I’m having difficulty getting seeds to sprout. Getting a solid tap root is no problem but getting it to sprout? Difficult. I’m looking at 63-70F and 43-51% humidity HLG 100 4K that has a 4’8”-ish height limit
Soil is an organic potting mix on top of FFOF
Soak seeds for 20hr in a hydrogen peroxide/water mix, don’t soak longer you can dround them without noticing it.
Dark warm area until tail shows.
If they are autos:
Place seed in RAPID Rooter, try to use something that is a couple inches tall and is somewhat sealed so the humidity is super high.
When it sprouts transfer it to the forever pot and dome it if you can’t get your humidity high in your grow tent, ideally you can raise you humidty in your grow tent with your exhaust fan off and your humidifier on as this will allow you to use your clip fan/interior tent fan to aplmy a very light breeze to your seedling to strengthen its roots/stem.
If it is a photo:
Get some seedling soil from your local hardware store, grab a solo cup and poke some holes in the bottom for drainage, fill it up with the seedling soil and place it inside another solo cup so the runoff is collected if you accidentally over water.
Again put the plant in a high humidity environment, if you have to dome it with something but if you can apply a light breeze.
Apply light close and dimmed down to avoid stretch until it Grows two sets of leafs, then start backing the light off and watching node spacing for an ideal 1" node space.
How deep are you planting your germinated seeds? More then 1/4 inch soil on top is too deep. There is no reason not to place germinated seeds directly in soil.
Are you keeping them warm? A seedling heating mat might be a good investment, or you can leave lights on 24/7 to keep them warm.
How are you watering them? Give the pot a good soaking before placing germinated seed in it, then leave it alone until the pot is almost dried out. No need for dome or misting or hovering. Just plant it in the damp soil and it will do its thing.
Question about soaking the soil and then leaving it alone till it dries.
So you not spraying soil on a daily baises to keep moist? Just letting it go for a bit!
I spray the soil everyday, how long is the tap root when you drop it into your medium?
Once the seedlings show themselves I MIGHT use a humidity dome, but I’ll attempt to keep the use to a minimum using it a few hours at a time. By the third or fourth day I won’t use one at all.
By soaking the soil before placing the germinated seed, the soil in the bottom of the pot is moist. Once the roots start growing you want the soil to dry out on top of the pot so the roots search out the moisture in the bottom of the pot. Using a humidity dome or watering a little bit every day or two defeats the purpose since the roots have no reason to grow beyond the top few inches of soil.
When a forum member harvests their plants and says their roots only grew in the top half of the pot I have to question their watering procedures. I think they are giving their plants too little water at a time, too frequently, and apparently never watering until runoff.
Hi all,
Hey I’m a new grower too, but can kick in a cool idea on a low budget that I’ve had 99% success with with all seeds I start for vegetables for the last decade. Follow the advice of @CMichGrower @Nicky @SKORPION but throw one of these together, self humidity, self heating, 5000k LED from home depot for a nice soft light that they won’t stretch for …a copy from YouTube. I never have an issue, give it a shot for getting the girls going, you won’t be sorry! This old timer uses it for everything
20201102_224629|375x500
I like the idea, I will say you will get better light reflection if you use a white container or paint the inside white rather than tin foil, mylar works well to you could spray adhesive it to the sides.
I really like the idea of making a little propagation bin like that although I would run a bit more lighting in it personally.
Unfortunately for me I need quite a bit of space once the seed pokes it’s head out because I put my autos right into 5 gallon buckets. So one bin would only really do one seedling for me.
I have to run like @SKORPION (Ps budy drop your light and dail it down to control your stretch but I’m sure your doing fine tag me if you run into any issues)
Ideally I would love to run all my seedlings off of 4kh LED’s but they would have to be powerful enough otherwise a great option is a T5 fixture with 6500 bulbs in it.
It all takes up space though so currently I personally just toss them in my tent and make them survive, sometimes I can dial it right in because no other plants and other times they just gotta take what they can get.
That’s a 2x4 with 2gal pots?
Lol yeah I raised them up for the pics. I actually run them on hlg 100s to I can drop them way down. @Nicky
Thanks bud!!
I’ll do some messing around with it along those lines. I grabbed what I had around the house and since it worked so well, I didn’t want to modify it…ha, ha, ha… they did stretch a little so I see what you mean. But the temp/humidity/isolation is spot on.
The clothes pin is of course is a marvel of engineering achievements to keep air moving… … 
They are 3 gallon fabric pots.
No but they work, good for seedlings actually.
I ran a 200w cfl veg setup before I got my 3500k LED’s.
I still want a cfl/t5 veg area they veg the best unless run in 4k led boards /strips
So i found rooting cubes on amazon, for some reason it won’t let me buy the rapid rooter brand where i live.
I’m asking this to try and make sure I’m clear on what you’re saying to me.
Do i pre-soak the cube or need to water it is my first question…?
Second, do i need to poke a hole in the cube to drop my seed in?
HOLD ON! did u use WET cardboard under ur plants to increase humidity?
