5 holes each .75" diameter. Drained fine and worked fine for the first five harvests. Recharged each year with the usually suggested amendments. This strange year I’ve dumped the old soil and started over after the first rounds complete failure to sprout, adding even more perlite, vermiculite, and pumice as well as all the other “recharge” stuff. Yet still plants look over watered (droopy leaves that are going yellow at the bottom and over green at the top and have stopped growing. I turn the soil about 4 times a day to bring wet soil to the surface to dry out with a hole saw, outside the imagined root zone, yet they still droop and die. Think both meters are wrong? OK I gave each about a cup of PH balanced 1/2 strength “Grow Big” aerated tap water this time for more calcium etc. No change this AM, I didn’t expect any. I’m resigned and out of this hobby for this season at the least. Folks should know that regardless of how much you know and how long you have tried, this hobby is full of traps that even successful gardeners like me can’t seem to overcome. When the cost of growing your own becomes more expensive than buying it, the fun of the hobby is gone.
And so I sign out. Goodbye, thank you for all your help and good luck! GDub
@Gdub thank you for thinking of me. 
As far as messaging and sending info, I’m only able to communicate through this platform at this time as I’ve had to cull external communications and anything to be received. I’m not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to trusting others so though I appreciate your thinking of me, I must decline. I hope you understand it’s no reflection upon you. 
to kmac03 ok, bye then.
I look forward to seeing your future grows! Have a great rest of the day!
just sent. let me know if problem with too big a file…
nope, you broke it down to manageable sizes…sent a private email back…will continue there so we can leave this site alone and not use it for social purposes…only a little…lol
Not to misdirect, but why doesn’t anyone use or recommend vermiculite? It retains more water than perlite. If your girls are outdoor, I’d recommend vermiculite. Be careful though. I did an ER transplant yesterday to save a girl that was drowning even though the top 3" were bone dry.
I make my soil with a mixture
25% vermiculite, 10-20% perlite, 30% peat, the balance is soil / compost
I used to use coco but too many times the PH fluctuated becasue there is no way to determine if you get washed, ph balanced coco…they always manage to slip in the garbage
I always use vermiculite…especially when soil becomes hydrophobic…
I once upon a time shared a smoking pit with some PhD dirt scientists. never saw perlite, but don’t know or care what they were doing. I know it wasn’t reefer.
If vermiculite is disturbed, it could cause tiny, needle-like asbestos fibers to become airborne . Asbestos in the air can be inhaled and cause lung damage.
You probably don’t want to inhale perlite dust either, but that’s why I’ve stayed away from it. I’ve heard the miners and surrounding towns run into problems as well.
I wear the mask when dealing with either of them…see, some good came out of covid, we all have masks
OK,OK I’VE GOTTEN THE ANSWSER FOR THIS YEAR’S FAILURE AND IT’S CAUSE SHOULD BE OF CONCERN TO ALL GROWERS! To sum it up, I lost 56 germinated seeds this season. Soil would dry out (hydrophilic), root balls sit atop this muddy base and slowly drown. Having exhausted all the usual places to research my problem. I contacted FoxFarm the maker of the “Ocean Forest” I and many use as our base. They graciously sent a call tag for a sample of my errant soil.
The amount of “drying agents” I used: perlite, vermiculite, sand, gravel and cactus/succulent soil had absolutely NO effect regardless of the amounts. ANY amount of the old (6 seasons) soil in the mix was enough to poison it.
So FoxFarm just got back to me; THEY CONFIRM MY SUSPICION THAT THE SOIL WAS TOO DENSE AND HYDROPHILIC. The raking I had done to “sanitize” the soil after the 1st round of failures exacerbated the problem, breaking soil and all the leftover hyphae into dust. The mycorrhizal supplementation leaves quite a bit of hyphae, when broken up act like little sponges.
Periodically fresh potting soil is really the best choice
“We do not recommend reusing FoxFarm soil, and we agree that the recharged soil should be disposed of…” !! MUST DISPOSE OF ALL SOIL ANNUALLY!!! SAY WHAT!!
