Ahhh, the germination stage. Can be nerve-racking and fun at the same time. Nobody likes to wait, but know that you’re putting your seeds in good hands as the BLOOM regulates the various environmental conditions needed for proper and swifter germination. The key factors that allow a seed to germinate are your water to air ratio, and temperature. BLOOM provides perfect temperature and water/air ratio (our peat pods are pretty special). The #1 other influencer is seed freshness/viability, so always make sure you are storing any unplanted seeds in a cool and dry location to maintain their viability.

We recommend planting 3-5 seeds into your Grow Pod to start as this will increase the likelihood of germination. Know that for most varieties of plants, you will want to trim the weakest links and leave the strongest stem to continue to grow.

Also, keep in mind that the number of days to germination will vary depending on the type of seed, so it is important to not compare apples to oranges. Here are some average times to germination for several types of plants:

Tomato – 5-10 days
Cucumber – 5-7 days
Pepper – 7-21 days
Eggplant – 7-14 days
Strawberry – 14-28 days
Lettuce – 2-10 days
Basil – 7-10 days
Cilantro – 7-10 days
Cabbage – 5-8 days

The moral of the story is to trust your BLOOM and do some research on the most ideal temperature for your little seedlings. You can customize temperature and light on/off time in your grow recipe and we’re more than happy to assist you in creating the perfect recipe that your plant will need to germinate and thrive. Post any recipe questions or requests for help in our “Recipe Discussion and Requests” category. Happy growing!

Thinning and Pruning are extremely important for all plants, so let's talk about these tasks and how to do them. Thinning is the process of clipping out the weakest seedling and leaving the strongest behind to grow strong and tall. It might seem counterintuitive to clip out all but one seedling, but trust us. This will allow your plant to receive the nutrients it needs and your plant will still take over the Bloom and eventually produce lots of fruit!

How to Thin your New Seedlings:
When your plant is about 1-2 inches tall, gently clip away the weaker seedlings from the bottom, and leave the strongest one to grow.

Pruning Young Plants:
When your flowering plants have about 3-5 nodes on the main stem, you'll want to "Top" the plant. Topping will control the size of the plant as well as create more main stems that eventually produce larger and higher quality fruit. This will encourage the plant to grow outwards vs. only up.

How To Top:
Trace the main stem up to the 4th, 5th, or 6th node (depends on plant, use your best judgement or reply with a photo if you need help). Clip the main stem slightly above the node.

This is how it would look after topping if done correctly:

Now your plant will grow two more branches instead of growing only upwards from the main stem. Every time you top, you're turning that one branch into two.

TIP: Be sure to do your last topping BEFORE the flower cycle begins. Make sure the branches are mature and well-established.

Pruning Mature Plants
You'll want to prune throughout the entire life of the plant. Don't be afraid to cut off leaves or weak branches as this will send the nutrients to the stronger parts of the plant and increase light penetration.

If you need help deciding when and how to top or prune, post detailed photos of your plants in the "Show Your Grow" category or "Questions and Answers", and we'll do our best to help!

Post your topping and pruning pictures below to help others out!

Welcome @DJ and great questions!

The BLOOM uses a "Flood and Drain" system. This means that the system AI will regularly flood the grow tray with the nutrient-rich water and then drain it so that your roots can intake the optimal level of nutrients set by your grow recipe and the water can remain oxygenated.

In regards to the "two vented pumps", I believe you are asking about the irrigation pump. This pump runs the nutrient-rich water up into the grow tray and then back down into the Nutrient Reservoir.

A mixing pump is constantly mixing the nutrient and water solution to maintain the proper nutrient PPM (parts per million) and pH levels that are pre-determined by your grow recipe.

When transplanting a rooted plant into your BLOOM, be sure to inspect it thoroughly for unwanted mold, mildew or pests. It is very important to spot and eliminate potential threats to your young plant otherwise they can compromise the whole growth cycle. If there is a pre-developed issue that is allowed to flourish unseen, it will be difficult to combat and in the long run, very challenging to clean the system of the now established organism.

