Transplanting air-rooted clones into rockwool cubes

Greetings growers,

I'm wondering if anyone has a successfully transplanted air-rooted clones (bucket clones) directly into rockwool cubes?

I understand that, traditionally, most people use starter rw plugs or smaller cubes which are then transplanted (or top-planted) into a larger cubes.

But since I've got air-rooted clones ready to go, I was hoping to transplant them directly into the 8" rw cubes as part of my top-drip, DTW system.

For the record, I am normally a RDWC grower, for which air-rooted clones work great.

I have two ideas:

1) Bore a 1-inch diameter x 4-inches deep starter hole directly into the cube using a drill bit. Tranplant the air-rooted clones in and gently backfill with some loose rockwool.

OR

2) Shred the cubes completely into loose rw, use netpots and top w/ hydroton. I know that you can buy loose rw.. but I did not want to get a huge bale of it until I am comfortable with medium and my system design.


Thoughts? ideas? Suggestions?

Many thanks!

For those who might come across this thread later, I tested out idea #1... and even with moist blocks and humidity domes, it was too big a shock for the air-rooted clones to take. It was worth a shot since I had the extra clones ready to go, but no dice. I'm going to use the traditional rw starter plug approach this time around.

Cheers,

diggabyte said:

For those who might come across this thread later, I tested out idea #1... and even with moist blocks and humidity domes, it was too big a shock for the air-rooted clones to take. It was worth a shot since I had the extra clones ready to go, but no dice. I'm going to use the traditional rw starter plug approach this time around.

Cheers,

Click to expand...

u can bore out a hole, and then buy some coco and then transplant and fill that in with coco. Sprinkle some coco onto the roots and even some myco if u got it, and then try to kinda make a pellet that u can throw the clone into the rockwool, and then fill the rest up with coco. Try to shorten up the roots if u can, if your cuts are long, you should bore into the hole in the rockwool, if ur cuts are short then i would imagine you wouldnt have to bore into the coco, and just kinda make a makeshift rockwool cube outta coco. GOOD LUCK!

I guess I don't understand. Are you planning on going hempy or a basic coco drain to waste? If you are planning on going into perlite or coco then skip the RW, the clones will love either medium. As you found out air rooted clones and RW just don't work.

Sorry to disagree but I've had good success taking clones from my aerocloner with a decent root mass split a 1.5 inch cube and placed it around the root mass. I've then placed them into 1.5 inch cups in a LPA system until the cube was over taken. I've placed those and freshly tv split 1.5 cubes into the 3 and 4 in cubes. I've placed those into 5.5 net pots an into soil. Prepared and watered correctly the are excellent in my opinion. I ALSO have noticed less ph swings vs clay. Used them with clay pellets also.