Shotgun321
Member
I germinated five seeds (NL Auto) the paper towel method, three germed strongly in 36 hours, about a 1/4" tap root. The other two were only cracked open, not much sign of tap root yet, looked like it was ready to come out.
So Decided to put them all in peat pots, to save transplanting stress later. I put them about 3x seed size deep. I then covered that with more soil and watered the everything heavily. I then put the peat pots under a 250w CFL at a distance of about 3".
Four days later and the ones that had good taproots have sprouted above the soil and now they look ok (one of them hasn't dropped the shell husk though. The other two, the ones that were just cracked, didn't sprout at all.
So I decided to just take a look at the non-sprouting ones, they were completely dried out, looks like they'd made an effort but dried out trying. So I threw them in the trash. so my three healthy ones are still in the same setup but I looked at the soil in the ones I dumped, it was bone dry.
Now I had watered these a lot, I even saturated the peat pots earlier today and they're dried out already judging for the lack of moisture in my two throw-away pots.
My conclusion as to why the bad two didn't pop is that they weren't germed enough and then got completely dried out in the jiffy pot.
I'm not sure what to do now with my three remaining plants, Should I water constantly to keep them moist or just put them straight into bigger pots? This issue with the jiffy pot always drying out will be on my mind if I leave it go.
So Decided to put them all in peat pots, to save transplanting stress later. I put them about 3x seed size deep. I then covered that with more soil and watered the everything heavily. I then put the peat pots under a 250w CFL at a distance of about 3".
Four days later and the ones that had good taproots have sprouted above the soil and now they look ok (one of them hasn't dropped the shell husk though. The other two, the ones that were just cracked, didn't sprout at all.
So I decided to just take a look at the non-sprouting ones, they were completely dried out, looks like they'd made an effort but dried out trying. So I threw them in the trash. so my three healthy ones are still in the same setup but I looked at the soil in the ones I dumped, it was bone dry.
Now I had watered these a lot, I even saturated the peat pots earlier today and they're dried out already judging for the lack of moisture in my two throw-away pots.
My conclusion as to why the bad two didn't pop is that they weren't germed enough and then got completely dried out in the jiffy pot.
I'm not sure what to do now with my three remaining plants, Should I water constantly to keep them moist or just put them straight into bigger pots? This issue with the jiffy pot always drying out will be on my mind if I leave it go.
.....remember we are giving advice to someone that does not know much (hence New Growers Forum) and lets not forget that things work differently for everyone. I used jiffy and thought that they were too slow...and found I had to constantly keep a 
on them because they dry out too fast. That is not a good thing for a new grower that may have just spent 100 or more on seeds and wants to keep them alive. I clone too and use rockwool and it works fine 4 me. 
