SOIL Seedling Concerns

[Gjourney101]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here and new to growing. While I've spent hours reading up on the process, I still have concerns with one of my plants. It's about a week or so into the seedling stage and I've noticed that the inner most part of the new leaves coming in seems to be a brown color. I'm using regular soil (Garden mix, miracle gro) and haven't mixed any nutrients. I water once it's dry about an inch down and put in under a 23W CFL on cloudy days, while using sunlight when possible. I will provide a picture to see the discoloration, but it's somewhat hard to see in the picture. Any suggestions?

[crunchyfrog]

Hi Gjourney101 , I am a new grower as well, a week or so ahead of you also using four 23w CFL for four seedlings. From what I am seeing in the photo, the seedling looks fine to me. How far away is the CFL light? I am targeting ~ 4" away as I got the lights ~2" one day and saw some browning of the fresh new inner leaves the next day, moved back to ~4" and it looks like the leaves/growth has recovered but left with permanent "scars" on two leaves. I am also sure I over watered mine one day and the leaves got droopy, let it dry out and went back slow with the water and they fully recovered. It looks like this weed has a pretty strong will to survive. Good luck.

[Gjourney101]

My CFLs were around 1.5 - 2 inches away, relatively close. I noticed this over the cloudy days when I transition to the CFLs. Never noticed it with natural sunlight so I'm hoping you are correct with the distance of the light. I moved it back to the 4 inch margin to see if it recovers. Thanks again!! Good luck my friend

[crunchyfrog]

I am thinking once they get a couple of weeks out of the ground they can handle closer light but right out of the ground, mine did did not like it that close (~2").