Newbie grower in MA

New grower here from Cape Cod near the water. I planted 3 seeds of Northern Lights and all 3 germinated within a few days. I am now just about a month along and the plants look healthy and are growing, each with a number of leaves, but they are shorter than I would have expected by now. They are 6”, 5”, and 3” tall. I realize there are many factors that will affect growth, but as a general question is this about a normal growth rate for this strain at this climate after a month?

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Pictures help, but from your description yes.
At this point they’ll be stalling a bit in top growth, to make more roots. They’ll take off again in a week or two.

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I’m also a new grower. My plants started really slow. I found I was over watering all the time.

I’m now waiting until I think they need a drink, then I wait a day. I’ve never had drooping leaves and growth has taken off.

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Thanks. The plants look good, just small, but growing. I typically stick my finger in the dirt and if it is dry most of the way up my finger, then I water, much as I do in the veggies. I’ll try holding off on the watering.

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I think this technique is what gets people in trouble with watering. Just because the first few inches of soil is dry doesn’t tell the story of the remaining 7” or so below that. Best way is feeling the weight of the pot. Fully dry soil will be real light. A good way to train is to get one of those cheap soil ph, moisture and light meters. The ph and light meters are pretty useless but the moisture probe works well if you keep it clean and it can get all the way to the bottom of the pot. When the meter reads 1 or less on moisture, pick the pot up and after a little while muscle memory will tell you when it’s dry.

Cannabis is a different monster than your vegetable plants. It is a weed and prefers wet and dry cycles.

see I cant do any of that because my soil is 2 feet deep and there is 100s of gallons of it. So I let the plants tell me if they need more water. Because a pot is so small it isnt a very big reservoir and it needs water fairly regularly, whereas a large pile of dirt can go for many days.

I am currently growing northern lights. On 4/4 the germinated seeds went into peat pots with potting soil
Here they are on 4/12 just before putting then in 6" nursery pots


On 4/30
A week later on 5/7
Just to show it takes time for the roots to develop and once they do, the plant takes off.
To bring you up to date here is the largest of the 4 on 6/19. The net is about 18" above the soil
Patience - they will do their thing

Thanks. I feel better. After 2 1/2 months your are 18” tall and your photos after 6 weeks look like mine after 5, so perhaps what I am getting is typical. After transplanting to bigger pots early last week, the past couple of days they started getting more height and leaves so I guess I am probably on track.

Thanks again.

I couldn’t agree more. I just chopped 2 autos that hadn’t been watered for the last two days. The top of the soil was dry as I expected. What surprised me was how damp the bottom half of the soil was. These were grown in air pots too!