First Grow - Poor Man's Grow

New pics. Took these today just before posting this.
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The rest of the plants are still recovering from being trampled on, hopefully they will be fine, they seem very flimsy right now. =/
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Here's the setup I have right now.
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How much should I water them? Like.. how moist should the soil be, or rather how much of the soil should be moist? I feel like I'm underwatering them and they are kind of shriveling a bit and the leaves are curling and turning yellow. D:
 
You should be drenching them, then letting them dry, drenching them, letting them dry....you get the idea. Don't let them dry out completely but pretty dry. What I do is I lift the pot after I water, remember the weight and then check it in a few days. If the weight of the pot is significantly lower, I water again. By this time the top inch or two of the soil is completely dry.
 
So after some reading I've come to the conclusion that it's probably Nitrogen deficiency so I stopped by the local Hydroponic Shop and picked up some Cal-Max. Now it's not specifically for Nitrogen, it provides Calcium and Magnesium as-well but he said that it will also help with the Nitrogen problem. While I was there I also picked up the stuff needed to make one 3 gallon bubbler. I also got a pack of rockwool plugs.

Transferred one of the plants to the bubbler. Accidentally tore some roots a bit while transferring it. It made me sad and I'm hoping that it's going to be OK. =/
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Sorry about double posting but I was going to add these pics to my previous post but I don't know how to edit my posts. But anyways, here are some pictures I took just a little while ago if the plant that is shown in the previous picture.

As you can see, the leaves are already perking up and aren't slouching like in the last photo.
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I failed at getting it centered in the pot. :p
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I cut off the bottom leaves because they had died from (nitrogen deficiency?). I added that Cal-Max stuff and the yellowing of the leaves doesn't seem to be progressing anymore so I think it's working, I guess only time will tell.
 
Looking good man you might want to get some superthrive from the garden shop ts like 10 bucks a bottle and it works pretty good as an additive. Good luck.
 
Well, looks like I didn't stop the yellowing of the leaves afterall, two more bottom leaves have died, and it looks like two more bottom leaves are turning yellow. Not really sure what to do, I've tried everything I can think of to stop it, added the Cal-Max stuff, didn't work, replaced the water with just plain distilled water, still didn't stop it.

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Tip of the top leaf is burnt because it's growing so fast it actually grew up to the light over night.
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Hydroponic bubbler is definitely making a difference in growth rate. Here is the biggest one I have in soil. As you can see, compared to the one in the DWC, it's not nearly as far along.
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I know it's my first grow and failure should have been anticipated but, everything was going so well until they got squished and then everything went down hill from there. Hopefully my next grow will be a little more successful.

Here's my new sproutlings. Forgot to turn the timer off, so the lighting was still setup for 18/6 so they stretched a bit during those 6 hours of darkness. =/
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If anyone knows anything that can help me stop the yellowing and eventual fatality of the bottom leaves, that would be greatly appreciated. Right now I'm using 10-10-10 Vigoro All Purpose Plant Food and Cal-Max. Yep, I'm pretty noobtastic I must say. :p
 
Are those fibre cups waterproof? If you get a fan on the seedlings right away you will not have to support them, not a huge wind but they should at least be moving a little bit. If the fan blows it over at all and you have to tie it up, thats too much.
 
No, they aren't. They actually absorb water and soften, which can be a bit annoying when you are using them as pots, but eventually when you feel the need to transfer to bigger pots you can actually take them and plant them directly into soil and the moisture will soften them up to the point where they will break down and the roots will penetrate. So it's like an easier way to transfer, instead of having to remove the plants from the pots, you can just take the whole pot and put it into a bigger pot full of soil.
 
I have used these types on one of my early grows before then. I hated them, I had trouble watering them inside because they dont drain at all, and after I did manage to get them outside, unless you keep the fibre wet continuosly, it caused my tap roots to coil around inside. The fibre must be wet all the time or it dries hard as before. I say throw them away, get a plastic beer cup with lots of holes in the bottom and a dish to catch run off. Soil gardening is messy and dirty (maybe thats why I like it). They caused lots of crap for me before I knew it.
 
The ones I have seem to be draining just fine and I didn't really plan on actually keeping them in the pots during transfer. I have plastic dishes underneath them right now because every time I watered them it was leaving puddles on the box underneath, which... I don't really care about the box but for some reason it was bothering me. idk.. just a pet peeve of mine I guess. :p I do need to get another bubbler soon though because one of the new sproutlings I have in the rockwool plugs grew quite a long root out of the bottom of the plug so I decided to put it in the bubbler with the other plant just for the hell of it and now it's growing really long and starting to coil because I'm preventing it from seeping into the rocks so that when I do get a bubbler I won't have to dig up the root.

Here's the root, you can see the sproutling itself next to the plant in the bubbler in one of the previous pictures.
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Oh and as for the supports on the sproutling. The rockwool dried up pretty well and when I had gotten a chance to see how they were doing that one was laying down, so I just tied it up to the support and watered it, it doesn't need the support anymore but I just haven't gotten around to taking it off. I've just had a few of them die from that before so when I saw this one laying down I was like "aaaah!" and tied it up.. seems to have helped because it's doing fine now.
 
Nah, I just have that one in the bubbler. The rest are in soil and are staying in soil. I just couldn't find a place to get stuff to make a bubbler until recently and when I finally found one I was anxious to try it out.
 
Wait until harvest, dig up the roots and check them out. I bet you will notice the tap root wound around and around. For me, it was like the small searching taproot still had trouble pushing through any kind of barrier, even the mesh on the plugs forced it around and not down. Cause that taproot doesn't start off an inch thick, path of last resistance and stuff like that.
 
Well, like I said, I'm not going to plant them with the peat pots, I'm going to remove them from those peat pots and plant them in new pots. I understand what you're saying though, you'd have to keep it pretty soaked for it to work well. As for the mesh on the plugs, I did remove that before I planted them in soil. Next time around I will be starting out with Rockwool cubes/plugs and putting the sproutlings straight into bubblers, it's just a matter of getting enough bubblers. Which shouldn't be too hard because the setup I got right now was only like $23 and it came with enough Hydroton for two. I would have to get more lights though. My next grow should go a lot better because I just kind of bought things as I needed them during this one and then there was the whole... all of the plants getting squished thing.. that didn't help, most of them never really recovered from that. =/ Next time I'm going to make sure I've got everything I need before I start, including nutes specifically for hydroponic systems.
 
I haven't updated in awhile because I've recently got a second job and have been working 13-20 hour days. Which unfortunately also had an impact on my plants. I came home the other night... well... day.. because I get home from work at 7:00-8:00AM now.. anyways. I got home and found that three plants had died from lack of water. I had been too tired and had been going straight to sleep when I got home so I neglected to water them. =/ Ah well.. it's probably better this way anyways because now I'm just down to 1 soil plant, and 1 hydroponic (well 2, but I'll talk about that later.) Ofcourse the reason that it's okay is because my whole point of this grow was to gain experience so that when it came to a serious grow I would have a better idea of what I'm doing. Hopefully next time I won't have all of the abnormal problems that I had this time around. (The accidental squashing of all of the plants) Anywho, here is a recent picture of the plant that was moved to the bubbler:
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Here is a new sproutling that I started the other day and put straight into the bubbler when it sprouted. I did this because I wanted to see if it would do any better than the ones I started in soil. So far it seems to be doing a lot better, doesn't seem to be much (if any) stretching, I've got it under two 100watt CFL's
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