The lights have been dimmed down for over a day now to 25%.
Strawberry (the smaller/younger of the two) doesn't look horrible, but bubblegum really isn't looking great. the 1st node leaves are pretty much completely crunchy, and the 2nd nodes are now starting to do the same thing - spot and crunch up. Won't be anything left on her to photosynthesize with in a couple of days, unless she starts growing again.
I'm not using any sort of starters though. I was running into far more, and much earlier failure when I was using rooters or rockwool - they were always just too wet or too dry. I've read a lot of people having success just going straight into the hydroton - so that's what I'm trying now, hoping to eliminate another potential point of problems. I was concerned keeping them in the cloner (with unchilled water) was going to lead to an increase in root rot / ph issues too, so I tried to keep their stay in that as brief as possible (5 days).
I'm just having a hard time waiting when - especially the one - looks as bad as she does. I've lost so much time now on countless failed attempts, that it's just driving me crazy.
Where exactly are you putting these 'starters' and how are you handling that before the transplant into the netpot? At this point, I have this immobile system in a 3x3 tent, and my cloner - and that's it. I don't have a whole lot of extra space for anything else unfortunately.
Give it time you’ll be surprised… without starters they need much more too watering… there is no one way to do things so you need to adjust to your methods. In using no starters you have nothing to retain some moisture so top watering is now a crucial part… they have some stored energy and will put all energy into roots and new growth. Top water as often as you reasonably can as you will not be able to over water them in that setup but you can definitely under water.
just need to limp them across that line and then they will come around.
this is not criticizing in any way shape or form but its common for people to make a lot of drastic changes when they have an issue. My advice is stick out your decisions and make them work by making small adjustments.
As i said previously if you let the plants root longer in a starter they will have much much less difficulty and that may have been the major contributing factor to your issues. But thats not the situation for now so imo lets try to work through this and get you across that line. Dont be discouraged and dont think for a second that a lot of ppl dont have all these problems. Conquering them will make you a much better grower and have a mich better understanding.
IMO you can only become a better grower through learning how to deal with as many issues as possible and gain the understanding as to why they happened.
just because someone has a perfect looking grow does not make them a better grower or more knowledgeable.
Think of it this way… someone who has grown for 20 yrs. the exact same way with the same results has 1 grows experience repeated for 20 yrs.
Someone with 5 years of growing changing grow methods, nutrients, environment etc each grow will have far more knowledge and experience. Even though they may not have the perfect looking grow they are far more likely to have much more knowledge and understanding.
if you not making mistakes or having challenges…. Your not learning