Thanks for the input… I don’t think I’ll ever have a solid answer for why those seedlings did so poorly, but everything I grew this past summer did poorly 
The “is my soil bad” tester up here now 4 weeks into flower over here, and doing fairly well… could always do better 
I still have 2 Apollo 13 beans in my soon-to-grow seed stash… maybe I’ll pop one or both for the new year and see if I can make functional adults out of them.