Jump to content
The Corroboree
Sign in to follow this  
Evil Genius

Reducing Humidity

Recommended Posts

Hi Guys! I sometimes grow seedlings in small Food Carry Boxes! As long as they are in the high humidity enviroment, they grow fine! But i still lose some plants when i remove the lid and try to accustom them to the normal Air humidity! As soon as i remove the lid, i spray them a few times a day! Nevertheless some plants die at that stage! How much water is needed to keep them alive as long as they are still accustomed to the conditions they had in the mini greenhouse? I have Problems to find the right balance between over-watering or fungal infections caused by overwatering and drying out! Any Tips or general Guidelines for seedlings would be appeciated! Its the only Problem that i encounter sometimes and i really want to get this handled once and for all! Its really frustrating when you are able to germinate rare seeds and then lose them because of minor crap like this! bye Eg

Edited by Evil Genius

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

just make small holes in the container to get them accustomed to outside airflow...like you would shrooms get a small amount of FAE happening with small holes or even slightly larger ones covered with micro pore tape.....or you could get a fish tank off ebay and get a couple of strip flouro lights above the tank and have a sheet of perspex or glass as a lid and can slid it back and forth to create an opening to let air in gradually....it is very drastic change when seedlings go from under lights in humidic chambers to the outside world it has to be done in baby steps ... :)

try watering from the bottom too it encourages the plants roots to dig down harder for moisture...I stop misting the surface as soon as they sprout and it increases their chances of becoming strong plants by bottom watering.

H.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

yep, exactly like hunab says, baby steps are needed.

and evil you say loosing plants because of minor steps like that, they are not minor steps, hardening out is a major step when is comes to nursery work.

there are many factors at play here and obviously different people have different approaches,

i am a person who sort of likes the new born seedling get used to the real enviroment right away or soon after birth.

but that depends on your seedlings and on your climatic conditions.

for you evil for example, to open a box of let's say psychotria seedlings when your central heating is still on could proof disastrous right away. even if you open a lid more and more over day's or even weeks at the end the planst will suffer because they hate this central heating indoor enviroment. in that case it's best to open the lid just a little bit, and than a bit more, but leave the lid on 80% or more over the heating periode and than in spring/ summer harden out completly.

those seedlings must not get only used to the different humidety, but aswell to the sun.

so by good judgment, you place your boxes so that they get just a bit of morning sun, or for example you know your window and place them so that they get just 2h direct sun. or you shade them behind other plants, i think you get the idea.

if it's cloudy days you can sometimes just place them somewhere where normaly they would recieve even too much light, the clouds block out the sun a bit and like that do the "baby steps" for you. but if the weather suddely turns boody marvelous, you might have to run and relocate them, as otherwise they will get burned.

what happens is that, plants build the leaves according to the enviroment, and to later change the design is pretty impossible for most of them.

in other words, the plant sences a high humidety and than builds stomatas and how they will function according to this condition. i think its something like in a high humidety enviroment, the stomas stay open, worse they are build in a fashion which makes them impossible to close.

so they will stay open even if the humidety drops drasticly, like that the plant looses water, the result you see as a wilted plant!!

now you water the soil, but not so much happens because the lazy plant was happy to get a lot of the water via it's leaves and not the roots, so again "baby steps" are needed for the roots of the plant to grow in a changed way which allowes more water uptake, and this all takes time, so one has to not rush the hardening out process!

if you keep a plant for a long time in a close enviroment like an aquarium, with artficial light, and no airflow, the hardening process becomes harder than when you do it earlier, but i'm sure opinons differ about that.

remeber how we says it's all custom build? well plants are so lazy, if there is no wind and airflow, the stems will be formed out of very soft material, and once you put a plant like that into the open it will get killed very fast as the tissue just gets squashed, hardening out the stems so they are strong and upright, is the slowest of those hardening out processes,

and it;s the worst to keep off from doing, as the plant will grow more and more to become a sissy than a tough specimen.

but if a seedling was born right away into the wind, they will be tough as boots,

so it's a matter of weighting off advanteges vs disadvantages.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also like to hard grow an equal amount of seeds to them ones under lights and molly coddled....hard grow sorts the men out from the boys and you can quickly establish the stronger genetics...under lights etc you can have a false reading of strength IMO....some under lights... some outside in all the harsh elements from day one...just like nature and then some artificial ...work with what you have and use your powers of observation to eliminate making the same mistakes twice.... :wink:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks Hunab and Planthelper! There is some good info in there! Dont get me wrong, hardening up is very important! But when i grow very difficult plants from seed, i am really pissed when i lose some of them after 6-12 months when they are almost mature! I usually dont lose seedlings or mature plants! Only the middle aged ones! And now think that i know why! Planthelper, i think that the seedlings that come freshly out of my growing Containers arent used to use their roots because they never needed to due the high air humidity, right? And thats why they dry up though they have enough water in the soil! bye Eg

Edited by Evil Genius

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
what happens is that, plants build the leaves according to the enviroment, and to later change the design is pretty impossible for most of them.

That is why all the leafs on Salvia cutting sent to my house fall, but the new ones that grow do just fine.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×