Mehlich III - I’ll have to look that up, if it’s something I can do at home with distilled water and a pH down formula that sounds like it’s probably more accurate. Makes sense, too, since we’re shooting for 5.8-6.2 pH on the water as well. I’ll need to start adjusting the water I put in. I doubt it’s all that useful to be getting a RO system, my filtered tap water is already a 0.1 EC.
Definitely is not something I can do with distilled water and pH down. 
“The extract is composed of 0.2 M glacial acetic acid, 0.25 M ammonium nitrate, 0.015 M ammonium fluoride, 0.013 M nitric acid, and 0.001 M ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA).”
Sounds like this is the lab testing we were referring to. I’m not sure I can get those at all, much less keep them readily on hand for soil testing; so I guess at some point I’ll have to do this and perhaps try to get a Bree/Olsen test as well, since apparently there’s some debate about what works best. Some US states don’t use Mehlich because they’ve found it over-extracts P and some of the micronutrients, but there’s also debate over whether that’s a pecularity to their particular soil or not. Fun, fun! Even the professional scientists can’t figure out what’s going on in soil, and I think I’m going to…
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Yes, that was done at Logan Labs. I use Mehlich III for everything but Ca, that I use the AA8.2 (Ammonium Acetate buffered at 8.2 pH). I then recompile my TCEC with that Ca number and adjust accordingly.
I spent years guessing what was in my soil. Now I know and amend accordingly. 
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People have already addressed the reason why your surviving plants look so bad, but the reason you only got two plants to begin with is probably because you left the seeds in paper towels for five days. You wanna get them in soil as soon as the tap root emerges. Did it take five days for the tap roots to emerge? Back when I was a kid, I used to take seeds from my Mexican brick and germinate them in paper towels; usually only took two days for them to be ready to be planted. Five days is a long time; 7-10 days is insanity.
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The way I learned it was to keep them in the paper towels until the first set of true leaves start to emerge, then plant them with the tap roots under the soil; that took 7-10 days. Typically, any that actually germinated in the first place survived (I hadn’t realized to use a heating pad yet). I’m not crazy about it either, because the roots would grow into the paper towels; in fact, either way this was going to be the last time I did it with paper towels at all. I’m planning to use rooting cubes and a prop tray next time, we’ll see how it goes. I’m sure it works putting the seeds into soil after 2 days as well, presumably at that point you’d be burying them entirely and waiting for them to break the soil naturally. 5 days was halfway in-between, with the cotyledons emerging but no true leaves yet, and didn’t work well at all. But yeah, as far as insanity? There’s about a million different ways to grow plants. Just because it’s not your way doesn’t mean it’s insane.
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I’m not criticizing, dude, relax. This is the first time I’m hearing of anybody ever leaving seeds in paper towels for ten days, that’s all. Seems like a hassle.
I plant my seeds directly in the dirt, no paper towels or soaking or anything and they’re usually up in within four or five days. Those rooting cubes work for people, too. Shit, the paper towels do, as well. Like you said, a million different ways, some easier than others.
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Well, not much of an update; the plants still look terrible, but they still don’t look entirely dead yet either, so I guess maybe they’re recovering? Time shall tell.
In the meantime, I cleared up some space for a real grow tent just like a big boy, so I popped a few more seeds (2 Sour Lemon & 2 Foxtail Skunk). They’re tucked away in rooting cubes, seam facing up, in a prop tray that’s on a heating pad @ 80F. Gonna basically ignore them for the better part of a week, then move them to the tent next weekend once it and my new LEDs are here.
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Smaller one is dead and cremated; he was a trooper, but just wasn’t meant to be in the end. I’ve decided he was male anyway, lacking any evidence to the contrary, simply because it makes me feel better. Either way, the final Valley GHash x Cake Fighter and a Foxtail Skunk seedling, under my new GLS Grow 200 LED:
The Valley GHash x Cake Fighter is doing well again, so I figure I’ll give it another two days before again top-feeding a gallon of fertilizer at 3000 PPM and killing it off entirely. Either that, or I’ll just give it some peace and LITFA for another week. The Foxtail Skunk stretched a lot during its last two days in the prop tray, but it’s settled down now that it has some solid light and is just plugging away at growing those sun leaves. The other three seeds are still in their cubes in the prop tray, 100% germ rate but one of the Sour Lemons might not make it. It grew with its taproot in a U-bend and started poking its roots out of the cube before its cotyledons, so I tried to adjust it and managed to cut off part of the taproot with my tweezers. It seems alive but struggling, and I’m not sure it’s managed to grow at all in the last few days. At any rate, I’ll be mixing up two more pots of fresh soil today and probably moving them in over the weekend. We’ll see what the leaves have to say about it.
