What just happened??

Hey, um.. wtf did I do? I watered plant yesterday and the leaves curled up immediately and has not recovered. Also had this yellow spot for a few days but didn't spread and plant looked ok. Medium is coco. Nutes just floranova grow.

Thanks in advance!

Maybe get it out if that small cup into an appropriate container size to start.

Budzbuddha said:

Maybe get it out if that small cup into an appropriate container size to start.

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Omg! That was supposed to be the last watering before I transferred.!EEK

There seems to be a straight up obsession with people using cups here. It's bizarre. I've always planted seeds straight into 2 or 3 gal pots and never had a problem. The only times I've had problems is when I tried using all these lame "seedling" techniques everyone here uses that all centre around using ridiculously small pots.

If I had a dollar every time someone posts a plant in a cup asking why it looks like ass, I would be a rich man.

VincenzioVonHook said:

There seems to be a straight up obsession with people using cups here. It's bizarre. I've always planted seeds straight into 2 or 3 gal pots and never had a problem. The only times I've had problems is when I tried using all these lame "seedling" techniques everyone here uses that all centre around using ridiculously small pots.

If I had a dollar every time someone posts a plant in a cup asking why it looks like ass, I would be a rich man.

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Because its easier to water/maintain and the root/plant growth goes quicker.

Cigarz said:

Because its easier to water/maintain and the root/plant growth goes quicker.

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I agree with this to a certain extent. I used to transplant macro plugs into 4" cubes and waited until they were demanding being watered too frequently before I transplanted them into the final pot. You use a lot less water, they need a lot less area, and the roots / plants grow a lot faster in the beginning. That was rockwool though, and you could get away with waiting longer to transplant because of all of the the air / air pruning. With a cup you're not getting great drainage and no air pruning, so they become rootbound pretty quickly and seem to be more temperamental.

Sticky.Fingers said:

How does container size matter to how fast the roots grow?

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Fills the container faster allowing for quicker top growth.

Sticky.Fingers said:

How does container size matter to how fast the roots grow?

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Bigger pots tend to stay wet longer because the plant isn't sucking up much water, so they aren't pushed to explore the medium. Plus once they find their boundaries they tend to maximize that space. At least with pots that cause aeration.

Cigarz said:

Fills the container faster allowing for quicker top growth.

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This is true. There is hardly any growth for awhile after transplanting, and all of the sudden the plant goes wild. I call this "the roots catching." You can tell that they are satisfied enough with the foundation, and shift their focus on building the skyline.

Sticky.Fingers said:

And them filling the space then maximising it defies my simple ass logic. Wouldn't hitting the edges restrict the outward growth which is what we were trying to encourage in point 1?

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It causes them to turn inward and fill in the medium as densely as possible. At least with fabric pots or rockwool or whatever. PLastic pots become rootbound, but that's down the road a little.

I have years of experience getting the pH wrong in coco.
Did you measure the pH going in?

I recently had a meter that went off calibration. Brought another meter in for comparison. Turned out the first meter was indicating about 0.25 too high from where my target. That was enough to produce the kind of leaf curl I see in your pic.

I used this too high pH mix in the nursery on very young plants like yours and some 24 inch. The large one's did not look like they were gonna croak like the little ones but I could see some curl in the large; which took many days to go away with subsequent feeds at correct pH.

Little one's also took days to recovery with significant flushing. Did not bother to produce a big runoff on the large ones; just a nominal runoff.

Sticky.Fingers said:

I'd like to know if there's any science behind it. No offense intended but it sounds like a bro theory to me. But then again I am kinda cynical about most things so could happily be wrong about it.

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Have you ever seen a rootbound fabric pot? I haven't, but I've seen it where it takes forever to absorb water and is hard as hell to rip the coco back apart after harvesting due to the density of the roots.

As a point of reference, I can use a clear plastic cup (with ample holes in the bottom for drainage) and grow clones from a cutting in coco medium. Then I allow the roots to mature longer with light nutrients; and no dome top allowing for normal transpiration. Some roots that hit the cup's wall are exposed to light and the plant seems fine.
My pH is dialed in, tho.

Cigarz said:

Because its easier to water/maintain and the root/plant growth goes quicker.

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I find it way easier to just put the seed into the Coco, give it one good watering. People say it's easier and promotes faster growth, but every plant I have started in jiffys or cups never fills a whole 5 gal pot with roots. When I plant them straight into 5 gal pots I find they are rooting out the bottom in three weeks.

I'm probably useless watering, but I found it a complete ass to have to drips small amounts of water into a cup all the time to keep it moist. It just seems way easier to me to plant straight into pots, water once and not have to for a few days afterwards.

I must be retarded, but every time I plant in a cup Ur jiffy pot, I come back a few hours later and the tops dry lol. Moving back to dropping a seed straight into 3 gal pots for autos, and 5 gal pots for photos simply stopped my issue with over/underfed seedlings and gave them a steady environment for the first few days.

I've noticed too, that my Last few plants are 30-40cm tall in a few weeks, while most people are still in solo cups. I was in that same boat for a year or two until I got lazy and started throwing seeds straight in the ground outside, or in 3 gal pots indoors.

But technically speaking if dome right it's probably the best method. I'm just too unreliable when it comes to watering I think. If transplanted at the right time it seems to be the accepted and most reliable technique, but I've had far too many people come to me with three or four week old plants in solo cups or smaller struggling to hit 4 nodes asking why it wasn't growing.

I should clarify.. I still germinate my seeds in a test tube with coco Until the seeds popped off and the taproot is an inch or two long (4 or 5 days), and then it goes straight into 5gal pots.

Day 7, two days after leaving test tube on March 6.

A week later (14th March)

19 March


Only watered once when transplanted on the 5th, again on the 13th and again on the 17th with tap water...that is ease for me. I think I'm too lazy to use small pots more than anything.. my mate started a plant at the same time...it was still in a solo cup on the 19th and a fraction of the size.

Sticky.Fingers said:

Did I read that right? Your getting it to that size in 3 weeks on tap water only?

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To clarify, that is in Medium (sphagnum moss/compost bark) that has 14-2-13 in it. A bit misleading to say just water. The first pic you can see the prills on top. If the medium was finer (you can still see the large bark chips) and came pre buffered both dolomite it would be an amazing medium for a few bucks.

It just sits at low 5s pH naturally due to high peat content.