What to look for and where:

When a rooted plant that is ready to be transplanted into your BLOOM, inspect it from top to bottom.

Starting with the leaves to stem:
Make sure there is no white powdery looking mildew, webs or larva on top and UNDER the leaves. Pay careful attention to the bottom side of the leaves near the veins. Dormant pests may have laid their eggs there waiting for the proper environment to hatch and colonize. These eggs are surprisingly small and hard to see. Look for any spider-like webbing or mildew on the tops of the leaves and in between the leaves and stem.

Roots:
Transplanting hydroponically grown plants is beneficial to reduce the amount of vegetation time between flower cycles. Make sure the roots look healthy, strong, and white in color. Beware of root rot, which will look brown and slimy.

If you find any of these do not put the plant in the BLOOM. Quarantine it with IPM (integrated pest management) strategies or start over if it is obviously infested.

Photo of spider mites on tomato plant, just so you know what you're up against!

Hey all - Just here to add a quick note for when you're draining your main Nutrient Reservoir. The process is very easy and the Control Panel will walk you through the steps. Be sure to have a bucket ready for the process.

Additionally, do not worry if you hear a loud noise coming from your pump when your reservoir has about 2 inches of water left to drain. This noise is perfectly normal and is just the sound of the pump doing its' job.

Here's a video where you can hear what is to be expected.

https://youtu.be/2NYqcw6ejSg

You should drain and refill your main Nutrient Reservoir every 2 weeks (your Stage Change alerts will remind you to do so). This will help maintain the proper nutrient balance that your plants will want and need for optimal growth.

This may seem obvious to some, but with plants growing so rapidly in later stages it can be easy to forget to check your water level in your Nutrient Reservoir. The bigger the plant, the more water it will need so water level will begin to lower in your reservoir at a faster rate. Yes, BLOOM will alert you when your water level is low, BUT lower water levels (even showing medium) will create a higher ratio of nutrients in your reservoir, causing your PPM to be over the range.

If PPM is just a few hundred points over target, your plant will still be OK. A quick solution to seeing your PPM above range is to add water to the nutrient reservoir and let the system dose it back within range.

Did you know that you can find out just about anything you need to know from the Control Panel? Don't be afraid to tap around to learn more about your grow recipe targets, system and component details, and more!

Hey Everyone!

We just want to stress the importance of pruning as much as you can when growing inside of the BLOOM. There are several reasons why it is so important:

1. Space is limited in the BLOOM - this is the most obvious reason, but you want to prune to avoid having your plants grow into the lights. The top lights are 250 watts and the side lights are each 25 watts. This generates a lot of heat and the lights can burn your plants if they get too close.

2. All plants transpire in order to move water throughout their stalks to the branches and leaves. This means that as the plant is larger, you won't need to fill the humidifier as much because the plant is busy converting the water it takes up to a gas. If you start to see a "steam room" effect inside the BLOOM, you should consider how large your plant is and prune wherever possible.

3. Pruning encourages new growth in the plants and because the BLOOM provides the perfect environment, you WILL see faster and more frequent growth. It may feel "wrong" to prune early on, but you will quickly notice that the plants will bounce back and be stronger than ever!

Post to the forum if you have any questions about when/where/why to prune your specific plant. Yes, there is a lot of information out there to help you, but be aware that a lot of the tips on the internet are geared towards outside growing vs. the controlled environment of the BLOOM. Our BLOOM experts and community members are always happy to help!

Welcome to the world, Tom! Keep the updates coming @pg13!

@BG1164 We're happy you're here and we couldn't agree more. The BLOOM is a beauty and will look even better when those Black Beauty Eggplants start growing! Keep us all updated on your growth.

Welcome aboard, @smithwastaken ! Take a look around our forums here and don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions.

Hello BLOOMers!

