rockwool never again

[reflux1]

just done a seedling run,   thought i would run seeds in rockwool for the first time,  lost 15 to 20% of my seed,  i was watching seedlings get sick one by one s they were showing every nute deficiency kown to man,  tried lowering the ppm and changing the ph a bit to both sides only to see it get worse,  a pattern started to show,   the only plants getting sick was the slower an less vigorous plants,  the others were going fast and great,  and it came to me,  i bet this is root rot,  i took away most of the rockwool from  sick seedling to see the roots,  and i could see root rot at its first stages,   small  brown under developed root balls,  as the rookwool was holding to much water for to long,  the faster plants sucked it up creating the wet dry cycle that roots need,  the weeker plants just couldnt drink it fast enough,  and just sat in nute water for to long,  ended loosing $400 in seed,  i couldnt bleave how much water they hold,  this has never hapend in other soil or soiless mediums i have used never,  wether or not i brought bad rock wool,  i  dont no,  but to me,  i am never using rookwool to start seed ever again,  never anyway hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes

dry cycle

[CamZ]

Rockwool isn’t the most economic choice, but believe it or not, it’s very good at controlling root moisture. You might want to inspect your conditions and clean. Sorry you lost such expensive genetics. Consider a root inoculant in the future to help mitigate this issue if you haven’t already.

[reflux1]

trying to identify what caused it,  the first thing  i thought was, maybe the blocks  got scwished before i got them,  but they didnt seem to be,  and they come in strong boxes,  so im pretty sure they wasnt,  the next thing i thought was, i have read that they come with a high ph,  but i let them sit in water for 24 hours and flushed the crap out of them,  am not sure wether thats enough as iv never used them before, and the only other thing i could think of was, that it may have alredy been dirty seed, but it hapend to 3 different strains, so that rulles out that to yes,  i have never seen this before,  not at all,  in the past iv always used 50 50 mix of pelite vermiculite or hi grade poting mix,  i will clean the crap out of the  whole room, and spray the spot with bleach water soluton,  over 25 years never seen this, very frustrating thats for sure,  there is good news though the other 80% of the seed is doing great i have got a inoculant but forget to use it every other time

thanks for your reply, means a lot to me, it realy doese,  you have give me something to think about again,  clean clean clean and clean again it doese make logical sence, maybe it is the only other posability

[CamZ]

I’m glad you found value in my response. One thing to make sure you focus on growing in all mediums is proper dryback. Every single medium has the potential to drown a seedling when oversaturated. Once they are moisture stressed it becomes very easy for them to become infected with pathogens, hence the root inoculant.

[reflux1]

yes,  water nutes air,  water nutes air,  the rhythm goes on for ever,  i have always thought  the more airated the mix is the better,  how much air is in my mix  the primary thing i look for in a mix,  every other thing is second,  which i thought and maybe hoped, was the reasons that i never had rot before

do you think that, even  if  there was rot present, and  if plants were in a very airated sterile mix,  eg perlite vermiculite,  could most plants simply out grow it,  do you think

[CamZ]

If you are asking if plants can outgrow root rot then the answer is yes. It usually takes longer than most people are willing to deal with though. It can take weeks of recovery. If you remove the excess moisture the plant can grow new roots usually. Sometimes they will die, but I have personally recovered from rootrot many times. The grow I’m in right now, all of the plants in my tent had it because I failed to clean out my res in my veg tent because i was being lazy. It took me weeks to baby the plants back to health and I literally grow in water so the bacteria just kept coming back. It was my own fault, but I put those same plants in my flowering tent after treating the roots and they went from the size of my hand to 4ft tall in 3 weeks and have no deficiencies. The biggest thing you can do for root rot is let things dry out, even to the point that the plants get a little droopy, then give them a little water at a time until they have new growth. Rockwool should feel almost dry before you give them more water when they are small, and when you do give them water don’t saturate the cubes.

[reflux1]

when i say a airy mix,  im talking 2 parts prerlite, to 1 part vermiculite,   i also run the course grade vermiculite and the course grade perlite making for even more pockes of air,  it s super airated, and has never failed,  well so far anyway,  if let it dry between waterings,  could rot still come and raise hell in a mix like that

[CamZ]

Less likely, but yes. You can still overwater and cause root rot.

[Author]

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