Hydroponics - at Home and for Beginners

Step 7 Starting From Seed

If the last step applied to you, you can skip this step -- or read for your information ;)

This requires extra materials - mainly rockwool seed cubes and a method to germinate. But basically, you're going to soak the cubes, drop in a few seeds and then place in your pots with the main media. Be sure that you can see the top of the seed cube. NEVER, put a seed into a dry cube as the dry glass could damage your seed(s)

You're going to need to water by hand to ensure the seed gets the loving it needs. You may want to place a hood over the pot to make the conditions better.

Comments

[samsamleelee]

By watering do you mean with nutrient solution or just water? And do we still have to soak it in the pot of nutrient solution while germinating?

[downgrade]

Seeds generally just need the water to crack open, so you can pretty much just water them, but adding nutrient doesn't hurt (actually should speed up growth once it sprouts). If you are really budgeted water works fine, although you don't need to water much, just need to keep the area moist (unless it's a plant that really loves it's water, but I am talking in generalities here). And if I understand your second question correctly, no you don't NEED to soak it in the pot, heck it might even be smart not to at times, but also it's convenient to keep it there so that is up to you. Most people will germinate their seeds outside their system, and then introduce it into the system once they've started to develop. At that point you want to watch them either way as their roots are growing and may not have found the water/nutrients yet, so have a spray bottle mixed up just in case some plants are having a harder time. But again, no need to go overboard, plants have been doing this growing thing for a bit longer than we have.

[tibby_]

where exactly could i get a medium besides on the internet. would a place like lowe's or home depot have it??

[xlioilx]

you can use jiffy cubes at home depot, manards, lowes or walmart they are also the cheapest alternative and work real good.

[pigpen]

Jiffy cubes in a bubbler system like this would be a mess in my opinion, but you can get bags of perlite (white light-weight pellets) at the big box stores (in season) or just use stones/rocks whatever. Make sure you rinse the heck out of any medium (except maybe jiffy cubes - sludge) to get all the dust and crap out of them so it doesn't contaminate your reservoir.

[Mr. Medang Scheizer]

You are absolutely correct. I built a system similar to this. The growth rate is astonishing, but you'd better use something like leca stone or hydroton rocks.

[clicclic]

Worm's Way is a massive catalog hydroponic dealer that sells all this stuff. Check out their site here:

Wormsway.com

They have an awesome catalog so definitely apply for that. And no I don't work there...