Seven weeks to achieve this amazing root structure. No, I did not keep it that soaked the whole time – that was just to remove it from the pot to see the root/soil structure. That said…
There were actually a lot of side roots that never found their way out of the Rapid Rooter – really only the tap root made it out. So for those of you who suggested that the Rapid Rooters might be the problem (Tinytuttle, GGW, and Muleskinner), you are probably the winners. No more Rapid Rooters for me. Will give these beans a try again in a few months and see if things go better
In my humble opinion I see that occur when the soil mix is prematurely fertilized, or a naturally hot mix. I prefer not to feed seedlings until they are larger. If it were me I would soil test and check for levels and pH, if the soil is hot I might flush but at this small size they could still damp off.my intuition says to repot in more neutral mix I am using a product called Sunshine natural and organic, when I purchased it the product was represented as no nutrients added. I soil tested it and it still maxed out the npk test. I added peat and perlite then flushed it prior to repot
interesting photos, the soil mix certainly looks fine. It could be the plugs, but then again if something caused it to die quickly it would stop growing roots too.
yep… it’s drowning… staying wet for to long… it will get better as it becomes a better fit for the container… solution would be to use smaller pots and to add lots more perlite… perlite is your friend.
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.
@Grower13@99PerCent . Aeration/drainage is your friend, but does it have to be perlite? I still use it, but I´ve been trying with other materials in my current run, rice hulls (regular and charred) and pumice, and probably will look to experiment with sand (although the weight concerns me). Perlite here is expensive and not readily avaibale, aside from a non-renewable resource and nasty to work with (that dust)-
I’ve got some rice hulls and they look great, I’m not brave enough to replace the perlite yet, I want to try it with some outdoor containers next summer first. You have to wear a dust mask stirring perlite in but once it’s in the mix it doesn’t cause any problems.
sometimes I manually split my beans i fthey take 3 days and no tap root or any signs of crackin, it’s very simple, but if you’re working with expensive genetics coul get hectic and stressful lol. also wouldn’t suggest feeding them any nutrients until the 2 set of leaves working on its 3rd at the earliest.
The “is my soil bad” tester 