My tent arrived, but it was used and came missing some pieces so I had to write the company. They’re sending out the new pieces, but probably won’t be here until next weekend. However, I realized I was underestimating the size of the new tent and would certainly be able to fit more than 5 plants in; it’s 6’6"x6’6"x6’8", so I’m letting five more rooting cubes absorb water before I drop more seeds later today. I’m thinking all feminized this time, I’ve been smoking the same old black/grey market Platinum Kush for a year and a half and I want to be sure I can get some new and interesting tastes. I’ll go with 1x @Tonygreen’s Gorilla Bubble bx5s1, 1x Alien Glue Invador (sic - from Mr. M on Strainly, included as a freebie by another seller), and 3x random seeds from Tony Greenhands’ Feminized Mix (25 random fems, mixed & unlabeled - also a freebie). Assuming 100% germ, that should give me 10 plants, at which point the worst-case scenario is that I don’t find any males among the 5 regs and have to grow them all through flower in tight quarters. I’m assuming I’ll find at least one male, at which point I’ll decide whether to put him/them in the closet to wait while the females get to live it up in the tent.
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Valley GHash x Cake Fighter and two Foxtail Skunks under the lights, doing their thing. Tough to see the second Foxtail clearly since it’s still so small, but it grew kinda weird with a curlicue in the stem that’s still working itself out. It’s not actually drooping, though it looks a lot like it. I’ve got another five pots filled and soaking up some water, waiting for the stragglers to join the party.
Sadly, the Sour Lemons will not be joining them… the first one I apparently killed trying to adjust its roots a week ago, and the second one I killed trying to help it get its helmet off. I did, but took its head off too. 
I replaced them with two fresh Durban Freeze reg seeds from Reboman on Strainly - (Durban Poison x pre-98 Bubba) x Freezeland. We’ll see how it goes. This time I won’t be trying to “help” them any more since I’m far too clumsy. Live or die, whatever will be will be.
The babies in their prop tray, cover removed for the photo. The Gorilla Bubble’s the star of the show, 3.5 days since taking it out of the pack and it’s already started on its true leaves. Close behind, but apparently growing a little slower, are the Alien Glue Invador (back left) and whatever random feminized seed I got from Tony Greenhands (back center left. Kind of what I would’ve expected, knowing their sources. 
The other two random fems haven’t made it above the plane of the cube yet, and can’t really tell what’s going on with them without breaking up the cube. I’ll give them up to another week, though hopefully they’ll be up in a few days. The Durban Freeze are both starting to visibly swell under the surface and I expect they’ll be up by tomorrow, which is a good sign - only 2 days since I started them, going about the same rate as the Gorilla Bubble.
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that valley ghash is looking proper now. hope its female.
sucks about sour lemons, but durban freeze sounds cool.
i’ve just recently started to browse strainly and reboman has some good gear and great prices.
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good luck man, onward and upward, we learn as we go!
and all that food stuff…
i’ll keep tuned in!!
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Not sure whether I’ll laugh or cry if it’s male after all this. One of the two, though… I’m much more curious about the Valley GHash and Durban Freeze than the Foxtail Skunk, so my bet is on the Foxtail Skunk both turning out female and the other three male. Either that, or all five male. If I actually get one female of all three, I may just do a jig on the spot!
Strainly’s got some definite shysters and pollen chuckers, and I’m not 100% confident about the genetics of all the stuff I picked up on there… but Reboman seemed to be pretty genuine, and it’s not a far stretch for someone who’s been growing in Cali since the 70s to have the strains he does. I’d be cautious about his autoflower Amnesia though, if you were interested in that. I think it’s more a misunderstanding on his part as far as the genetics, but he’s saying they’re regs when they’re probably fems that he’s been selecting for herm tendencies. Dunno, it’s possible he actually did win the lottery and get a real male from a 10-pack when it’s roughly a 0.03% chance. If you do order from him, don’t expect it to be lightning-fast, but he came through and added in two free packs as freebies because it took him a little longer. I’d call it pretty good service, for an average of $20 a pack.
