New grower here! Just have a few questions if you have time to help me

HeyMac08

New Member
Hi everyone! So background on me - this quarantine/social distancing thing has got me stir crazy, so I’ve decided to try my luck in growing a few outdoor plants. This is pretty much my first time growing anything, ever.

I live in the SF/Bay Area in NorCal and picked up 3 clones yesterday evening from Harborside: Blue Dream, Strawberry Banana and Do-Si-Dos. I transplanted them into solo cups (holes in the bottom) with Happy Frog soil, then watered them with Aquafina bottled water (closest thing I could find to 5.8 pH).

Right now, there is only about 13 hours of sunlight in a day here, so I kept them under about 4,000 kelvin LED lights in the bathroom for part of the night last night to try to get their exposure to 18/6, probably down from the 24hr light they had at the dispensary.

I planned on putting them in the shade outside today to get used to the outdoors and start the hardening off process, but it’s currently 58 with a high of 64 today, supposed to be cloudy all day :( For the meantime, I put them on a table outside to get some fresh air, just need to make sure the sun doesn’t magically come out to beat directly on them since the table isn’t in the shade.

Now for the questions-

I understand having them in cloudy weather is better than indoors light-wise, but is the current temperature okay for clones that I transplanted literally 14 hours ago?

My pH meter hasn’t come in the mail yet, so I had been researching pH of waters I could get in the store. Aquafina ranged from 5.4 - 6.0 from all the sites I looked at. Is this water okay? Does it make sense to even go as high as 7? Eventually, I’d like to transplant the plants in a big pots (after they grow out of the solo cups) outside and use a hose or irrigation to water it, but my tap water is 9+ pH.... will that ever be okay or how does one water their plants outside if their tap water pH is not ideal?

As far as lights go, I don’t have a proper set up to make up for the 5 hours of darkness (hence why I used the white bathroom lights since it was the brightest and whitest light in the house I could find). What kind of light should I purchase to make up for the lost light? If I plan to have these little buggers outside and it’s still short days, how can I set up a way for them to get more light?

If you have any suggestions on how I can better improve what I have set up now, I would absolutely appreciate the feedback.

Thank you so much in advance for your help with this! :)
 

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milehighgreenthumbbb

Active Member
Congrats on the new baby’s! Nice strains you got for yourself! Here where I live around 5500 ft I can’t put anything outside till after mother’s day. Curious what people do in your neck of the woods. If your trying to stay simple keep using the bathroom and maybe a little clip fan to get some air moving on them. I use to transplant from red solos after about a week. Be careful in solos can be vulnerable to getting blown over. Cheers !
 
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