Northern Lights by WEED ME

FarmerRoy My seedlings look healthy, but I am wondering if they are stunted. I see people posting pictures of their seedlings with captions like 'day 10' and their seedlings already have a couple sets of leaves. However, at day 13 my seedlings were about halfway done developing their first set of 3 fingered leaves. I started counting with day 1 being the first day that the plant broke throigh the soil. Is this the standard for day 1? Or do people start counting at a different stage of development?

FarmerRoy I am wondering if my plants are slow to develop, or if they have been focusing their energy on developing their roots - progress I would be excited about, but I cant see. I have raised my lights from 24" to 30" and increased the brightness to 100%. I am only running a 100 watt Spider Farmer SF 1000 in a 27" x 27" x 63" tent, so I figure I can use all the power. I am letting my soil really dry out in order to give the roots more oxygen. I had been watering lightly with a spray bottle each day, and I wonder if I am stunting the growth by keeping the soil moist. I can see the soil cracking and pulling away from the sides of the pot, but I am going to look at the condition of the plant to determine when to water it. I check on my plants a couple times a day, so I believe I will be able to get them water as soon as they need it. **Update** I identified fungus gnats were present in my tent. That explained the slow growth and the twisted and deformed leaves. Apparently gnats are a common problem in organic soil. They lay eggs in the top 2 inches of soil if it is moist. If you let the soil dry out, the larva die off because they need a moist environment to live. I let the soil dry out for 2 days so far. The gnats are all gone, and the plants are enjoying the oxygen. I dug down in the soil near the edge of the pot and the soil is still moist, so I am going to hold off on watering until I see the plants start to droop. The growth seems to have sped up as well. New leaves are forming, and new branches are starting to form at the nodes.

FarmerRoy I cant figure out what is causing the leaves on sprout 2 to curl so drastically. I had fungus gnats appear a week ago so stopped watering the soil because I read that if you let the soil dry out, then the gnat larvae will die and the pest will be gone. It worked, but I think that the larvae may have damaged the roots before the died which caused stunted growth. I have not substantially watered my plants in 3 or 4 days. They look healthy, so I am going to continue to wait until they begin to droop before I water them. Any other reason the leaves would be curled like they are?

FarmerRoy My plants seem to be pretty stunted given their size at 28 days. I know it is still early in their lives, but it is hard to imagine them growing any bigger. They have not changed much at all over 4 weeks. We will see what happens. I moved my clip on fan so that it is now blowing over the plants instead of the light. I have also added a second fan. I hope this will help dry the soil so that I can establish a healthy wet/dry cycle that will allow the plants to thrive. Both plants are Northern Lights, and this strain has a reputation for being resilient and providing high yields. I am expecting the plants to hit a growth spurt in about 9 days, so we will see if that actually happens. I have a Seedsman OG kush autoflower in the back which sprouted Dec 25th, and I have a Critical Purple Kush photoperiod seedling that broke soil Dec 16th. I am planning on vegging that one while my autos grow, and then flipping it to flower when I have harvested all the Autos.