DWC Help

[IgotsumEarly]

I have 4 DWC systems ready for use, I have two plants growing in soil that I want to transfer to my DWC system. Also I am germinating a few seeds and they are just about ready to be placed in the rock wool. My question here is can a newly sprouted plant thrive in a DWC system (because all the roots will be in the rock wool, none should be exposed right away correct?) so what do I do with these sprouts, Should I just start them off in soil and let them grow until they have a decent root system, or should I put the new sprouts in the DWC system and just let the bottom of the rockwool sit in the planter with a little bit of water bubbling up to it? My only question is how are these plants going to grow there roots, without the roots being directly in contact with the water.

[polishpollack]

This is an excellent question.
In deep water, what I did once was simply dip a cup into the water/fert mix and pour that close to the stem so it would run over the roots. I did that several times a day and didn't have a problem. You could also grow in soil and transplant. I've done that too and while it seemed to take the plant a few days to adjust, it was ok after that.

[SpaceNeedle]

If you are gonna run DWC, using hydroton, I highly recommend using an aero cloner or bubbler. that way you have no mess whatsoever and when they are rooted, you could put them straight into your netpots. While they are vegging, I would put all your net pots and use an ebb and flow tray to keep them happy, flooding about 6 times a day for 15 min each. Then once they are big enough, you can just take the netpot and put it into your DWC buckets.
You could also root your clones in rockwool and once they have roots, put them in a say 4" cube of rockwool, and feed them by hand. Doing it this way, entails putting your rockwool cube into a netpot and then adding hydroton. You will have to adjust your feeding schedule according to the size of the cube you have in there once in flowering, as the rockwool holds WHEEYY more moisture than the clay pellets.

I definitely recommend the first choice, as I have mentioned before you can get yourself into trouble using both if you don't understand or know what your watering schedule needs to be using two different growing media. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I like to keep things simple.