Gardening 104: Soil

I've had little success with germinating seeds.
In a best case scenario, I'd have a 20% germination rate, at worst, zero.

I bought at least a dozen different kinds of seeds for flowers, vegetables, and fruits. I picked out at least a half dozen more things from the fridge. For weeks I put countless seeds in little pots and watered the soil. I had visions of big lush flowering pots, and bushy fruiting plants on the window. What I currently have are two tomato plants, a couple of small chili pepper plants, a couple of marigolds, and 4-5 small slowly growing sprouts.

Yes, I lost one of my tomato plants to verticillium wilt, a fungal disease that attacks its leaves. They just develop grey spots on the the underside and corresponding yellow spots on the topside of leaves. After a while the leaf completely wilts and the branch starts to die.
After seeing a couple of leaves exhibiting symptoms in one of the other plants, I finally succumbed to pressure. Screw organic! In panic mode, I trimmed all leaves showing signs of wilt and grabbed the insecticidal/fungal spray in our gardening closet and sprayed. I took great care to only spray the lower leaves that were at risk, to not spray the soil or anywhere near the flowers and developing fruit. I think I'm safe for the moment, however I'll be keeping a close eye.

But I digress.

Back to soil. I believe the little success I had in germinating seeds is mostly due to the clay-like soil we have in our window sills, and which I've been using to try to germinate seeds. See, to germinate, seeds need an airy, moist, well draining environment. Clay on the other is generally in one of two conditions: A soggy wet clay-ey mess, or a dry hard block. Airy, it is not. So little seeds either rot in the damp wet soil with no air circulation, or fail to grow roots into the hard packed clay, eventually drying out.
Luckily, only yesterday, after making many trips in vain to find sterilized potting soil, I was very happy to find that our supermarket's gardening section has finally restocked on soil (seriously, stores here need a lesson in customer satisfaction!!)
I bought 2 bags of soil, and immediately started putting seeds into pots. Again. The consistency of this soil is completely different to the one I was using. Well draining, fluffly, almost spongy in texture. Here's hoping I'll be more successful this time.

In other news, a whole month after placing carob seeds on a wet folded paper towel in small jar, and doing the same with apple seeds but in the fridge, I finally have sprouting seeds. I haven't quite decided what I'm gonna do with half a dozen carob trees and half a dozen apple ones, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.