This photo is of some mixed Morning Glory seedlings- a new pack of seeds-planted in sterile seed starter mix moistened with distilled water-put on a heating mat until they popped up, then on sunny windowsills since then. Why are they white? I have never had this happen before. So far they appear sturdy enough, just white/yellow.
Hmmm.....have you fed them since they sprouted? How strong is the sun in the window?
Maybe your potting mix was too sterile.Also try collecting rainwater to water your indoor plants.
Maybe I will repot them with some regular potting mix-but all That I read tells me to germinate seeds in sterile mix-? Also, my mentor where I worked years ago told me not to fertilize new seedlings- that it was as dangerous as giving an adult medication to a baby-(I have never forgotten that good advice!)
Since there are several I will only repot half and see what happens-
PS- forget rainwater- we have an annual rainfall of 5-7"-and that is in the form of snow! I just moved here 4 months ago from Florida- whole new learning experience!
Once they have their first set of true leaves most people start giving them a little bit of dilute fertilizer. When they first germinate the cotyledons have enough food to keep them going until the true leaves form, but the cotyledons will die eventually and then you do need to fertilize them. You shouldn't give them full strength fertilizer though...that's where the analogy of the medicine comes in, you wouldn't give a baby adult strength medication, but you wouldn't skip the medicine entirely, you'd give them the baby strength version. Same thing with fertilizer. They may also need more light, light from a window typically isn't strong enough for seedlings so even if that's not what's making them yellow, it'll make them tend to grow really leggy.
JoParrot-Sorry-I didn't notice that you're on the dry side of the mountains.There is a thread in SEED GERMINATION that will help you.They fertilize in baby doses.Go take a look.
I don't think I would water inside with rainwater have you tried that before Nedhudson1? I did that one year and got the green mold on my dirt.
I'm with yotedog looks like too much sun for the seedlings :) That sun coming thru the windows can be strong sometimes.
lol lebug. but i guess rain water would bring all the fungus and mold spores out of the atmosphere.
I had 2 pots do this. One grew out of it (I determined it was too wet, and did the fork trick and now let it get really dry before watering.) The other one is on its last legs. It isn't too much light, though, because I have it on the ender of a fluoresscent tube where it gets fewer lumens.
I am thinking too much water and compacted soil. As if you packed it down too hard when you first sowed. BUT I am learning same as you, so take it with a grain of salt.
Fork Trick: To test my theory, I took an eating fork and poked all kinds of holes in the soil. If the seedlings aren't too thick, I give it a little bitty twist. This will not only loosen the soil, but also get some air down there. Where it's too tight for a fork, I use a coffee stir stick from Starbucks.
Suzy
I don't know what to tell you about your seeds, I just wanted to give you a "hello" neighbor!
LeBug-I have,but I've only got a couple houseplants.I have heard other people recommend using rainwater,though,instead of city water.
Illoquin-nifty trick with the fork.I'll be trying that tomorrow.Thanks.
Is it city water that's bad, or softened city water? As in salt-softened with a water softener.
The fork trick is also useful for pots of seedlings that didn't germinate. Sort of their last chance before being tossed out! Tuinkabouter also does this with Clematis seed; in fact, she says they need it to germinate.
Suzy
I wouldn't say city water is bad, rainwater is just better. Most city water will have higher levels of minerals, plus the chlorine or whatever they use to purify it, and unless you live in an area with high pollution the rainwater will be much purer. Some plants are more sensitive to the stuff in water than others. Honestly though I've grown a lot of plants and since we don't get any rain at all for 6-8 months out of the year they all get a fair amount of city water and I've never had any trouble either with my seedlings or with my plants that I would attribute to the quality of the water I was using.
Maybe I should clarify myself, I put my houseplants out in the rain and they love it but when I collected some and watered my little pots, under lights with rainwater the dirt got the green mold on top of it and over watering is something I try not to do, I keep my plants on the dry side most of the time, because of the fungus and nats, sometimes I slip up and they get a little more water than they should and I do water from the bottom :) Now when my seedlings go outside they get rained on and I water them with what I have saved from the rain so I wonder what the difference is must be the lights and being inside? Different atmosphere all together?
ecrane3, do you grow plants in the house under lights and have you ever tried to use rainwater for them?
I start seedlings in the house under lights, but my houseplants live next to windows (honestly I don't have a lot of houseplants...1 schefflera and 2 African violets, everything else is outdoors). And no, I don't use rainwater--with so few houseplants and only getting rain a few months out of the year I didn't figure it was worth the effort since they're going to be stuck with city water the majority of the year anyway.
