ooops... now what did i do wrong?

[897tgigvib]

Arielle, I think you're Supergirl from Krypton in disguise!

My mom had 5 of us, and we were the loud family!

 

[bills]

yes it does feel like im growing little babies... which is probably why i cant just pluck out the weak seedlings and toss them...i carefully pull them out and give them thier own peat pot to grow in....

Good thing your not growing a patch of carrots.. thinning them out would just kill you..

I to hate that part of gardening, but you still need to do it so the others will grow big and strong..

 

[897tgigvib]

I'd lay odds that if Mother Bear Arielle, aka supergirl from krypton, grew carrots, she would not lose a single one of her thinnings!

 

[Arielle35]

omg im laughing so hard...which is actually quite comical when you have laryngitis!...its all squeeky sounding.. but yes..i dont think i can ever truley thin out things... I would just take all the weaker babies and put them in thier own special spot and nurture
them...but as im noticing....even after i stook the smaller seedling and gave it its own spot..its still alot smaller....

and yes some days I feel like super mom, but most the times its easy cuz i have such super kids and its fun teaching them about gardening right along side me learning....

and yes I am learning sooooo much from all my mistakes, errrrrrr, learning experiences. Sometimes I just get so impaitent and frustrated because unlike my kids, the plants cant tell me what im doing wrong....but then again...i was a first time mom
once and made lots of mistakes with my first...now im a pro...
plants just seem a way lot harder than kids to raise!! but maybe if I started the seedlings in the summer when they had natural sun light growing them it would have been easier.....but then again...that just means that come may....i will plant most these outside
and hope they make it, and see what comes back next year and blooms and see what doesnt....
like you guys said, and yes, i think your right, ive been putting too much energy into these and I think im hurting more than helping.... so im going to try and ignore them a little more.....lol if i can... there is still alot of things I dont know and I will still ask alot of questions, but ill just try not to stress so much....and if they dont make it....ill start over...with much fewer plants (now that i know most seeds sprout) and not so early in the season so when they hit 3-4 inches they can get real sun.

so back to gardening questions.... i will post pics tomorrow... (its 3am here now) but somethings wrong with a few of my plants...they are gettin those little brown tips on the impaitens...and then the baby catnip has little brown spots all over the 2 bottom leaves and isnt growing anymore...taller/thicker i mean... its still growing tiny little leaves, but not gettin bigger... its wierd...and a few of my other plants seem to stop growing... I really really need to get a fan...just waiting till the first...

 

[Arielle35]

oh also...what would happen if i didnt have the grow lights on for like 3 days? if they got only normal daylight? would they die? just curious cuz i might be going out of town next weekend I would water them well b4 i left, but didnt want the lights on the whole time I was gone...so jut curious...

also for future references......

if i wanted to grow some pretty indoor plants without using grow lights... what kind of seeds could i try? I mean do they NEED the lamps or survive/thrive? or are there other kinds of flowers I could plant and just keep moist and warm without the lights?

 

[897tgigvib]

Your plants will need the light Arielle during those 3 days you'll be gone. Perhaps you can get a trusted neighbor to turn the lights off and on and give them a bit of water. Being not cared for for 3 days could mean the end of a lot of them.

Your plants are not expending undue growth now because they now have light. During their early growth they were growing rapidly too tall on the food given to them from their "mother leaves", the cotyledon leaves. You got used to seeing them grow fast and "spindly", but that is not the normal or best way. Their normal growth is slow like what you are now seeing.

Those brown tips on the leaves can mean a lot of different things. Do keep an actual very close eye on the soil. I have seen that on Cantaloupe seedlings once when there were fungus gnats. A poor name for them if you ask me. Root gnats or soil gnats would be a better name. Also, be checking especially near your lights for little tiny gnat sized flies that are very bright white. If you use your supergirl from krypton eyes and see any of them you'll notice they are shaped just like ultra miniature F-15 jets. Not kidding. Those would be Whiteflies.

Let me know if you see or even just sense their presence. There are ways to control them without expensive chemicals.

Another reason for brown tips can be too much water. I hesitate to even suggest that because some beginners might suddenly decide to stop watering or reduce watering too much. Use the "finger in the soil" test. Stick your index finger into the soil up to the first crease, or almost. That's 3 quarters of an inch or so. Leave it there 3 or 4 seconds. Pull it out and wave it in the air a bit. If it feels like it was wet and clammy you don't need to water that pot yet. It takes some trial and error at first so continue also to use your Mother Bear instincts until you get this method down. (I believe your mama bear instincts are among the more powerful I've seen. A good thing.) A good greenhouse worker learns this in a hurry, especially for cool winter greenhouse conditions where special care with watering is critical. Too much water in a cool winter greenhouse can turn it into a chilly rainforest with lots of moldy soil and dead plants.

Oh, also, look closely at the soil. If you see strange pale growth a small fraction of an inch to an inch or more, it'll look like a subminiature forest of spindly pale growth, that would be "damping off" stuff growing...really bad news stuff! Mostly you'd not see that until after you have a fallen dead seedling in the pot.

Don't mean to send chills up your back! One of the more difficult things for all of us is to even want to look at the pests and diseases sections of gardening books. Kinda grit yer teeth and read about pests and diseases anyway. It's much more pleasant to read about new varieties or new artistic planting designs for planting in a clay pot.

My tooth is hurting right now and i may have gotten things disordered or something, but I'm trying!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I know you said money is tight, but I have mine on a timer. 14 hours on and 10 hours off.

Different plants need different amounts of light. I don't do house plants so I can't help much in practice. A lot of what might work will depend on how much natural light they would get. Do you have a southern window you could leave the shades open where they could get a lot of light?

 

[digitS']

. . . laryngitis!... (its 3am here now) ...

ggaaarrgle & spit Listerine . . .

Okay, now I've located Arielle, precisely.

She is in southern Idaho - an area of the state the size of 47 New Hampshires. Of course, there are only 13 residents so google satellite should easily locate her grow light shining in a window at 3am.

You see, when she was typing at 3, TEG forum tells me that it was 2am here. Somewhere there's a border in the Idaho panhandle between Mountain and Pacific time. When daylight savings time comes in, there can be quite a bit of gun play along that border . . .

Steve

 

[897tgigvib]

Oh! Is that somewhere around Silver City? Coolest doggoned place in all Idaho! Population about 12 in an area the size of 53 Vermonts! 53.17375 Vermonts to be precise...

 

[Arielle35]

i just love you guys!!! your so awesome! yup I am in south eastern Idaho... im an hour away from wyoming and an hour away from montana and 2 hours from utah... I dont know where silver city is tho.

so im not seeing any bugs at all...but I noticed something growing on over half of my little peat pots.... its white specks. not covering the whole top part of the soil just a little on about 10 pots...
its as if someone siften so very lightly a little flour... im guessing its a type of mold? probably from not having a fan running? I toke my finger and wiped my finger across the tops of them and it all disappeared
but im guessing it will be back....

so my question... i think i remember reading or hearing once....just a drop of dish soap in a spray bottle sometimes gets rid of mold? or is that something else?