Starting seeds in rockwool – does accurate PH really matter?
First of I’ d like metformin side effects in women to thank Zach for inviting me to post on the Urban Hydroponic Growers Union website. There’s a lot of great information here and I hope I can contribute some of my own findings every now and then. So I’m relatively new to the whole hydroponics thing and all the plants I have put into a hydroponic system have always been started in soil. I wanted to try my hand at rockwool and see if it could help make things easier for me. Advantages of rockwool is that it holds water and has a good water to air ratio, wont dry out, sterile, and is easy to transplant among other things.
I did a little research and it seems the general consensus for prepping the cubes requires one to soak them in water with a PH of around 5.5. Rockwool tends to come from manufactures with a starting PH of 7.5 and many would tell you this is too high for starting seedlings.
Although it might not seem like a big difference to some I thought I might do a small experiment to see If I can get different results from starting seedlings in rockwool with varying PH. I took 3 cubes and soaked them in water with a PH of around 5.5, 3 cubes in water with a PH of around 6.5 and 2 cubes I soaked in tap water from my home with a PH of around 6.7.
I am currently trying to germinate the seeds which are all in a similar environment all exposed to the same conditions. Now all I have to do is wait and see what happens.
How To Hydroponics – S01E15 Rockwool & Seeds (the experiment)
Seven days later I revisited seeds I had placed in the rockwool. Much to my surprise everything had germinated and was looking good. But even more surprisingly there were several sprouts that looked better than the rest. The 5.3ph rain water cubes were a lot more consistent with the way they all sprouted. The height and health of all these sprouts not only looked ahead of the other 5 cubes but overall just looked more developed.
I realize this is a rather small scale experiment and it could have been a little bit more in depth but for me I learnt two things from this
- Given the ideal sprouting conditions your seeds should still germinate provided the ph of the cube isn’t way out of wack.If you are looking for the best possible results then I would use 5.3ph rain water as these sprouts did appear to outperform the rest.
How To Hydroponics – S01E17 Rockwool Germinating Seeds (the results)
-Matthew
