SOIL Newbie with introduction wondering how to get into the VPD zone

[static]

Greetings all!! First timer here from Canada with a 4x4 tent, 480watt LED (samsung leds), Destiny Grow Systems supersoil system.. I have never grown anything before but am eager to learn


Seedlings are in the tent, a few days old sprouted now, tent has been running several days etc. and I guess I am basically not sure what to do now to tweak the climate conditions from here..

My tent is in a very well ventilated basement and the temperatures are incredibly solid, but cool. Reading around 68F-69F very consistently

The RH seems to be reading around 60%, dropping to under 60 now

In my house, the heat has just come on for the year so I have seen the RH drop slightly since I first began, but nothing drastic.. Unfortunately I'm not sure how much further it's going to go as we come into the driest seasons (Winter and late winter)

I keep reading about aiming to be in these VPD zones but I guess I need a few more educated people to steer me in the right direction. Do I need heat and a humidifier? And then also a dehumidifier for the end of flowering? Any kind of combo units that do all 3? Or any recommendations? Also, information on where I should place them etc. and just what values I am trying to achieve even

I notice a lot of VPD charts I found on Google seem to say contradictory things so I'm super confused

Sorry for the long winded first post, feeling a bit overwhelmed at this moment like I wasn't prepared for the next steps suddenly

I thank you all for your time and help in advance, have a great night, I'm going to hit some dabs

Cheers!!

[Tersky]

Here's the thing about grow tents. Unless you have a sealed system, the air is coming from the room it's in so you would ideally have to increase/decrease the humidity for the room as well. I have a small humidifier for my tent and I honestly dont think it helps that much. Maybe it goes up by a couple percentage points? I found the culprit is the air going into the tent, not the air inside the tent. And to address that would take an expensive setup that im not ready to invest in nor install. I would do a heater if it gets too cold, but be careful cause the plant closest to the heater can get cooked if your not careful. Humidity is something that i struggle with in the sense if it's off it's really hard for me to control. You can invest in a small humidifier for seedlings but using a humidity dome would imo be more effective. Once you get into deep into veg the humidity will increase proportionally with the number of leaves your plant has, so to bring down humidity i defoliate before flower. Main thing to pay attention to is flowering. Dont let it stay too humid or you can get bud rot. One way to get away with slightly higher humidity in flower is to have good air flow inside the tent, meaning fans.

There is a lot to consider when growing, but dont stress too much about it. As long as the humidity is around the recommendations you should be fine.

[homegrown]

if you need to increase humidity and wanna do it for cheap...get a tin foil roasting pan(or something like). fill it half full of water(1"or so), put it in the tent with a small fan blowing across the top of the tray of water. that'll bring the humidity up.. had to use this trick last week when the tent was getting a little dry at 40%RH. Once you hit your desired % just turn the fan off..i just left tray of water in there for rest of week to maintain 50%.

[Farmall]

Up until the mid 1970’s every home in New England with wood stoves had a kettle or pot of water steaming away on top to increase humidity. It does work. As Tersky said...it’s not the tent but the room the tent is in so monitor it as well. Humidity in winter keeps my space at about 50% and the water pan and watering plants in the tent will add 4-6 points usually in my space. When I was doing a hydroponic system, I kept an air stone in a 5 gallon bucket as well and the water evaporated nicely to increase humidity from the additional agitation. That never fell below 58 in the same space.

[static]

Really appreciate the comments and helpful comments, thank you very much

I continue to experience a drop in RH as the weather is cooling off for the fall season here. Although the natural gas furnace has come on here in Western Ontario, as the outside air has completely cooled off for the year it has also gotten drier in the home itself and now is sitting at only 50% .. I'm not sure what to do here .. sounding like the solution may be to get an unfortunately somewhat expensive humidifier designed for a larger sq. foot area and then use it to humidify the entire surrounding area, instead of just inside the tent?

Or if I'm able to keep it at 50%, and because they are only seedlings once veg happens it may raise, am I cool to just stay the course?

I've been stressing over people saying to try and achieve VPD values but my head is spinning lol

Thank you once again for all your help guys

Here are my seedlings as of today. They got stretched from my light being way too high and too dim, I'm really struggling with light intensity and how high to turn my LED light up, and also how high to keep the light.

Dropping the light and added them into the supersoil hopefully should stop the stretch I am hoping

[Tersky]

To be honest i had to look up VPD cause i have never heard that term. To me it's just temp and humidity. Unless you are going to be a commercial grower i wouldnt worry about it, especially in your first grow. In my opinion 50% is adequate. Mine fluctuates between 40% and 70% and is currently 56% in the tent. Yes you can maximize your yield by perfecting humidity and temp, but unless you have that kinda money to get that setup we do what we can with what we have and it is adequate imo. Once you re-pot those in bugger pots and start watering your humidity will go up as well. Dont get me wrong, humidity and temp is important, but for a beginner, as long as your humidity is around 50% you will do fine. Don't expect your first grow to look like others, it may suck in fact. Mine did. But i learned from it and made adjustments and now i do ok. Also, i wouldnt put them in supersoil just yet, unless you have cut it with some neutral medium cause it may be too much for the seedlings. I would just lower or turn up your light. Once you get a couple grows under your belt you will feel more comfortable and wont stress as much.

[stump]

you can get a medium size cool mist humidifier for around 40 bucks. I have one made by holmes and it seems to be effective.

[static]

Thank you so much once again..

RE: the moving into supersoil thing, damn it, I knew that could've been a mistake. I started second guessing my approach of keeping them in the jiffy pellet because I had read some articles saying they were bad to use. And also because my supersoil kit's instructions actually calls for starting the seeds directly in the supersoil itself (the jiffy pellets was a thing I did that contradicted their instrcutions)

Sounding like unless my RH dips below 40% as per the GWE guides which call for 40-60% during most of it, I shouldn't worry at this point too much

cheers man and if you think of any other helpful suggestions at all i am 100% all ears

[Tersky]

It really depends on the supersoil. some are hotter than others. you may be fine, just look for burnt leaf tips from nutrient burn. If the instructions say start in super soil it might be ok. Cannabis nutrients tend to be on the lighter side in regards to nutrients compared to other plants so i would just keep an eye on it. If the seedling looks like it's having trouble you may want to think about re-potting with a diluted soil mix but i would wait and see first. Someone who knows a lot more about soil is az2000 and he may have a different take. What is the name of your super soil?

[az2000]

I appreciate you thinking of me. But, I've never used supersoil. I like very light, airy soils, feeding each watering. My style is what I would call "soiled soilless." I like fast drying, feed each watering, rapid wet/dry cycles. That's more like soilless. But, I like it to have some soil charactristics.

I don't know much about organic growing, supersoil, etc.

[Tersky]

oh my bad az, thought maybe you had! Thanks for replying tho!