So, I tried to improvise a soil mixture based on various recipes I read on the internet, cobbling things together because I don't have access to a lot of gardening supplies. This is what I ended up with:
5 parts topsoil
3 parts perlite
1 part vermiculite
2 tbs dolomite lime per gallon of mix
2 tbs bone meal per gallon of mix
1 tbs blood meal per gallon of mix
I ended up with 7 non-sprouting seeds (it still hasn't been a week, but from one I dug out to examine it looked like the tap root got barely out and it just stopped). Now, there are any number of reasons the seeds didn't work, I could have messed up watering, the blood meal could have been too much (I didn't see till I had mixed it that it was not good to use to germ seeds), the soil could not have been aerated enough, could have been too aerated. . . But my main question here is about the soil mix.
Anyway, so I'm going to try again with a new soil mix. Still have plenty of all the ingredients I listed above, and I also have access to peat moss (though I'd like to avoid buying another huge bag of stuff if possible, it's hard to fit all this stuff in an apartment). There's pretty much no other ingredients available. I looked everywhere for worm castings, but only found one person at one nursery who had even heard of them, and she had no idea where I could find some. No kelp meal anywhere, no hydro store within 2 and a half hours, no potting soil that isn't filled to the brim with nutes, only found one place that had non-Miracle Gro perlite. I can order it all off the internet of course, but I'm a poor student and shipping is expensive.
I need some advise about what I should use and in what ratio. I'm probably going to leave out the blood and bone meal because I have other nutes. I'll starting from seed as well, I imagine that can make a difference.
tl;dr: I had 0 sprouts from 7 seeds at least a few I know to be viable (one opened while soaking, and one I dug out to get a look at). I have very limited available ingredients, what should I use for a soil mix?
5 parts topsoil
3 parts perlite
1 part vermiculite
2 tbs dolomite lime per gallon of mix
2 tbs bone meal per gallon of mix
1 tbs blood meal per gallon of mix
I ended up with 7 non-sprouting seeds (it still hasn't been a week, but from one I dug out to examine it looked like the tap root got barely out and it just stopped). Now, there are any number of reasons the seeds didn't work, I could have messed up watering, the blood meal could have been too much (I didn't see till I had mixed it that it was not good to use to germ seeds), the soil could not have been aerated enough, could have been too aerated. . . But my main question here is about the soil mix.
Anyway, so I'm going to try again with a new soil mix. Still have plenty of all the ingredients I listed above, and I also have access to peat moss (though I'd like to avoid buying another huge bag of stuff if possible, it's hard to fit all this stuff in an apartment). There's pretty much no other ingredients available. I looked everywhere for worm castings, but only found one person at one nursery who had even heard of them, and she had no idea where I could find some. No kelp meal anywhere, no hydro store within 2 and a half hours, no potting soil that isn't filled to the brim with nutes, only found one place that had non-Miracle Gro perlite. I can order it all off the internet of course, but I'm a poor student and shipping is expensive.
I need some advise about what I should use and in what ratio. I'm probably going to leave out the blood and bone meal because I have other nutes. I'll starting from seed as well, I imagine that can make a difference.
tl;dr: I had 0 sprouts from 7 seeds at least a few I know to be viable (one opened while soaking, and one I dug out to get a look at). I have very limited available ingredients, what should I use for a soil mix?
