How do you normally train junior PHP devs?
1. Tell them to figure it out themselves which definitely take longer time
2. Spoon-fed what they need to do which hopefully will make them understand something (?)
3. Others

I hardly ever have a good senior dev above me that can teach me. So I'm really open to any suggestions.

Some of the problem of what I see in my junior devs:
- inconsistent lines and spaces (lol)
- multiple unused db calls
- not reading requirement properly
- not diving through the code and try to understand it properly (usually needs to be handheld which is understandable since they are new)

There's two categories of problem there - comprehension issues, and style issues. The style issues are easy - enforce it with a linter at push time, and refer them to the style guide when it doesn't work. They should be able to figure that out.

The comprehension issues are less clear cut. I'll usually start by spoonfeeding to ease them into it, but quite quickly expect them to work out more and more on their own, or at least try. I'd then ramp up the stuff they need to work out on their own until they were operating pretty independently, but that can take a while.

Not all of them will get there of course. Juniors are cheap because they're a risk - some might be great, but many will never get beyond the hand holding stage.

First of all, you only employ people who can demonstrate that they are willing and capable of learning what’s expected of them. Case in point: myself. I had zero knowledge of PHP, or even programming past some programming 101 courses at uni, when I started my current job. I googled PHP omw to the interview, cause I had no clue what it was. I never needed any of that hand-holding. Guidance, yes, but that’s to ne expected. You got to mentor the juniors, but not hold their hands. Not have any of the juniors we’ve hired since needed much hand-holding either - because we don’t really care if they already know the tools of the trade or not - we care that they care enough to learn. So far it hasn’t gone wrong, but if it did, we’d end up firing the kind of juniors OP describes pretty soon.

As a senior, ask questions.

I'm known to be the guy that pokes the intern in the rips till he / she starts asking the questions by himself.

In my opinion, you must get them to a point where they get curious and start building up knowledge by themselves - instead of just looking at how to solve the task at hand.