I know this thread is really old but I am hanging onto the idea that mine will be alright as well. I just did what you were posting about. I poked holes through all the soil and broke up the soil. My plant was doing nothing, just little spurts of growth here and there. It was 6 inches after 76 days and it kept dropping all the bottom leaves, tips burning and such. It truly was a pitiful little thing LOL I'm not sure why I kept it for so long! Didn't matter what I did. it just would not grow. It was down to roots and finally I started poking in the soil with a long screw driver. I have always been so protective of the root system, I thought doing that would kill it and that's what I thought while I was poking. This will either kill it or set it free. Only time will tell now. So, I sit and wait. I will let you all know if it takes off. Funny thing is, out of all the exhaustive researched I did online, nothing spoke about this at all. Never saw a word mentioned about soil compaction. Not in any of the grow bibles, nowhere. Just makes me wonder why. It must happen a lot. I forgot to tell you! While I was breaking up the soil with the screwdriver and my hands, there was something really hard under the root ball. I didn't see it but I was definitely hitting something and it was hard. I pulled up some gravel! OMG I forgot that I had put gravel in the bottom of the one gallon pot. When I transplanted it, some of that gravel didn't fall out and the roots twisted up all around it, it was acting like a barrier I suppose, plus the old soil that was in the one gallon pot was terrible so it went along for the ride when I transplanted as well. It was a soil/clay/gravel/twisted root nightmare! No wonder it wouldn't grow or put down better roots. So, someone said to kill it and start again, I love challenges and it has come this far already, I'm going to see if I can help nurse it back to health. Sitting on the edge of my seat for the next several days. It will either live or die but I think I gave it a fighting chance!
