Ok, just a bit of advise for you. the bark chips in the top of the pot are not necessary. they are doing nothing for you at this point. In fact if you water and some water bounces off one of those bark chips and hits your plant, it could fold it over and ruin it. They are way too young to be adding fancy bark chips. Get those out of there man. Second you can use MG soil, without issue and many have. If I were buying MG soil I would buy a bag of MG soil, a bag of perlite and a bag of Organic soil with no addatives. I would mix 40% MG, 40% Organic blend and 20% perlite. Miracle grow makes all three of these products and they are affordabley priced. If you are shopping at home depot you are guranteed to find all three products there.
third, some plants die, and some seeds do not even sprout. It is simply a risk you take every time you plant. Here is my advise to minimize damaging a plant. First you buy some rockwool cubes. after you have cracked the seeds in a dish of water kept warm in a dark place, you place the cracked seeds 1 per rockwool cube. You will then place your moistened rockwool cubes in a seed germination tray with a see through plastic top. poor a little water in the bottom of the tray and through a lid on it. In order to keep the rockwool cubes moist but not soaked, you need just a small amount of water in the bottom of the tray. Do not keep opening the tray after you have set this up!!! Only open to re-up the water in the tray. If you can place it in a warm place or on a heating pad, then that would be ideal. They need to be in a damp, warm place to germinate properly. so find somewhere with a temp 85 or above, but not greator than 90 and let them sit in the tray.
Eventually they will pop through the top of the cubes. once you reach this point, you are in the clear. Now place you CFLs over the top of your germ try. Let the plants grow in the germ tray... Lemme say this again. let the plants grow in the germination tray. Its the perfect environment for a baby plant. Its moist and wet and they love that. once the get 4 or 5 inches tall. Place more light on top of them. At this point you could safely add the MH light at about 12 inches away. you will let the babies grow in the germination try until they are hitting the top of the plastic dome or just about to. then you will transplant them to your premixed soil that we discussed earlier. At the time of transplant you will water them right after transplant and put them on 24 hours of light the first week. Then, at the second week scale back the light to 18/6. you can also adjust the light closer to the plants if using a 250 watt light and your cooling is good.
Sorry if nobody seemed helpful earlier. Some of these people have an ignorant habit of coming into a thread and making stupid comments even though they have nothing to say that is productive and helpful for you. The first grow is always difficult, but don't give up! You can PM me with any questions also.
. So should I feed my Miracle Gro Soil plants some Miracle Gro Plant Food? If so, how often, every time I water. It's 1 tablet per 2 Qts water.
