Wow that is quite interesting! All reports I’ve read online always say peat and coco coir have essentially no nutrients. Clearly thats not true, while Im sure the nutrient profile is low, a foot of growth would not be possible with no nutrients in your mix. I’ll hold off on any additional fertilizer until they’re a bit more developed. Unfortunately, quite a few of my seedlings have browned up like the ones in the picture (all over the last day or two) so this little experiment will take a bit more time. I’m glad I restarted extra seeds last week, 2-3 of them have already germinated.
Also forgot to mention, I spoke with an electrical engineer friend of mine. He let me know that while its true any wall timer unit is only rated for 15 amps, if a light were to require 50 amps at any one given moment it would be extremely brief and would not cause a problem with the timer. He assured me that even if somehow the timer couldn’t handle the charge, the worst outcome would be a broken timer (and not a fire luckily). I’ve restarted using the timer and so far so good.
i don’t have your friends degree. So you should trust his advice more than mine.
Still as far as i know, a relay is most sensitive to overloading (plasma arcing) when switching on or off. And this is when the inrush current can go 5+ times over the rating. I would not trust this to be fine.
Especially if the “fix” is an inrush current limiter costing roughly 20$
I don’t have experience with strawberry seedlings in particular, but those look like over-watering to me, which is common when starting seedlings in too-large pots. The planting mix looks a little too water retentive to me… I’d double the perlite % unless strawberries have unique soil needs I’m unaware of.
Also I concur on no nutes that soon. Fertilizer burn could be the problem as well, and seedlings generally don’t need nutrients for a bit.
@oscar Fair enough, this little indoor garden isn’t worth a fire. I’ll look into it. Thanks!
@swincher Well you’re the second person to recommend no nutrients, Ill definitely stop using them for now. Hopefully some of the seedlings will bounce back. Im a bit shocked that this may be the underlying cause as the mix I used was only a 1-1-1. When do you generally start using nutrients?
Depends on the plant species (and like I said, I have no experience with the particular needs of strawberries), but for most things I wait until they are potted up from their seed starting pot, and even then I usually start with just a more nutrient rich potting mix in their second pot (up to 1/3 mature compost) with no other added nutrients. Then the first proper feeding isn’t until they start looking hungry or growth slows down.
But I know some things need more nutrients than others, so that’s not a hard and fast system by any means.
Are you going to put a fan directly on the plants?
I am not sure of strawberries , but indoor plants seem to get leggy with no direct wind on them.
Also I do not know the name off the top of my head , and it was difficult in the past trying to re find it,
but When plants have wind on them they make a hormone that makes them stronger , and thicker .
(I may have read it on BBC news science or something , but it was over 5 years ago I think , and since A teenager always put a fan on indoor plants starting germinating (at least at the beginning I mean.)
Thanks for the tip, yes I do have an oscillating fan blowing on them at all times. So far the seedlings that didn’t die (from excess nutrients likely, as stated above) are quite strong and sturdy!
I use different mixes for different plants. When I don’t just get a commercial mix I go with something like equal parts perlite, coir, and vermiculite, with or without a little bit of compost in the mix depending on the plant. E.g., peppers or bananas get some compost, but not most other stuff. Sometimes I’ll add some sand, but not usually.
To moist of a growing medium, damaging the roots can be another one.
But to much air flow of low humidity can also cause that.
Most plants like some airflow. But it’s rarely necessary to have a fan directly blowing on them.
for me, when starting seeds indoors under a LED light. The fan of the LED light is usually enough airflow. And that’s faced away from the plants.
to much air flow is forced extra evaporation, and especially if the medium/water is nutrient rich, this can damage plants due to exces nutrient uptake.
i usually go for organic nutrient sources (organic as in carbon (manure) based, not necessarily organically certified) Since they are slow release, and usually released by microorganisms and fungus when plants “ask” for them.
i could probably get faster growth with artificial fertilizer or paying more attention to fertilizer. But you can quickly overdo it.
Anyway either way you want to fertilize to compensate for used nutrients. So pay attention to growth. 2 plants of same species in the same pot, Plant A only has 2 smal leaves. Plant B is a few foot tall with side branches, which one needs fertilizer? and which one does not? you can probably figure that out.
