oh mannnnn! this does NOT make me a happy frog. my second seedling has been killed and i believe the culprit is the big-ish chunks of rock and wood chips in my fox farms happy frog soil.
lets take a look.
four days since i first germinated my two viet black seeds and viet black 1 has sprouted above soil. no sign of viet black 3 though, so i go digging like i had with new caledonia 4.
about an inch down the soil where i had last dropped it, i found the carcass of my dead seedling. it’s hard to see in the above photo but i’ve tried to point it out.
here’s the seedling before and after a quick water rinse so that we can get a better look at it.
so what do i think happened?
well, as i was gently digging through the soil, i again noticed that there were some big-ish chunks of rock and wood chunks that i felt would be tough for a seedling to push through. they’re not huge chunks like the size of my thumb or anything, but definitely sizeable enough that a young seedling would likely have trouble, perhaps having to redirect itself to go around the obstacle.
looking at the carcass, you can see an obvious bend where i think the seedling hit something and had to find another route. it couldn’t make it very far though and expired shortly afterwards.
obviously i have added perlite and pumice to the soil in order to increase aeration. but i don’t feel like it was either of these additions that caused this issue. maybe i’ll sift through the soil to isolate the bigger chunks and take some photos so we can better evaluate.
dammit! these poor babies didn’t have to die. it wasn’t grower negligence or poor watering that caused this. has anyone else had this issue with their seedlings in happy frog soil?
i do really like the happy frog soil, as i’ve seen better root growth. but i’ve had two out of nine seedlings die because of this. that’s a horrible average! if i really wanted to keep using this soil, i would likely have to sieve out these larger chunks, which i shouldn’t have to do if i’m buying soil.
edit: i just saw this post in the free seeds free clones thread where @Kasper0909 puts vermiculite right on top of his planted seedlings.
this seems like a great, easy solution. how serendipitous, thanks overgrow!