I am going to restart my experiment in starting seeds using hydroculture.
After the first week, there was nothing. No sprouts. Nada.
I thought, and from what people were saying, it could’ve been because they were getting too dry. So I put a tray under them and kept that filled with water. Still nothing.
It was then suggested that it could be too dry for them being outdoors.
I’m not one to give up easily and want to get this to work. They have now been brought back indoors to pretty much start from the beginning again.
I took some water with fresh squeezed lemon and poured it onto the seeds and rockwool. The egg carton is still sitting in the tray to catch the water and to keep moist. I’ve also put a sheet of plastic over the top to keep the moisture up as well.
Hopefully in the next few days, they will have sprouts.
Anything else you think I can do?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blJUGoY0kio
It’s been about three weeks since I started seeds using hydroculture as an experiment. They still haven’t sprouted. Nada.
One issue
Kudos to you Mike for your follow through wishing you the best of luck inside : )
9 out of 12 of mine sprouted – here’s what I did:
Soak rockwool in water that has a PH of 5.5 for about 10 minutes. Remove rockwool, insert a few seeds per cube. Rip off a little piece of rockwool and cover the hole you put the seeds in. Place in container with lid. I put my container on top of my dryer, but I was suggested to place it on top of the fridge. Once they sprout, remove lid, and they will need lots of sunlight or indoor lighting if you’re doing it indoors. The rockwool will need to be sprayed with water of PH 5.5 everyday once they sprout, or whenever the rockwool starts to dry out. Nutrients added to the water should be at 25% strength at first, and slowly increased to full dosage. If you are planning on transferring to soil, I don’t believe you need to worry much about the nutrients because it will be in the soil, or whatever you usually add to your soil to help the plant.
Nice. Thanks for sharing.
Are you using tap water for this? Our first year starting seeds from scratch, we were obsessive about using rainwater on the seedlings, and everything was awesome. The second year, the winter was much colder, and we got lazy and sometimes filled the mister from the tap instead of going outside to the rain barrel. We were growing in seed blocks, and had done the initial moistening with rain water, so they came up just fine, but then we had a lot of damping off and a general “failure to thrive”. I finally connected with the tap water (we have a pretty high chlorine content here), went back to rain water and everything was good. We also then installed a chlorine filter in the line going to the main garden for when we are running low in the rain barrels and have to use the tap 🙂
That’s crazy. Thanks for sharing. Might be worth experimenting with on my end.