How to take care of Cannabis seedlings?

Seedlings are tiny Cannabis plants that appear above the soil shortly after the seeds germinate and shoot out their first root. For any grower, this moment is exciting, as it means that the seed was healthy and the first step of growing your own weed has been done successfully. 

Since seedling is a young and therefore very sensible plant, it requires some extra attention. Mistakes made during this stage can be extremely harmful to the final result. The tips below will help you to ensure that your tiny plant will certainly make it to become a healthy and robust bush. 

WATERING THE SEEDLINGS

Unlike mature plants, seedlings need to stay in a constantly humid environment to thrive. Therefore, during the first 2 weeks, the soil around the roots and stem must be wet all the time. Just make sure that you don’t water the entire amount of soil in your container. Using a small glass in order to carefully water around the stem will help you not to overdo it. Making a swamp out of the environment is not what we need either, hence too much water is just as harmful. 

As precations during that stage, take your time and measure the acidity of the water, ideally it should be around 6-6.5pH. Lastly, when watering make sure that the water drops do not stay on the plant. They can work as a magnifying glass and cause a burn, that will give a lot of stress to the seedling and stun its growth.

SEEDLINGS AND LIGHT

When seedlings are outdoors no extra actions are needed. That can stay right under the sun and feel just fine. However, for indoor growers, things are a bit more compicated. As lamps for indoor growing typically are very powerful (especially popular LED), which is too overwhelming for the baby Cannabis. There is a risk that growth will be stunned. On the other hand, if the light is placed way too far from the seedling, it will stretch trying to get closer to the source of light. This will result in a long but weak stem, which isn’t great if we aim at having heavy buds that will produce an impressive yield.

 

Overstretched seedling 

 

In order to mitigate these risks, pay close attention to your seedling during the first week. If you have a really powerful lamp, you don’t need to use it right away. Some simple CFL lights will be enough to provide sufficient lighting during the early stage. Later on, you can summon the heavy LED artillery. As for the stem stretching, control the distance between the lights and the container. Once you see that stem is trying to stretch up, reduce the distance by putting something under the container or moving the lights down.

SEEDLINGS AND SOIL

As it was pointed out above, seedlings are much more fragile than mature plants, just like babies, they literally cannot handle the adult amount of anything. It is also applicable to the growing medium. Many growers tend to forget that soil retains a lot of nutrients after using fertilzers. Therefore, putting seedlings into the growing medium that has already been used for some plants naturally increases the risks. 

The soil that was over-treated with fertilizers is called “hot” and can lead to nutrient toxicity for the seeds. Thus, if it is not the first time you are using the soil mix in the container, it will be wise to germinate the seed in a separate tiny container with fresh soil. After 10-14 days the seedling should be carefully transplanted to the bigger container. Be very careful with the roots. The best technique is to put the container on the side and gently rake out the soil with the seedling, grab the seedling together with the soil, and carefully put it into the prepared hole in the soil of the bigger container.