First time grow!

Hi all! I have been reading pages and pages of information for weeks and finally thought I had enough knowledge to give it a try. I have everything set up in a closet 4' square x 5' tall. I started with 2 bag seeds germinating them between wet (with distilled water) paper towels. The seeds were placed in the paper towels on a plate with a bowl to cover everything and then placed in the closet with a heater keeping the room at 80 degrees. after 46 hours the root tip of the smallest seed was 1/16" so I planted it in a 1 gallon bucket about 1/2" deep in Organic Choice Miracle Grow Potting Soil. I planted the seed last night. I punched a bunch of holes in the bottom of the bucket and filled the first 1/4" with fish tank gravel to help with drainage. Before planting I watered (with distilled water) the soil until it flowed freely from the bottom of the bucket. After planting the seed root tip up but slightly angled to the side, I poured a little water directly over the seed to settle it in place. I will not be turning on the lights until the sprout breaks the surface. Now I am just using a spray bottle to keep the top of the soil moist at all times. The other seed I still have in the paper towel and I hope it germinates as it is a large seed with black tiger stripes. The lighting that I have ready for the sprout after it emerges is 3 27W Daylight CFLs. I will be taking pictures of everything when I can. Any advice or comments are welcome at any time.

Good Luck with your grow.

Jan 27th at 10PM is the day I started germination and today Jan 31st big things are finally happening. My little seedling just broke the surface! I finally turned on 1 of the CFLs directly over it at about 1.5-2 inches above the top of the soil. I don't know if this is too close but I don't think it is, as everything I read says that there is no such thing as too much light and the CFL does not get hot. My large tiger stripe seed finally germinated today so I planted it at 10AM this morning. Before the first one sprouted I just kept misting the surface of the soil ever 5-6 hours until it broke the surface. Now that it has surfaced I have no idea how often to water it lol I will have to do more reading on the site or feel free to comment here if anyone has any ideas. As long as my tiger seed makes it to the surface and opens its little leaves I will have 2 plants growing, so I am thinking about buying at least 2 more 27W CFL bringing my total to 5 27W CFL lights. I turned down the temp in the grow room to 75 today because from what I read that should be a good veg temp. As always feel free to comment or give advice!

Here are some pictures finally.

Here are some pictures of how my gals are doing. I started germination on 1/29 and now 2/2 both plants are 1/2" tall with 4 leaves each. I can't believe how fast things are moving along. I am a little worried about how I have been watering. I have been spraying them every few hours but I am nervous to do anything else. I am going to wait until the top of the soil look quite dry before actually doing a full water. I am going to not use any nutes until flowering because I figure the MG soil that I'm using should have enough slow release nutes in it until then. My next thoughts are how long to veg. I only have them in 1 gallon pots so I want to make sure that they have enough room for the whole flowering process.

I went in to check on my girls this morning and found 2 little tiny fruit flies crawling in the soil. Can someone tell me how to get rid of them before I have thousands lol.

You can pour sand on top of your pots like a top layer.

I really think they come with the MG soil bags because I used some of that exact same stuff and also had gnats immediately. They were there throughout the entire grow

Like a 1/4" or so layer of sand? Will that hurt my little sprouts? They are only 3/4" tall. Will that stop them from eating my roots which I heard they can do? I see 2 of these things and I'm freakin out lol. I am going to buy sand today and one of those sticky fly strips. How fast can this get bad? And how bad is bad lol. This closet is in our bedroom and I doubt my wife is going to enjoy thousands of tiny black flies making a home in it.

So after spending the day at work reading up on the black flies, I places a saucer of beer in the closet and slices of potato on top of the soil. I am also not going to water the sprouts for a few days to let the soil dry out. We have named the little seed Eve and the big tiger striped one Adam lol! Even though Adam sprouted 2 days after Eve he has caught up to her in growth and actually has a thicker stem. They are both about 1" tall right now. I will try to get pics later tonight.

Congrats, lets hope Adam is gay.

LOL

Ya I hope he's gay too! lol Well today they are still looking good, very green and they are stretching less than I thought they would so I hope that means I am keeping the lights close enough. They are both a little over 1" tall and today is the 4th day of veg for Adam and the 5th day of veg for Eve. Adam is slightly tilted to one side so I twisted the pot to make more light hit the opposite side to make him straighten hopefully. I have still not watered them because the soil is still half moist on top. I stopped misting them today because I've been told it really doesnt help. Here are some more pictures! I know my camera sucks lol so no need to tell me. Feel free to comment on how they look, I am curious to see how my first grow stacks up against people who actually know what their doing! I also just noticed that the very edges of Eve's leaves have a slight yellowish tint. I wonder if this could be nute burn? Can someone tell me the signs of under watering because like I said its been a long time since I watered them.

Well I think perhaps that taking pictures every single day may be a bit much lol but I do it anyway. Here they are 6 day old Eve and 5 day old (Gay as hell!) Adam. They are looking very nice except the very tips of Eve's leaves are slightly yellow, just slightly. Adam's 2 big round leaves have a slight outline of purple. If anyone can tell me if either of these color changes are a bad sign that would be great. I read so much about LST today I cant wait to get to that point! The brown crap you see on the Eve's one leaf I removed after taking the pictures, I think it was just a part of the seed shell.

I finally went to a hydro shop and picked up a few things.

FoxFarms
Big Bloom
Tiger Bloom
Grow Big
Open Sesame
Ocean forest soil
Humidity meter
mylar
2 5 gallon pots

I put up the mylar and installed the humidity meter. My room is hanging at 42% humidity and 73 degrees. Here are some new pictures, if anyone sees a problem please let me know.

I just added a plate filled with water to the closet. That brought my humidity up to 48%. I don't know if you can see in the pictures but Eve's leaves are slightly curled on the very tips and just ever so slightly yellow. Any ideas on why this is happening?

10th day of veging. They are looking good but there are a few tiny little brown spots on Eve's leaves. I assume this is from nute burn from the MG soil. I just hope that it does not get worse.

12th day of veg. Eve is looking bigger and better every day while Adam has a thicker stem but makes little head way with his leaves.

Here are some pictures of day 15 of veg. Adam fell over last night so I picked him back up and packed some dirt in around his stem now he is fine. His first pointy leaves he got are now starting to get brown spots just like Eve's did. Eve on the other hand has gotten a lot worse but only on her first 2 pointy leaves. All her new growth looks great to me. I think I will wait a few days and clip her bottom 2 leaves off because they are getting bad. Should I wait or just clip them off now? Also should I clip them right at the main stem or out aways? I have added a piece of cardboard covered in mylar over the lights to reflect the light back down. I also added 2 more 27w 6500k CFL today.

they commin along nice mate

Thanks Cyrus! Here are some pics from 18th day veging. Adam seems to be very unstable. Just the slightest nudge will tip him over for some reason. I added some more soil to my pots and tapped it down around him to keep him more stable.

Here are pics from day 23 of veg. I did some LST just before taking the pictures. Last night I re-potted both plants into a mixture of 75% Fox Farms Ocean Forrest and 25% Vermiculite. I put them in 3 gallon buckets which I plan to finish them in. I am a little nervous about my LST. The plants just looked so much healthier when they were standing up right. I hope this LST thing works and that I did it right.