the way your fingers moved that soil round seems very strange , generally you would just let the pot sit in the drip tray as you water & let the water in the tray soak or wick up the pot for a while but i'd be contacting easy as & let them know what you found & where you got it from , they obviously not storing the bags of soil to well , leaving them in the sun or heat or something , easy as is pretty cool years ago i got a few bags full of gnats he replaced them for me at his cost , he drove over & dropped them off as we weren't that far from each other at the time