I also have the advantage of a friend who is a Professor of Soil Sciences. His response:" THE ANSWER; your ‘potting mix’, ‘potting soil’, ‘rootzone media’ etc. is likely dominated with an organic fraction such as sphagnum peat moss (my preferred choice), or some kind of composted forested waste which I avoid as much as possible. With time the organic material in pots decomposes slowly leaving behind finer organic particles which are capable of greater water adsorption due to greater surface area. We use the term hydrophilic primarily to describe compounds that are attracted to water and do not repel it as hydrophobic compounds do. Hydrophobic compounds such as waxes, silicones, and such do not dissolve in water but actually repel it. Solarization can be used to sanitize but not completely sterilize soil, but it takes prescribed lengths of time and temperatures to be successful. Growing successive crops of the same species can of course result in a buildup of rhizoctonia, phytophora etc. root or seedling diseases and along with poorer drainage you are fighting a losing battle. Also, air/sun drying of organic potting soil is notorious for becoming hydrophobic and actually will repel water for a while until it reverts back to being able to adsorb (surface phenomena not absorption). Fungal hyphae are also hydrophobic resulting in water repelling and thus the floating of the hyphae as you described. The clogging of pores is very real and most likely just the finely divided organic and inorganic particles filling the aeration/drainage pores which are critical for aeration of a soil. Bottom line as my wife started expressing to me many years ago that her houseplants ‘needed a soil change’. This is a typical progression of using potting media. natural soil has much less organic matter and through time develops a structure that balances macropore (aeration) to micropore (water adsorption) spaces. Although removing the potting soil and mixing and aerating and making an effort to enhance drainage and aeration characteristics by adding more sand, perlite, or vermiculite is seems like a noble cause the fact of the matter is you are working with a ‘muckier’ organic fraction. Organic materials as they decompose progress from a lighter fluffier material and browner in color to a blacker ore finely divided material which is denser with greater water holding capacity but yet it is muckier. You can look up naturally occurring histosols being from fibric, to hemic to sapric and for example, in Florida, they are referred to as ‘Muck’ soils."
THANK YOU PROFESSOR AND FOXFARM FOR YOUR TIME, STUDY AND RESPONSE. IT WILL COME AS A SHOCK TO MANY GROWERS TO HEAR THAT SOIL RE-CHARGING IS LESS EFFECTIVE THAN RE=TREADING RACE CAR TIRES!! THAT WE MUST BUY NEW SOIL EACH SEASON!!! WOW!! I GROW IN BIG BUCKETS, THAT WILL BE A LOT OF SOIL!!$$$
Sorry for the bad news, but I HAD to share it with you. GDub
So you ended up with clay?
clay
/klā/
noun
- a stiff, sticky fine-grained earth forming an impermeable layer in the soil.
I have thought about you and your problem a lot. Have you ever tried making your own mix.? Rather than amending the FF OF. It sounds like you were close to making your own mix with all the drainage amendments anyway.
What I mean is at the end of the season I dump all my pots into my raised beds and all winter I amend it with char and homemade table scrap compost. Then in the spring before planting I fill all my pots first with the garden mix love. I do not get bagged soil for initial planting unless I get a gift cut randomly mid season or need to top some pots. I have done this for 16years in a row to these particular raised beds and never had anything close to like what you experienced. My native soil is hard glacial deposit clay with occasional palm sized rock. I love hitting the clay bed so I can back mix it into my grow soil. My grow soil is about 4’ deep in most places now.
You could try something like this for science sake. Do you have any other garden beds without the clay affliction? You could try 1 pot at the end of this season and mix it into the garden. Add whatever leaves table scraps and coffee grounds you have randomly around. And a few handfuls of the worst example of your clumping clay old FF OF. Mix it all in. Then see how it is/looks in the spring and then actually grow in it.
Sorry I am having a hard time organizing this (my thoughts) in a sensible way. I cannot help but going back to the fact that clay (small particle) soils are some of the richest for growing once you get past the water clog properties of clay. Everything broken down into small particles makes it easy for plants to pick up what it needs, especially for trace minerals. It seems to me that your problem at some point could be a benefit again as a rich source for minerals and nutrients. And maybe not have to $$ soil for you 5gal buckets.
I really like this concept…I have a REAL HARD TIME trying to wrap my head around “throwing out your soil”. What happens to soil in nature, it doesn’t get tossed. I compost all year long and that stuff is gold. I also buy soil, like a couple yards each year to add…I do not do this anymore…now just my compost as I finally have a decent foundation of about 2-3 feet
If its heavy clay, we add sand (and perlites), if its hydro…we add carbon and larger composts to help with moisture absorption, retention (and vermiculite), minerals, rock phosphates…we add peats, cocoa, other substrate material. If you can grow in clay pebbles, water, rocks…soil should only be an anchor and nutrients made availble manually…Thoughts?