i planted the germed seeds last night and threw the timer to 18/6, gave them a little water a few mins ago.ph says its around 6.5-7 and the light is spectacularly good and its moist enough, my fan is always on when the lights are on. decided not to use the miracle grow and instead got some dirt/soil from my dads garden and mixed it with some vermiculate(sp?)....will keep posted
That will do ok to get them started, get a little lime and adjust the ph of the soil to as close to 6.0 as you can, within 48 hours of breaking the ground/soil make sure they are in a gallon size grow container. You really don't want the tap root to touch anything that would stop it from growing downward when it first sprout the soil. How long to be concerned about this I can't say, I can't prove any of what I am just said but it comes from obversations. Some say if the tap root touches or stops it downward growth real earily in sprouting it will give it a better chance of being a male. If this is true or not I can't say but it is always better to be safe than sorry, I do know that last year I had alot of work to do around the time the seeds were sprouting and some did stay in the small cups longer than I liked and I DID have more males than usual. The mircle-gro potting soil would have been ok to use, it doesn't adjust the nutrient level enough to matter, always make sure if you HAVE to use slow-release nutrient/soil that it does NOT contain nitrogen levels higher than 5% also if the nutrient level is stated to last around 3-4 months so much the better, by the time of budding the nutrients are gone.
Slow-release nutrients are not recommended but they can be used as a last resort but you MUST be careful of the nutrient level release, lenght of time it is good for and what nutrients are released (one reason they say don't use them, too damn complicated).
But if you want to you can give them a feeding of manure tea if you have access to any animal manure from a farm, it contains many, many nutrients, good baterica/fungi and organic gardeners recommend it to all plants well except catii.
Chicken manure is what I use for manure since I have access to so much, I take some and mix it into the soil with bone meal, wood ash and mix it all up good and then spread lime all over the soil and let it the rain wash it all down thru everything and then about 2 months later I mix the soil again with a shovel and set out the small plants and give them a feeding of manure tea and buddy they grow like crazy. The manure tea can also be used as a feeding for your plants.
Do a search for manure tea and you will find all kinds of help in making it and using it. There was one time I grew a plant and the only thing I had to feed it was manure tea and MG bloom buster fert. and it turned out ok for me and a few others.
Oh yea don't feed them for close to a week after sprouting, seedlings have enough energy stored to help it get growing, but what you used more than likely is good enough to last a little while.