So the girls seemed to handle the defoliation pretty well. I may have been a bit aggressive, as they didn't need any feeding on Sunday, and only The Mayor needed a light feeding today. They're still pushing out new growth so nothing too bad:
The Mayor was showing some very light nute burn (very small amount of yellowing on the tips of the new growth), but I don't think it's a problem at this point. I'll be keeping an eye on it, but everytime I think she's getting nute burn she snaps out of it, and looks fine the next day or so.
My wife found some binder clips, so I said hell with it, let's give Bubbles some LST. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, but it opened up some of the bud sites, so I guess I'm good:
I counted about 14 bud sites so far on The Mayor and 8-10 on Bubbles (but she seems about 5-7 days behind The Mayor in the flowering department).
You might have noticed I'm back down to two pots in the tent. I lost the second SN
I can see where I exposed the seedling, and there's been no movement. The soil was kept moist, but not super wet, humidity has been good for the older girls, but I've had a humidity dome on her. Basically same or better conditions than the two GCS seeds had. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and given that fact that conditions were as good or better the the girls, it narrows it down to two variables. First would be genetics, but were talking Mephisto here, and taking into account that they popped from their seeds very nicely, I don't think that's it. The other variable is the soil, and I think this is the source of the problem. See I ran out of the soil that I had for the girls, and I found half a bag of soil (MiracleGro at that) and to be honest, I have no idea how old it was. Since all the seeds germinated just fine, and then dried once they hit the soil, I think that's where the problem lies.
I'm really pretty pissed about this, I threw away $15 in seeds, that I really wanted to try, in order to "save" less than $10 in soil. Basically, I'm a dumbass. I should have figured it out after the failed solo cup experiment. I mean, it's not like it was a really expensive mistake, but still it's the principle of the matter more than the cost.
I've still got one SLxSB, but I'm going to wait until these girls are done before I get more soil and pop this one. I'm also going to skip on the paper towel method of germing and just give them a soak and into the soil.