sorry to see that, I agree they are upset about your soil mix. or possibly overwatered, or rootbound, or lack of oxygen to the roots, or worst case scenario root rot. I can just tell from that appearance that the problem is with the root system.
kinda reminds me of my sad little kuato plant from like 7 years ago:
Yeah, what I think is interesting is the ones in the solo cups actually look the best. I have no idea what that’s about, because it’s not like it’s all the same stuff in those cups, but yeah, pretty weird.
I don’t think it’s overwatering, but it could be underwatering. Those solo cups don’t drain as quickly as the “official gardening pots” do; those little pots are always lighter than the cups when I water. Maybe I’ll give them a little more than I have been. I did finally water with a compost tea two days ago, hopefully that’ll get them going.
That’s a funny name. When I read it, I thought,”Kuato. Like from Total Recall?” Then I scrolled down haha.
I find the same to be true. Idk why that is. Maybe it’s the shape of the cup. Maybe it’s the size of the holes we poke in them. Maybe it’s Maybelline
Edit: now that I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking it’s because the cups have less surface area on top so the moisture is held in better towards the middle.
perched water table. the limbo land between capillary action and gravity. I’ve found after watering solos, waiting a bit then tipping the cup lowers the table and releases a lot of that.
Haha… I was thinking it’s the size of the holes in the cup. And the shape, too. And the surface area, just like you said haha. I cut those cups down a little bit so that they’re almost the same height as the starter pot things, so I guess there’s even less surface area than had I used a whole solo. Moving forward, though, I think I may just use cups exclusively and retire the little starter pots.
Still, that’s why I mulch everything, even at this stage of life. I’ve never had to water every day before, no matter how young or old the plants are, but I did water two days in a row on Tuesday and Wednesday. Everything looked a lot better yesterday, so I transplanted into the half-gallons last night. Some plants had enough roots to make it easy, some didn’t, but whatever haha. It’s done.
I don’t know what any of this means haha. Are you talking about a sorta “hydrophobic” thing going on?
I exclusively use solos also for the first few weeks as well. Very easy to transplant out of solos
What’s odd is that I usually have issues with the solos and the starter pots are the ones that work the best, better root development etc.
Who the fuck knows what happened this time? Growin’ weed is weird…. haha.
Everyone’s grow is different man idk, I water so little that it forces the roots to search for water and stretch out. I’m talking like 1-2 light waterings a week during the seedling stage. It works for me personally lol
I’m definitely not a professional tho that’s for sure so I could be bending myself over a barrel but it seems to work really well when I pop them outta the cups to transplant
Fancy science talk, lol! Dry peat is hydrophobic. Repels water until it is soaked. After it’s damp it absorbs water, and tries to keep it evenly distributed throughout the pot. Capillary action sucks it up, gravity sucks it down. Where one ends and the other begins, there can be a pocket of unsuckable water. If there’s too much, the plant can get overwatered.
Tipping the pot makes the pocket spread out, more susceptible to gravity, so more drains out of the bottom holes… at least that’s the way it works in my simple mind, lol! Coco doesn’t really care 
What size pots & modified cups are those and what is the soil mix inside? They look very shallow to me. I saw perched water table mentioned and shallow containers are going to have a larger percent of pore space occupied compared to the same volume of soil in a taller / narrow pot.
Is this re-used / re-amended soil or a new batch you made up?
I get that. It makes sense, anyway. I just like to keep things as consistent as possible and not have to “force” the plants to do anything. Just keep it la-di-dah haha. It usually works.
Right, which is why I water every-other day no matter what stage of life the plants are in. Something’s going on with my soil, though. I think. I dunno.
Yeah, I mean, they’re just little starter pot things, been using them for ten years, never had any trouble with them. They’re good for thirty days, usually roots develop fine and then I can transplant after a month.
Recycled soil, yeah, same soil I’ve been using for the last few years. I have a very foggy memory of me pouring a bunch of compost and an equal amount of pumice into the bins, I think it was maybe three months ago. Or maybe six months ago.
You know how schmarm was doing that? How he’d re-amend and also add more compost and perlite to his soil? I think I did that a while back, but I may have just thought about doing what he does and not actually done it. I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure I did that. In any event, I was kind of sifting through the soil when I was filling up the half-gallons yesterday and it did seem like maybe the soil-to-pumice ratio was a little off, maybe not enough aeration, so zephyr was probably on to something there.
I dunno… haha. We’ll see what happens now that they’re in the half-gallons.