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i’ve found that the growing gods prefer a burnt offerings every fortnight to ensure female plants.
thanks for the info about strainly and specifically reboman.
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I offer them a burnt cannabis sacrifice every morning, and usually five times a day… hopefully they are very appeased.
Valley GHash x Cake Fighter, two Foxtail Skunks, and a feminized Gorilla Bubble in their swanky new outfit. The replacement parts for the tent arrived, and I put it up this morning; still leaving half the tent empty, but I’m planning to grow these through to flower in the tent so the ones that I keep should be getting a lot bigger. Either that, or I’ll kill them doing something stupid again.
Speaking of doing stupid things, if you’ve been following along you might be wondering what happened to the Alien Glue Invador and the random fem that was showing its head in the prop tray - sadly, the same thing happened to them as the other Valley Ghash x Cake Fighter seeds. I germinated them just fine, and once roots started poking out the bottom of the rooting cube I put them in soil. Turns out there wasn’t any problem with my germination technique in the first place, it was ‘damp-off’ again. Same thing this time, except it’s finally starting to make it through my thick skull - the most vital thing that a fragile seedling needs to survive is water, and the thing that can kill a fragile seedling the quickest is also water. Funny, that…
Anyway, the random fem actually didn’t die to damp-off, it probably died because it couldn’t support its own weight and the stem broke before I even touched it. I tried putting it into soil anyway, hoping that the soil could brace the stem and stabilize it, but it was a lost cause no matter what the soil conditions were. If it weren’t a lost cause, though, it would’ve died from damp-off. The Alien Glue Invador definitely did die from damp-off. 4 of the other 5 pots, which I had ready for seedlings and thus soaked through with water, have been dug up and the soil is laid out to dry for a while.
The Durban Freeze is in front; Reboman’s seeds seem to be kinda kicking Tony Greenhands’ random fems in the teeth here. They were planted two days later, but have grown way faster and seem better able to support themselves even with all that stretch. Still, I’m going to move them into soil and bury most of the stretch away soon - as soon as the soil is a little less waterlogged. I’ll probably put the feminized seeds in as well, since one of them already stretched itself to death. The one at the back left is one of @Donnie’s MWCBxC99 fem/herms. Only dropped that in two days ago, to replace the other fem that died of stretch. It’s certainly a fresh seed, so I expect it’ll be poking its head up in a day or two. I’ll update again once the results of the move to soil are clear… fingers crossed!
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Almost everyone is in their new homes. The Valley GHash x Cake Fighter is loving life again, thanks to a tip from @Nagel420 to avert a magnesium deficiency. The Gorilla Bubble next door is growing her second set of true leaves, having successfully fought through the slightly over-damp conditions I started her off in. The two Foxtail Skunk behind them are plugging along; I’ll be keeping an eye on them for magnesium deficiency, since that and calcium are probably the weak points in my soil mix. I’ve got half a dozen eggshells downstairs, washed out and drying, so I can powder them up in a coffee grinder and mix a small amount into all the pots soon. Probably next week, I’ll need to make myself more cookies soon too.
Front and center of the lineup, we have the remaining Durban Freeze - one damped off, but I’ve figured out the real culprit. It’s not that I’m massively overwatering every time, it’s that the rooting cubes soak up and hold water like a sponge. In the propagation tray, they had better drainage and more open air, but once they get put into the soil they don’t have as much room to breathe. So anyway, one of the Durban Freeze didn’t make it, one did. Next to it is a Spirit Train F2 clone, and in the pots to the left of her are two Blueberry clones, also thanks to @Nagel420. They joined us yesterday night, going into soil right before lights-out, and they don’t look entirely happy about it yet; all of them seem to be leaning rather precariously; they were facing straight up last night. Hopefully they recover, the soil is damp but shouldn’t be overwatered and they were all rooted already. In the past I’ve used rooting cubes for clones as well, so I’m not sure if this is abnormal or not. Is this usually how rooted clones react to soil?
The two random fems from Tony Greenhands are behind the Durban Freeze and Spirit Train, just being seedlings. They seem happy enough. There’s also a fem/herm-prone MWCBxC99 downstairs in the prop tray that I wasn’t too sure about, but it’s sprouted after 5 days under the surface and has started stretching for the light. I’ve actually turned a light on this time, so hopefully it won’t have to stretch quite so hard and won’t end up having trouble supporting itself and needing to go into soil early. I’ll have to mix up another pot for it too, unless one of the rooted clones ends up not making it. I’ll keep clinging to hope until the bitter end, but I have a few days anyway before I’ll need the other pot, so I guess I’ll know for certain by then one way or another.
