Growing isn’t an easy business, and it all starts in one place. It begins with your seedlings. Ok, I guess it kind of begins with building your grow room, sourcing the right equipment, doing your research, but can I just be dramatic for five seconds? Thank you. Anyway if you want to raise healthy and happy plants you need to make sure you know how to look after your seedlings. Also, the more careful you are with your seeds, the less money you’ll waste on seeds that don’t sprout. Giving your plants a good start is extremely important so today we are going to focus completely on how you can raise healthy seedlings. I’m not sure why I’m all about the two parters recently but this definitely needs all the information I can squeeze in if you’re going to germinate your seeds properly. In this section we will learn about initial germination and next time we will have a look at planting and initial care.
Prepare Properly
Without proper preparation you aren’t going to be able to grow healthy plants. This completely depends on where you are growing, what type of operation you have set up, and how many plants you plan on growing. There are completely different strains, setups and mediums, some of which don’t mix together well. This is a big ‘do your research’ part of the process.
The very first thing you need to do is pick a strain, then you can shape everything else around it. Do you want a plant that grows fast? Produced a large yield? Grows well indoors? Grows well outdoors? Does it grow well with lots of other plants? Is it high quality but needs lots of attention? Whether you are growing commercially or for personal use, recreational or medicinal use, will alter which strain is the best for you.
Once you have decided on your strain you need to make sure that you have the right medium ready to grow. The top grow sites recommend light aerated soil with a PH of 6.3 – 6.5. They also recommend adding a decent amount of perlite to help the nutrient balance in the soil.
You also need to make sure that everything fits to your grow space. You can’t just grab an outdoor plant and stick it indoors because you like the strain. Everything needs to work in harmony.
Germination
Once you have everything ready to go you can start germinating your seeds. This may seem super easy but there are subtleties to this process that will make or break your perfect seedlings.
If you didn’t already know, germination is the process that causes your seeds to sprout ready for planting. Your very first step will be soaking the seeds which will make germination more likely. Put tap water in a bowl and soak your seeds in there for around 12 hours. The fun trick here is it tells you which seeds are going to sprout and which aren’t. Much like eggs the bad seeds will float to the top and the good seeds will sink to the bottom of the bowl. This means you can focus on the good seeds. Once you know which seeds are which you can dispose of the bad and pop the good onto a towel.
Next up we want to dampen a paper towel and put that onto a plate. You want the towel to be pretty good quality and damp but don’t soak it or it’ll just fall apart and stick to your seeds. Try and use a plate that’s a similar size to the paper towel so you don’t accidentally badly place any seeds. Then you want to get your good seeds and pop them onto the towel about half an inch apart. Making sure they have enough space is important and so is ensuring that they are butt down on the towel. Basically the end that’s not pointy should be facing down the way. Then dampen another paper towel and place it over the top of the seeds making sure that it’s touching all of them. Then put another plate of the same size over the top. You can also just use a plastic container if you have one that’s big enough.
This next part is super important, don’t mess around with temperature or your babies will have a hard time. You want them to sit in a room that is dry and warm, around 21 – 29 degrees celsius. Ideally you want an ambient temperature rather than a lamp because that is likely to dry out the paper towel. On that note keep a spray bottle nearby to keep the paper towel damp. If your towel dries out it is pretty likely that your seeds will die.
Within the next two days your seeds should start to sprout in the paper towel. Once these little shoots get to around half an inch they are ready for you to plant them. This part, like pretty much every other part, is extremely important. Be super careful with your sprouting babies because they are extremely delicate. Don’t go poking them or pulling them and transfer them for planting very carefully. If you mess up this new root your seedlings are not going to grow. You also may have a few seeds left that haven’t sprouted after a few days. There is no harm in leaving them a little longer in case they are late bloomers, but the likelihood is that they are not going to sprout.
Next time we are going to revisit mediums with a little bit more detail and we will learn how to actually plant our seedlings. If you are capable of the focus and care needed to successfully plant seedlings then you should be a good parent to the plants as they start to grow. Remember, these are living things and there is no uniform method that guarantees success. All you can do is be as careful as possible with your seeds and your plants. Then hopefully you will be rewarded for it.
Written by Tasha Porritt
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The post How To Raise Healthy Seedlings: Part 1 first appeared on Cannabis Seeds News.
Source: https://www.cannabis-seeds-store.co.uk/Cannabis-Seeds-News/how-to-raise-healthy-seedlings-part-1
