Beginner Gardening: Troubleshooting some Growing Seedlings Issues, 1 by Zen_Man

Zen_Man wrote:
Hello Jegtrio,

" Some of the seedlings have a leaf or two that appears very pale. As in almost white tinged. Could this mean the lights are too strong for these fellas? "

Outdoors in the sun has a light level of 5000 foot candles or more. Indoor lighting rarely runs over 1000 foot candles, so your lights are not too strong, unless the bulbs are so close to the seedlings that their heat is too much, and that would brown the leaves. The loss of leaf color is probably a sign of a nutrient deficiency. You might want to add some soluble nutrients to the water you are watering them with. I like the Sun Bulb products for Orchids, because they are urea free.

[HYPERLINK@www.amazon.com]

Urea is a nitrogen source that depends upon microbes in the soil to break it down into usable ammonium and nitrate ions. Potting mixes frequently don't have any or enough of those microbes to make the nitrogen in urea available to plants. So using urea-free nutrients is advisable for indoor growing. This book is one of the few that is up-to-date for indoor gardening.

[HYPERLINK@www.amazon.com]

I started some zinnia seedlings indoors for setting out into outdoors locations, and used that Sun Bulb product on them. My indoor growing medium is Premier Pro-Mix BX.

ZM (Not associated with any product or vendor mentioned or linked)

This message was edited Jun 3, 2020 12:10 PM