Hi Everyone,
Little bit of background...
First time grower...living at the other end of the Silk Road (the birthplace of a curious little plant we all know and love). I plan to order some commercial strains and start cultivating some western-influenced traditional Chinese herb a bit later this year, but decided to try my hand and gardening with some seeds I have lying around before I go to work on the real deal. The seeds came from a grow that a buddy of mine did (sort of). Actually, it's more like we found some wild weeds growing that were full of seeds.
So, basically this "grow" is me trying to figure out what exactly I'm working with materials-wise because I can read very little packaging or labeling on any of the soil, nutes etc. So, really what I'd like help with is:
1) What's going on? That is, why are my plants in the conditions they're in.
2) How to prevent it in a future grow? As well-meaning as advice about ordering Fox Farm fertilizer is, it's really not going going to happen for me. First it'd be a bit of pain getting bags of the stuff shipped internationally and then I don't really know what I tell customs if they ask me. They'll just wonder why I can't use domestic dirt and then tax me on it.
In any case, all these plants are around 5-6 weeks old. None of them have been given any nutes (unless the soil has nutes). The problem is that I can read any of the packaging, so I don't really know what's contained in anything. I can only tell you the following:
**Most of the soil I can find says pH is 5.5 - 6.8 (I know this is a bit low, but the water is at about 7 or so.
**I've only seen nutes with explicit NPK ratios as follows: 30-10-10; 10-56-10 and 18-18-18. Not sure how to adjust those to my needs. I have seen some hydroponic nutes and nutes simply labeled "growth (veg)...yellow-ish" and "flower (bloom) blue-ish"...but no explicit concentrations of anything that I could discern.
**Watering: I'm probably guilty of over-watering a bit in the beginning, but I've since cut back.
**As far as light, they've just been on my roof for a couple of weeks. So lots of sunlight.
So, I germed a bunch of them and some have grown and others not so much. The one's that actually grew, ended with some very brittle leaves that curl at the sides. Top growth appears unaffected. Pictures below.
Poor Girls - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery
The ones below sprouted but aren't actually growing. These were planted no more than 2 weeks after the plants above.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong? Also, how to fix it. And by fix it, I mean make it work with what I have (eg, can I add baking soda to watering to increase soil pH?). I can't go around talking horticulture in Chinese...and I don't know anyone who can (and if I did, not sure I'd want to enlist them).
I'd like to learn what to avoid and what to do different before I move onto the non-freebies.
Thanks, everyone. Sorry for the added complications of my situation.
Little bit of background...
First time grower...living at the other end of the Silk Road (the birthplace of a curious little plant we all know and love). I plan to order some commercial strains and start cultivating some western-influenced traditional Chinese herb a bit later this year, but decided to try my hand and gardening with some seeds I have lying around before I go to work on the real deal. The seeds came from a grow that a buddy of mine did (sort of). Actually, it's more like we found some wild weeds growing that were full of seeds.
So, basically this "grow" is me trying to figure out what exactly I'm working with materials-wise because I can read very little packaging or labeling on any of the soil, nutes etc. So, really what I'd like help with is:
1) What's going on? That is, why are my plants in the conditions they're in.
2) How to prevent it in a future grow? As well-meaning as advice about ordering Fox Farm fertilizer is, it's really not going going to happen for me. First it'd be a bit of pain getting bags of the stuff shipped internationally and then I don't really know what I tell customs if they ask me. They'll just wonder why I can't use domestic dirt and then tax me on it.
In any case, all these plants are around 5-6 weeks old. None of them have been given any nutes (unless the soil has nutes). The problem is that I can read any of the packaging, so I don't really know what's contained in anything. I can only tell you the following:
**Most of the soil I can find says pH is 5.5 - 6.8 (I know this is a bit low, but the water is at about 7 or so.
**I've only seen nutes with explicit NPK ratios as follows: 30-10-10; 10-56-10 and 18-18-18. Not sure how to adjust those to my needs. I have seen some hydroponic nutes and nutes simply labeled "growth (veg)...yellow-ish" and "flower (bloom) blue-ish"...but no explicit concentrations of anything that I could discern.
**Watering: I'm probably guilty of over-watering a bit in the beginning, but I've since cut back.
**As far as light, they've just been on my roof for a couple of weeks. So lots of sunlight.
So, I germed a bunch of them and some have grown and others not so much. The one's that actually grew, ended with some very brittle leaves that curl at the sides. Top growth appears unaffected. Pictures below.
Poor Girls - 420 Magazine Photo Gallery
The ones below sprouted but aren't actually growing. These were planted no more than 2 weeks after the plants above.
Can anyone tell me what's wrong? Also, how to fix it. And by fix it, I mean make it work with what I have (eg, can I add baking soda to watering to increase soil pH?). I can't go around talking horticulture in Chinese...and I don't know anyone who can (and if I did, not sure I'd want to enlist them).
I'd like to learn what to avoid and what to do different before I move onto the non-freebies.
Thanks, everyone. Sorry for the added complications of my situation.