Okay, I got my first seeds coming up under the grow light. They are approx. 1" tall. How long should I leave them under the light until I move them to natural light? When should I transplant them into something larger? (They are in the Jobes seed starter discs.)
Natural light is always better if it is outside. Natural light is generally inferior if it is from a window in a house. So I would leave them under lights until you can put them outside.
Use common sense as to when to transplant. If they’re starting to root out everywhere or get rootbound or if you sense a heightened risk of them wilting from drying out then it’s time to transplant.
Thanks for the feedback. I guess what I am really trying to say is my seedlings are shooting up (1-2") with their second set of leaves but the stalk is skinny and no supporting. They are falling over. Is this just a case of a “bad seed”, or am I missing something?
How close are your lights to the plants? The closer the light source, the greater the light, the sturdier the seedlings. With old-style fluorescents you can get very close (inches) without burning the plants. Other kinds of lights may be much hotter.
Also, I read of an experiment using fans on tomato seedlings. Seedlings exposed to moving air had much stronger stems. Don’t know if this applies to roses.
Standard flour. grow light approx. 12-18" from plant.
Steve, you should have your fluorescent lights as close as possible to the seedlings after they’ve been potted up for 2 days or so. If you keep the lights that far from the seedlings, you’ll get poor and spindly growth.
Regular fluorescent lights (T8 diameter or T12 if you’re using some old ones) will not get hot enough to burn the seedlings, except maybe at the end of the tube (where the light is weakest anyway). T5 fluorescents run hotter and put out more light, so give them a bit more distance.
Once you get the seedlings to the point of transitioning them to sunlight, the usual sensible precautions apply. You wouldn’t spend the whole day without a shirt in the full sun after being indoors all winter–you’d get terrible sunburn. So would your plants. Ease the plants into sunshine over a few days, letting them have only early morning or late afternoon sunshine (easily done by putting them on the north side of a wall) for 2-3 days, then giving them 3-4 hours of early or late sunshine for 2 days or so, and then transitioning them to full sunshine. I don’t know when it will be safe to start moving them outside, but in the south-of-Dallas area that might be pretty soon. At least, as soon as they’re large enough to resist depredations by sparrows and other birds looking for some salad. My preference would be to keep them indoors until their initial growth has ended and you’ve seen the first bloom, so a bird could eat a whole leaf without killing the plant. If you have other salad-hungry varmints, consider keeping the plants under a net.
Peter
I too, grow seedlings under fluorescents. When seedlings get tall enough I change from a 2" dome to a 7" dome. My lights are all but touching the domes. Also, the location has east sun exposure, which I begin to rotate them around to get bathed by the sun. Monitoring all the time a gradual change for the seeds. Also, I use the feeding schedule by general organics for each stage of the seeds growth. After first bloom, the seedling gets transplanted. Then the seed can focus on root development.
Steve,
Unless you are actually going to have frost, I would get them out and under some filtered sunlight for a few days, up to a week. You will see a difference quite fast in how they will start to look a bit beefier, and then you will know it is time to start moving them into at least 2-4 hrs of morning full sun. When you water them give them some thing to grow on such as a diluted root and vegetative accelerator. Watch out for over exposure to sun and wind for the first week or so. If you think it will frost, cover them, or move them to a protected spot. This time of the yr in Red Oak you need to protect them from excessive rain storms also, esp., if they are growing weakly.
I’ve used a glass table to transition seedlings outdoors - the glass absorbs the UV giving them time to develop new leaves with dense pigments. However, strong sunlight will still damage them so Peter’s advice of a gradual transition is important to follow. I put mine out in the early morning and late afternoon a few times, then leave them out under a table so that the mid-day sun is shadowed then move them under a glass table and then to full sun once they have some new foliage that has developed out of doors.