I ONLY use rainwater on my houseplants! Had a bad experience many years ago that led to this behavior... We designed and built our house to capture the best light to grow indoor plants, and couldn't wait to move in and get started. When we first moved in, we spent more money than we could afford stocking the place with plants--all kinds. We were in heaven for a couple of months, but then all plants started declining. We weren't overwatering or underwatering, weren't over-fertilizing or starving them, light/temp conditions were "ideal", but the plants dwindled. So we did a stupid thing...we replaced all the declining plants with new healthier ones. A year later we were facing the same problem. It finally dawned on me that the ONLY reasonable thing it could be was the water we were using (tapwater, drawn from a 500' deep aquifer---which we assumed was totally "pure"). Bought a couple of 75 gal. barrels and hooked them to my downspouts. We've still got the third generation of "replacements" growing today, 15 years later. Just for S&G, a few years ago I had our tapwater tested---came back 7x the minimal acceptable salt content level (Clemson Univ.) for irrigation. Bingo!
Color me me a big fan of rainwater! I also use it to "flush" my potted plants twice a year to get rid of accumulated fertilizer salts...
I am a big fan of rainwater, but I am too lazy to collect it to use it. The rainbarrels sound wonderful and I saw some installed at DGer Dryad's place. I thought they looked nice, and I think Mr. Clean would be okay with it, even chopping the downspouts off, but I have to have a clear plan of what to do with the extra water. We get over 40 inches of rain here a year, usually 50 inches, and I live in a house with a BIG footprint. The roof is very large and a lot of rain goes through those gutters & downspouts. A single rainstorm would fill the barrel, I think, so then what? If we get that much rain, I don't need to water the garden, and my little houseplants can only take so much water.
Jo, sorry for getting off topic. 5-7" a year -- I can't imagine such a thing, and I bet coming from Florida, where at leats in the old days it rained every afternoon, you must be in shock....can you have a flower garden there? I am tryihg to think of what I have that could exist on so little rain -- heucheras and wild violets? Probably not even those! What do you grow?
Suzy
Suzy
Suzy-Yes, it was a shock when I moved here- dry hair & itchy skin from the low humidity & desert winds that blow more often than not! Every yard here has underground irrigation which is new to me- I think I can grow whatever I want as long as I water. At least the soil seems good,although very rocky. In Florida I had sand which was very frustrating.
Here is a photo of my Morning Glory babies-since repotting they have started greening up. I think I will have enough to climb one trellis, anyway!
So there is water there, just not falling form the sky? Or what do they irrigate with? Mountain stream runoff from 100s of miles away? I just never figured it out, this 5 and 6 inches of rain a year, I mean. I learned in 5th grade that there is a desert in Washington State...I only remembered it because it was so weird one side wet and gloomy, the other side a windy desert.
LoL, Oh, yeah, you have enough to climb one trellis. ROTFL!!! They look better, don't they? I think this is right: You are supposed ot pinch those MGs back after the 7th leaf node, I think...toddle over to the MG thread and ask the experts in case I have it wrong.
Did you determine the cause of the yellowing?
Suzy
This message was edited Mar 31, 2008 6:37 PM
Nope- no clue as to the yellowing-
I think the irrigation water is from all the snow that falls up in the mountains north of here- since I'm a newbie I am just learning!But I think I will just hook up hoses to the irrigation spigot and hand water everything- I like to check my babies anyway, and talk to them! Maybe I'm just too old to try figuring out automatic watering-some things are just better done the old fashioned way!
This is a bit off topic, but I am finding a small annoyance- When reading a thread, I find that the newer posts are way down at the very bottom of the lists. Is there any option to arrange them so the most recent are at the top and eliminate the scrolling down to read? (I do see a place that says "skip to new") I just think it would be a lot more user friendly that way- Have a great day, everyone- it is a cold but sunny morning here in WA
That's exactly what skip to new does--it takes you to the first post that you haven't read yet. (OK, it doesn't really know if you've read it or not...but it'll take you to the first post that's been made since the last time you visited the page, obviously it doesn't really know if you read all the posts the last time you were there!)
The idea of arranging the threads in reverse chronological order has been proposed before, but it makes it very hard when you're reading a thread for the first time, or if there are 10 new posts since you were last here, it's very annoying trying to read things from the bottom up. That's why the skip to new is there, that way people can easily read the threads in order, but if you want to skip over posts you've already read you can so everyone wins.
Good point, Illoquinn! My roof also has a big foot print, and 2/10ths of an inch of rain can fill up all four 75 gal. barrels in a hurry. But they have overflow pipes that lets you direct the excess/overflow, so it MAY not be a problem, as long as you can redirect the excess. Lots of ways to do this... But color me totally sold on the benefits of rainwater...
Jo Parrot-that "SKIP TO NEW" takes you only as far down the thread as you have been before.Pretty neat.You can go right to where you left off.Really helps when you get up around 100 posts.
