To answer this important question, first you need to see the seedlings.
It's the 2 largest Northern Lights female seedlings which are showing signs of nutrient issues. As many experienced gardeners know, symptoms like this can be caused by nutrient burn (too many nutrients), or nutrient deficiencies.
In this case, I'm not sure which it is. (Feel free to view the other photos and leave a comment!) So what I'm going to do is find some very gentle nutrients and water my thirsty plants with them.
Poop.
I spotted some clumps of poo on the front lawn yesterday, so I went out this afternoon (in the Vancouver drizzle) to fill up a plate:
These feces were left by some animals without owners to clean up after them - worms! "Worm castings" are a well-known and proven source of gentle (and odorless!) organic plant nutrition. When in doubt, castings are a safe choice.
My seedlings are still tiny. If they do need some nutrients, they don't need much! The 'soil' they're growing in is a very plain organic base made mostly of tiny wood chips and moss. I haven't been able to upgrade to coconut coir yet!
Watery poop.
Instead of just mulching the castings into the soil, I decided to make a weak 'tea' out of it. First, I mixed in some water until it blended into a slurry.
At this point you should be congratulated - you're reading about (and looking at photos of) watery poop. Thanks in advance for your upvote.
As you can see, there's a lot of organic matter in there. Since I'm mostly just after the nutrients, and definitely don't want any insect eggs or anything else weird getting in, I figured I should remove most of the extra matter.
Straining watery poop.
(Congratulations to you once again, you've reached a new low/high!) Here's my straining apparatus setup:
The sieve got out more stuff than I thought it would. Bit of grass (not actually part of the poop), grains of sand (boulders to a worm... they have pretty big mouths and bums), and some stringy fibers. Into the garbage.
The second strainer is actually meant for catching kidney stones as they pass, but don't worry, it's sterile. (Still.... what kind of blog is this, anyway?!) It catches almost anything bigger than a fleck of silt.
Even after flushing it with fresh water a few times, there was quite a bit of material. Half of it was inorganic - little grains of sand. The other half was a brownish fibrous mass, which seemed to have reddish and greenish components, and worm mucus. Into the garbage.
Here's some fine organic material I strained out:
I almost included this silt, but decided against it in the end. Into the garbage.
"Worm Juice"
What I have left was a jug of gray-brown water with light amounts of balanced nutrients and trace minerals. It also contains healthy Nitrogen-fixing bacteria plants need to be able to absorb Nitrogen gas from the air, forming ammonia (fertilizer).
Since the plants were due for a drink anyway, it was a good time for this extremely light nutrient tea.
First closeup is the main Steem OG seedling:
Nothing going on with the tips. Since they get the same soil/water/light/air/temp, and the Steem OG isn't affected, I'm thinking genetic differences are responsible. Perhaps we'll find out, going forward. It's like an experiment.
As you can see, the seedling is already printing out another node of leaves, which will be 3-fingered. The current set of leaves, which are 1-fingered, are finished printing and are now currently being raised up off the cotyledons (false leaves) below it.
I love how plants do their thing, it's so cool!
There's the shorter Northern Lights girl, with the faded tips. That came on just over the past 48 hours. These seedlings sprouted a week ago and have only had water until tonight.
They are getting 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness.
There's "legs"! She may look lanky but with the increased light I've been giving them since she first shot up, there has been little vertical growth. Just strengthening in the stem, and broadening of the leaves.
Some sad news, the curled up little Steem OG seedling didn't make it. :(
And the gimpy NL seedling continues to not know what to do next, but keeps trying anyway:
The roots seem healthy and the stem is strong, so I think she'll eventually get a proper set of leaves out, and resume the mission. We'll see!
And some good news! A struggling sprout, a few days behind the rest, has broken ground today! The future is bright.
I hope you enjoyed all the shit I wrote about today.
DRutter