As I'm sure many of you have noticed, we are seeing some data issues between our BLOOMs and the cloud. This can impact recipe upload and download and limit what you can see from the APP, but should not impact the day to day running of your BLOOM garden.

Most of our BLOOM cloud development had been done with trusted long term partners in the Ukraine, Belarus and other countries now impacted by the crisis in the Ukraine. For security reasons, we ended relationships with contractors in those areas and are working hard to build expertise in safer zones. BLOOM is complex however, and so far we have not been able to move fast enough to keep all the wheels on all the time. We sincerely believe we will have this resolved soon, and thank you for your patience.

We are sorry for any frustration this downtime causes. We wanted to make sure you knew that we are aware of the issue, and let you know that we are working to get these issues resolved as soon as possible. If you have any other questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Hi, @pdxbloom ... We are seeing some users having issues with connectivity from the Bloom app and recipe connectivity. We are working on this but do not have an ETR at the moment, with some messaging we hope to send out to users here shortly.

@pdxbloom said in Recipe downloads and App Internet connectivity:

I can no longer connect to my Bloom from the IOS app. After logging in, I get the internet connection lost message in red at the top of the screen.
Also on the forum and the Bloom panel, I am unable to download recipes from the forum. repetitive loop back to the login screen despite being logged into the forum.
Anyone else having similar issues?

WOW! This is fantastic!

Thanks for sharing such a lovely picture of your sunflowers! They are so pretty!

Hi BLOOMers!

We're learning lots, thanks to your help, and some urgent new firmware updates will be coming soon for your device. To upload them successfully, we need to make sure that you have updated your software to the latest version to prevent errors from occuring.

To Check What Software You Have:

• Press on the Home icon
• Press on My Account
• Press on Status
• In the center block of items, scroll down until you see "FW/SW Version". The second version number should read v.1.1.93.
  • If it shows v1.1.93, you do not need to do anything else.
  • If it does not show v.1.1.93, you need to update your software. Follow the instructions below.

To Update Your Software:

• Press on the Home icon
• Press on Wi-Fi
• On the left, third button down should say Software Update. Press that and follow the prompts.
• Once it is updated and takes you back to the main screen, Press on the Home icon
• Press on My Account
• Press on Status
• In the center block of items, scroll down until you see "FW/SW Version". Confirm that the second version number reads v.1.1.93.

Please let us know if there is anything further we can do to help by commenting below OR email us at customerservice AT bloomgrows.com

OmaCoder, I know we connected with you directly, but wanted to share the solution here for anyone else that may have a similar issue.

We advised that at the OmaCoder's discretion, they'd need to determine if deleting a multiple set of rows was faster/better than recreating the recipe from scratch.

Hey @OmaCoder !

@Juniper and @narganbright are helping out now so you may see their names crop up from time to time as well as our own We're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Another first time grow from the BLOOM Lab. Sunflowers! This is a dwarf variety so we thought we would utilize the 6 pod grow deck accessory. The Sunflower recipe has been uploaded onto the Forum if anyone else wants to try it out. We planted 2 seeds in each pod (which is what we recommend) and all 12 germinated after only a few days. We have decided to keep the back three pods with both plants growing to see how it turns out!

Our Brussel Sprout has shot up quite a bit over the past few weeks! We are hoping to start seeing some baby Brussels very soon. Right now we are on Stage 6 which is an Aggressive Veg stage, it still has a target PPM of 1000 which seems to be plenty. The BLOOM has had no issues keeping the cabinet temperature right at 65 degrees which is perfect for this cool-weather crop.

Yellow leaves are bound to happen (not all leaves will receive the proper amount of space or light) just make sure to prune them off so your plant can focus more energy elsewhere.

It has been a few weeks and our Brussel Sprout is really taking shape! The leaves are getting much bigger and the stalk is starting to emerge.

One side did not love the door being there so we ended up chopping those leaves off, but other than that this has been a very simple grow!