Honestly I don’t do my soil mixing quite so scientifically as I should, it’s more like grabbing handfuls of each and mixing them in my wheelbarrow until it seems like a good consistency… It might be closer to 2 parts perlite, 1 part of each of the other two. I use pretty coarse grades of both perlite and vermiculite:
Just wanted to send a quick ~5 week update. All but one of the seedlings survived my probably too early fertilizer attempt. The one that passed away was a yellow wonder and the other yellow wonder seems to be slower growing than the other varieties. Besides that theyre all doing quite well! Both hawaii-4 plants seem to be the most aggressive growers (I included a picture, both of the plants are already sending out runners!) followed by Reine de vallees. Its hard to say anything about bowlenzauber since i started them later than the others but they also seem to be growing pretty quickly!
The only issue some of the plants seem to be having is a slight yellowing of the outer leaves and the leave are curling slightly to form a little concavity. Im thinking potassium or phosphorus deficiency? Im planning on feeding them with a 0.5-0.5-0.5 fertilizer but was hoping to hear everyones thoughts.
I am not as familiar with the fertilizer requirements side of things, but I did want to recommend diatomaceous earth in lieu of perlite/vermiculite for future mixes. I have put it in most of my mixes for trees, hanging baskets etc since I read Drew’s thread about it and I’ve not been disappointed.
I sourced my “optisorb” from grainger supply for around 12 bucks a bag. Based on threads here that is the largest available particle size. Napa floor dry is slightly smaller sized particles with more fines but possibly more readily available if you don’t have a grainger nearby.
I also used it to root my fig cuttings with about 10% coconut coir mixed in, with 100% takes so there are many uses.
Update around 3 months from starting out. Quite a few lessons I’ve learned. The first being that no matter the brand, sterilize your soil for indoor use, even if it says it’s designed for houseplants. Ive had a terrible soil mite problem and while it doesn’t have any effects on the plants, there are probably 100s roaming around in my grow bags. I’ve tried everything to take care of them, neem, horticultural oil, insecticidal soap etc but all have failed. It brings down the numbers for a week or two but then they bounce right back (even if i apply them on a regular basis). Unfortunately, the very regular spray schedule (even after washing the sprays off afterwards) had lead to the demise of or at least greatly halted the growth of just about every plant…that is except the beast below:
Its a hawaii 4 alpine. Its managed to put out about 65 strawberries/flowers/buds over the last few weeks and doesnt look like its slowing down. In addition its managed to throw out about 30 runners (which also produce strawberries on them immediately). So far I’ve only tried one berry which was underripe so the flavor was just okay. I’m looking forward to trying several more over the next few days.
In any case, I’m going let some more of the berries ripen and then swap everything over to hydroponics. I started a hydroponic trial a few weeks ago and I have been very impressed with the results. Between that, easier maintenance and less pests, it seems like the right next move.
Can you post pics of your growing setup? The tent and the lights. Your strawberries look like they have made great progress- I’m surprised you already have fruit.
The mites can be beneficial as they break down soil, but they’re known to really enjoy peat moss which is the primary ingredient in my potting mix. This explains the explosion of the mite population. I had a plastic pot in the grow tent at one point that made it extremely easy to identify the mites and they were crawling all over the pot. While I don’t mind insects, I do not want to move my pots only to find my hand has mites on them (which did happen several times).
I was extremely surprised by the rate of growth as well especially considering how much I put this plant through (all of the leaves were wilted and half dead when I first started my spraying regimen). The tent looks a bit bare right now because I already transferred all of the pineapple crush, Bowlenzauber, yellow wonder and reine de vallees to my hydroponic set up in a separate part of the apartment. Ive been ravenously pulling off runners on the Hawaii 4 and somehow a few days later theres always more to take off. Given how aggressive this plant has been in growth habit, fruit production and runners, I decided to start propagating the runners which you can see in the photo. I’ve been pulling the flowers off of the propagated runners since I want them to have strong root growth prior to being moved into my hydroponic system.
I ended up moving them to another system. They were producing dozens and dozens of flowers every day, hand pollinating them simply took too much time. I broke up the clumps and moved them to a generic aerogarden system but they have continued to put out flowers continuously. It’s been around 4-5 months since they started flowering and they don’t seem to be slowing down but I’ve read that outside strawberry plants require removal of mother plants every ~3 years or the production goes down. I’d imagine since mine continuously produce fruit that would shorten their heavy fruit producing life span but since they are of the clumping variety you can always divide them for “new” strawberry plants.
