Welcome Moonshine! Thanks for coming by. Pull up a chair and spark one.
Yeah, I’ve been using a gritty mix like this for years. I too had a tendency to overwater. It’s an essential mix for all the house plants, which drink so slowly, they would be sitting in wet, sour soil otherwise. Outside, all the woody-stemmed plants, like the potted lemon and lime trees, love it. I had a red sweet pepper plant that over-wintered 5 years. Every spring, I would pull it out of the pot, prune the roots, put it in fresh mix, and stand back.
For this application, I’ll have to see how it works. If the autos really are sensitive to root pruning, I’ll just have to stick to starting them in their final pot. Jackie and the previous grow seemed to do just fine with that.