyledons aside, I think #2 is getting better too. It's true leaves are a darker green than #1 or #3 (not light green / kind of yellow any more), and no longer severely drooping like #3's are.

Let me know if anything the cotyledons do at this age (about 18 days from seed) are anything to worry about.

Thanks guys, I'll see what I can do about pics.

use your cell phone,thats what i do and then enhance it on my laptop

Don't have a cell - but by enhance it do you mean enlarge it or some of that crazy star trek shit?

by enhanced i mean digitally enhance the pixles with photo shop and stuff like that.it should be preinstalled in the computer

madness... my humble brain can't comprehend how a picture of lets say 250x250 pixels could be made to look any better, they just generate filler pixels based on surrounding colors or some crazy shit? You could have just answered star-trek, that's about as good as I'll understand it!

to make it look like a hd pic,u use ur phone(i know u dont got one) and change it to the highest pixel setting like 1280x960 and send it to your email and save it as a jpeg,then open it under your start menu(windows vista has the type in box) and click on it then once its open,click on enhance then go thru the options till u like the way the pic looks,im kind of a nerd,but not the one that looks like one but one of the cool nerds that everyone likes.ask to barrow someones phone and send the pic to your email,its real easy,oh ya forgot to mention that the cell phone camera needs to be greater than 1.5 megapixles to get a nice pic to start with.

hows the plants coming?

haha OK I think I've got this figured out.

"[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]While the amount of water a plant should get depends largely on the type of plant, the season, the temperature, and your climate, the signs of an over watered plant are generally universal. The most common symptoms include rapid and gradual defoliation (where the lower leaves on the plant yellow and fall), wilting or drooping, stunted plants, spotted foliage, and gray fuzzy mould around the stem, leaves and flowers of the plant."

yellowing/wilting/drooping/stunted growth are all right on the dot. It started right after they missed a watering (because they had been watered generously the day before) so my reaction was to think they had been under watered and I've watered them more ever since... I haven't been totally drenching them but I've been watering them until the lower areas of the jiffy pots become wet, and I've been re-watering them every time the pots turn light colored / dry looking... but I've probably been watering them about 3-4 times as much as I had been before, thinking that the 1 missed day was what gave them the trouble.

I'm going to give them a day or 2 to dry out (they've been watered probably way too much today) then resume watering at a much more cautious rate.
[/FONT]

Day 21:
little/no change in #1 & #2. All 3 are slow-growing (2nd leafset not getting any bigger, 3rd not started).
#1 has brown cotyledons, 1st pair of trueleaves is light-green and facing half downwards, 2nd pair of trueleaves are tiny greenish-yellow and still folded together.
#2 has brown cotyledons, 1st pair of trueleaves are pointing perfectly outwards and darker green (still a little yellowish) than #1's. 2nd pair are a healthy green but folded together and not really growing.
#3 has brown cotyledons, and yellow trueleaves facing straight down. 2nd pair are yellow as well but facing outwards and not folded together like those on her sisters.

They haven't been watered for a day, and the soil is still quite wet so it looks like they'll be going at least another day or 2 without water - I think I went overboard watering them when they got sick so right now I could be solving the problem or making it worse. I just germinated a few more seeds and put them in soil... I don't expect #4 or #5 to sprout, it's been a while even for #5

over watering them under watering them I don't know what I've done all I know is that I've butchered them, and I'm HOPING it was nute burn from that soil I used...

After giving them some time to dry out, #1 has dropped one leaf from its 2nd true pair and 1 of it's cotyledons. The other cotyledon is shriveling and it's other 3 leaves are yellow. #2 has fallen over on its side and it's leaves are more yellow than green, and #3 has the same downward pointing yellow droopy leaves it always has. Needless to say, none are growing, and they're probably all inches from death.

Being just over 3 weeks old, but not grown any more than they were at 1 week, would they need to be fed nutrients now if they continue to live?

I know they're in rough shape and will probably make lousy plants if they do live, but the experience would be valuable so I'm not giving up on these until they're dead... not that I know what dead even looks like, as proven by #2 in her early days!

#6 has sprouted, and is the first one to do so in the good potting soil mix. Perhaps #5 is still on it's way.

For anyone who's started out in Jiffy Pots, I'm watering them until the dampness darkens the sides of the pot - think this could be too much?

#6 has sprouted and has the fattest stem yet. In it's first day above the ground it grew about 2-3cm in about 6 hours, and has now slowed down at about the height of #1 & 2. It's 1st pair of true leaves is still very small, about a 5th the size of its cotyledons

#1/2/3 are still in bad shape, I'm just giving them time and letting them dry out a little.

I put seed #7 in paper towel for only about 30 hours before checking it and finding a taproot well over an inch long! I hope that won't be a problem... I filled a Jiffy cup 2/3 to the top with moist soil, poked a hole all the way to the bottom, put this things tail down, only to find it still stuck way above the surface... so I filled in up to the seed and a little bit over with dirt, and am hoping it roots well

- I'm thinking overwatering was my fault with the other 3. I never gave them tremendous amounts of water but I often watered them at least once a day... basically as soon as the soil was a little bit drier I would re-saturate it with water. Now I'm letting them fully dry out which seems to take about 3-5 days each time, then letting it absorb water from the tray they're sitting in before drying out again.

I've got an 8th seed in the process of germinating but it was missing a small piece of it's shell so it may no longer be viable.

Maybe I'll do things right this time

#7 with it's monster taproot seems to be doing OK. Popped up overnight and is starting to open up.

Have a 9th seed germinating alongside that messed up #8. At least one of them should germ!

oGipRotRe said:

#7 with it's monster taproot seems to be doing OK. Popped up overnight and is starting to open up.

Have a 9th seed germinating alongside that messed up #8. At least one of them should germ!

Click to expand...

Hey I see that you are learning the hard way the same as I did, I lost all of my first batch except one White Rhino (FirstWR1 aka WR1) and even that stagnated for quite a while too.
Don't give up, you'll get it yet !

#6's first trueleaves are coming in slowly but she keeps getting taller and has by far the fattest stem of all of them. Every other sprout has had somewhat narrow and very pointy leaves while this ones came out practically round and are now wide and short - diff pheno I guess?

#7's monster taproot grew out of the hole in the Jiffy Pot, along the bottom (between the Jiffy Pot and the tray it's in) and is poking out the side from underneath. It's only a day old but I'm thinking I should transplant it so it has a place to put that damn thing

I've put #7's jiffy pot inside a larger plastic one to give it's taproot some room to grow, somewhere more suitable than a foil cooking tray.

I also picked up some "Terracycle" liquid plant food (0.03 - 0.002 - 0.02) and "Jobe's" Plant Food Spikes (10-10-4). I've given seedlings #1/2/3 (the sick yellow stunted ones) a quarter of what the plant food spike package directions indicated, as all 3 of them are well over the age that they are supposed to be provided for by the seed.

I was thinking of using the terracycle stuff just to mist all 5 seedlings during their dark cycle for humidity, and holding off on using it for direct soil-feeding until I have some healthy 3-4 week old plants - any thoughts?