Laravel textarea has white space and not showing value from db?

I have a simple textarea tag like this:

<div class="form-group">
    <label id="main2" for="main" class="col-md-4 control-label">Main</label>
    <div class="col-md-6">
            <textarea id="main" type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Main Text"
            title="More main text"  name="main" value="">
            </textarea>
            @if ($errors->has('main'))
            <span class="help-block">
               <strong></strong>
            </span>
        @endif
    </div>
</div>

However, instead of actual output from db I get white space so if I click on the field it feels like I have pressed tab 3 times. How can that be solved?

via Chebli Mohamed