Time to Start Taking Things Seriously

I have been messing around with this sequoia growing thing for four months now. I think it's time to get things really moving now that I got some hang of it. So, what is wrong with this picture:

?

If you bother to check out the numbers on the white sticks you will notice a very peculiar pattern. There is a huge difference between some of the seedlings. Some are way ahead of the others. One noticeable pattern is that the ones that are flush with numerous green needles happen to be in the "magic 30" range. All seedlings below 30 and all above 42 are weak. Those below 30 are mostly dead. I am now in the range of 70s for those above ground level on the brown patch. As I will show later the seedlings in the 50-70 range are way behind in development as compared to the 30s.

And what in the world is this:

I decided to dig into the photographic evidence in attempt to understand the "magic 30" mystery. Here is what I found. The brown patch that had the 30-early-40 range seedlings was kept mostly dry, with the moisture being added in the form of water poured into the holding plastic pan.

After I prepared a pretty moist mix I kept the pots wet through adding water from the bottom.

This is a picture of seedling #36 taken during the "surgery" on Dec 1:

#36 December 1, 2012. 12 days old.

The length of the root of this less than two weeks old seedling is 1.5" - same size as the seedling above ground. Now, compare it against this one:

#82 December 22, 2012. Two weeks old.

#82 does not have the root length of the #36 while being two days older. The part above ground is remarkably similar. Now, look at this interesting phenomenon:

#67 December 22, 2012. Three weeks and 2 days old.

This is a three (!) weeks old seedling. It does not appear to be in distress. The green is green, the purple stem is sick and springy. At the same time it's not developing anywhere near the pace of its younger siblings.

What I believe is happening is that the "mystery 30" range got exposed to the condition where the seedlings had to grow downwards to get water. This allowed the root to get long and strong over first few weeks of development. Other seedlings were treated to too much or two little water. "The secret sauce" appears to be a thoroughly moist starter mix, followed by soaking of the bottom of the cups with water a few times a week. As you look at the #36 December 1, 2012 it shows how the end of the long root dips into the dark moist soil in the middle of the cup. 

#82 (and several others I checked) are getting too much water from all over. It allows the above ground part to grow fast with little need to develop the root. #67 and a few others I checked were in a very fluffy soil with a lot of air and not much water. Seedlings seem to be very resilient to the lack of water, but development screeches to a halt. With too much water, like in the case with #82, once placed into a real soil rather than the peat moss, bad things happen quickly. The lack of the developed root leads to the root rot. #67 and alike do not perform much better, sort of hanging around for a few weeks and withering away. 

With this new hypothesis, I planted a brand new germinated seed:

#102 December 22, 2012. Zero.

I made a reasonably moist core peat moss inside the cup. I placed the seedling as depicted above - white (future) root and the seed casing pointing down, with the purple (future) stem forming a loop pointing up. This has been one of the most consistent observations - nicely formed loop leads to good looking seedlings. I am not going to add much water to #102 from the top. I placed this sample into the pan with others and will keep adding water to the bottom of the pan holding the cups:

Will see how this is going and then I have about 5,000 more seeds to play with.