Advice needed on miniature plants (pics)

Hello everyone,

The plants pictured are 3 weeks and 5 days old from seed. They are in 1 gal containers with about 4/5 gal soil.
[EDIT: The temps are 85-90F during the day and 75F at night.]

The tallest plant is only 6 inches tall, but it has 7 nodes. I'm wondering if this is normal? The plants were grown with CFLs 4 inches away for the first two weeks and 8 inches away for the rest of the time, and they are in small containers. So, small size should be expected, but this seems too small. There is no micorrhizal activity. The plants do get liquid seaweed extract for the growth hormone. I don't think this is from underfertilizing because a nutrient deficiency would show up as an unhealthy plant - not a miniature one. I'm at a loss for an explanation other than that they were grown with CFLs too close and mostly in the blue area of the light spectrum.

Could it really be just that?

From my personal experience with CFLs, 8 inched is a tad too far, and if you are using the blue spectrum ones, when I did, my plants grew exactly the same, short and tight internodes. They eventually starting growing vertically quite fast. Patience is key with cfls, try moving them closer and then just raising them every day with the plan growth. Never tried myself but you could also put in a yellow/red spectrum to mix it up a bit.

Also, i would reccomend transplanting, they could possibly be root bound, 1 gal containers are quite small, especially for that size plant, in fact, This is the first step i would take.

flaiks said:

From my personal experience with CFLs, 8 inched is a tad too far, and if you are using the blue spectrum ones, when I did, my plants grew exactly the same, short and tight internodes. They eventually starting growing vertically quite fast. Patience is key with cfls, try moving them closer and then just raising them every day with the plan growth. Never tried myself but you could also put in a yellow/red spectrum to mix it up a bit.

Also, i would reccomend transplanting, they could possibly be root bound, 1 gal containers are quite small, especially for that size plant, in fact, This is the first step i would take.

Click to expand...

They definitely aren't root bound yet. Roots have reached the bottom, but they are still branching out. I don't have anything close to the thick root mass that looks like pure roots lining the bottom. I've got some additional 2400K color temp bulbs in there, and they were 50/50 6400k and 2400k bulbs (about 200 watts actual draw total) for week 3. It was too hot though, so I turned off most of the redder bulbs.

I'm gonna drop the lights back down and wait a couple weeks. If nothing, then I'll transplant one of them into a 2 gal to see what happens. Thanks for the advice!