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keep the soil moist and not overly wet and they will bounce back quickly. Their roots are well developed and were in zero nutes, so now having access to nutes, they will bounce back quickly… moist, not soaked, no dome…
remember the roots have been used to being constantly moist, so try not to let them dry out, but also not overwater 
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Everyone seems fairly happy. I rearranged the pots a little bit so all the fems are on the left and in the middle, and the regs on the right, so I won’t have to think about what’s what in the future. The MWCBxC99 is still downstairs in the prop tray; I’ve finally been doing it right, letting the rooting cube start to dry out before putting a few mL of water in with a syringe. This time, when I move it in to soil, it shouldn’t damp off. Gonna need to make up another pot, eventually.
The Gorilla Bubble’s bounced back from the overwatered conditions I started it out in, and is now several leaves ahead of the two other feminized seeds from Tony Greenhands, started the same day. The Durban Freeze is also ahead of them, though not by quite as much since it was started 2 days later. All the clones have settled in and are showing small signs of growth again. They’ll be up to speed in a few days, probably. I’ll be continuing to practice the art of zen LITFA.
On the Valley GHash x Cake Fighter: is it just me, or does this leaf have 11 fingers?
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I rearranged the tables again for a bit more space in the tent while they’re still small; gonna push to try and get them into the basement before up-potting them, at least most of them. The Valley GHash might need a transplant sooner, since it had that extra month or so of growth… the good times, before I stunted it and killed all its siblings. 
Anyway, being a bit more productive now, I ignored them aside from adding a quart of oxygenated water to the bottom of their reservoirs to wick up through the growstone. The Valley GHash was starting to sag, and I figured it’d been at least a week for the clones and two for all the rest, they could probably use it. Moisture meter showed them all at bone dry, though they looked happy enough. Since it’s in the reservoir, they shouldn’t wick up too much and oversaturate themselves even if I went a little overboard. I also mostly sealed up the tent, still have two holes open to relieve negative pressure and one for an inline fan to vent the hot air out. That being said, it hasn’t gone above 78F and so the fan hasn’t kicked on, might end up taking it out altogether and maybe even put a small heater in there to keep the temp stable at night. The humidifier is finally working now that I’ve mostly sealed it up, and the RH is up to 60% which should put the VPD at a pretty decent 0.8. I left them for the night and they seem to be thrilled with it, so I’ll probably bump the RH up even a little higher to 65%, which should put the VPD in optimal range at 0.6 or so.
Hopefully that grid layout worked, it sure doesn’t look like it in the preview. Anyway, I also included the MWCBxC99 seedling in there, she’ll be moved into a pot today or tomorrow once it’s dried out a bit. I tried to stop him, but my friend saturated the soil in order to pack it down; that’s the technique he’s always used before, and never had trouble with it killing seedlings until I started using the rooting cubes, so now we’re all confused. Probably going to discontinue them after this and move to @JohnnyPotseed’s EWC method, maybe with a few of those little 1"x1" fabric pots for neatness. Even if they won’t degrade in the soil, it shouldn’t be too onerous to sift through and remove them; I’m planning to re-use soil for the 7g pots anyway, since I have all this fertilizer and compost tea already. It’s tougher to burn them to death when they’re a bit older. 
I’ll probably be exploring the BAS soil mix and Coast of Maine’s Stonington blend, which I’ve also heard good things about, for the small pots on my next grow. The Coast of Maine stuff is about 2/3 the price, so I’m curious how the performance measures up.
One last picture: @Tonygreen’s Gorilla Bubble bx5s1, continuing to outshine the competition despite my doing my damnedest to kill her off. Popped the seed the same day as the two feminized randoms from Tony Greenhands, and for all the similarity in the names it’s quite obvious who’s the breeder and who’s the pollen chucker - since it’s twice as developed as the two of them put together. I guess all that torture his beans go through really paid off, since it’s barely even slowed down after everything I put it through. Definitely gonna be cloning this one, and probably a reversal is in the cards for one of the clones. Oh, and all that being said, I’d totally still smoke one of Tony Greenhands’ joints - that man is an artist, just not at breeding.
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Can’t blame the guy for trying to transfer his fame.
Personally if I was him and with his connections I would have started rapping. Ha
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