Ok end of day 8 and some important observations/notes.
Well after yesterday about half the plants were looking pretty grim. I attributed this a few things: the high heat in the grow space, poor lighting (in reality enough lighting, but spread over too much space makes it too little...), starting seedlings in too small an area of dirt, and also under watering. I was only able to water them twice in one day yesterday. Once I gave them a few good doses today though most of the plants came back great, and some joined the rest that have bitten the dust. This is fine with me though as I only intended to keep a few past this point. I really had no reason to germinate this many seeds, and in doing so I only took up more sq. footage and starved all the plants of light. I would have been better off germinating less from the beginning and closing in the space more, which would have made the lighting situation better and more reasonable IMO. Still, closing in the area even more would potentially raise the heat factor even more which brings back up my wonders about cooling in a small space. I only have a basic fan to work with so I'm just doing what I can. I try to keep the door open whenever I can but you know how that goes.
As far as the amount of dirt thing... I carefully pulled up some of the sprouts that weren't going to make it, but actually made it to 4 healthy leaves at some point. The root system even on a plant this small (~5 days old after germination) was quite advanced, in fact taking up the entire small amount of space already. Now I'm no plant expert so I can't say for sure but I think that even starting them in so little soil is a pain. My hard personal evidence for this though is more of a convenience thing. With so little dirt I could only water the plant so much w/out suffocating the roots. Because of this I was having to water with less water, more frequently. As I have to sleep at night, and go to work during the day, those long periods of time would allow the plant to dry out quite a bit and get hot. This caused many of the plants to die out and not make it.... mostly in the smaller containers. In fact all but one of the sprouts that I started in the bigger pots are all looking great!
Tomorrow I am going to ditch most of the sprouts as many of them have passed away (I basically let them). I will be down to about 6 or so at that point so I should be good to go for a while. I'm going to rearrange the grow space as well to improve lighting conditions.
One question... is it too early to transplant? I'd like to get them all in at least the size pots that I have a few of them started in just to make things easier... but when I pulled up some of the near dead sprouts, the root system still seemed quite frail and breakable... many of the sprouts simply snapped at the stem (at the surface of the soil) leaving all the roots under ground. I would hate for that to happen to my healthy ones. =(
Thanks!
Well after yesterday about half the plants were looking pretty grim. I attributed this a few things: the high heat in the grow space, poor lighting (in reality enough lighting, but spread over too much space makes it too little...), starting seedlings in too small an area of dirt, and also under watering. I was only able to water them twice in one day yesterday. Once I gave them a few good doses today though most of the plants came back great, and some joined the rest that have bitten the dust. This is fine with me though as I only intended to keep a few past this point. I really had no reason to germinate this many seeds, and in doing so I only took up more sq. footage and starved all the plants of light. I would have been better off germinating less from the beginning and closing in the space more, which would have made the lighting situation better and more reasonable IMO. Still, closing in the area even more would potentially raise the heat factor even more which brings back up my wonders about cooling in a small space. I only have a basic fan to work with so I'm just doing what I can. I try to keep the door open whenever I can but you know how that goes.
As far as the amount of dirt thing... I carefully pulled up some of the sprouts that weren't going to make it, but actually made it to 4 healthy leaves at some point. The root system even on a plant this small (~5 days old after germination) was quite advanced, in fact taking up the entire small amount of space already. Now I'm no plant expert so I can't say for sure but I think that even starting them in so little soil is a pain. My hard personal evidence for this though is more of a convenience thing. With so little dirt I could only water the plant so much w/out suffocating the roots. Because of this I was having to water with less water, more frequently. As I have to sleep at night, and go to work during the day, those long periods of time would allow the plant to dry out quite a bit and get hot. This caused many of the plants to die out and not make it.... mostly in the smaller containers. In fact all but one of the sprouts that I started in the bigger pots are all looking great!
Tomorrow I am going to ditch most of the sprouts as many of them have passed away (I basically let them). I will be down to about 6 or so at that point so I should be good to go for a while. I'm going to rearrange the grow space as well to improve lighting conditions.
One question... is it too early to transplant? I'd like to get them all in at least the size pots that I have a few of them started in just to make things easier... but when I pulled up some of the near dead sprouts, the root system still seemed quite frail and breakable... many of the sprouts simply snapped at the stem (at the surface of the soil) leaving all the roots under ground. I would hate for that to happen to my healthy ones. =(
Thanks!
