Rootbound In 4" Rockwool Flood & Drain?

A couple of my plants are starting to droop, and the roots are coming out the bottom of the 4" cube. Should I buy a mat or something to sit it on to extend the roots or will it fix itself? I've seen people do full grows in just 4" rockwool cubes, and my plants are only 1-2 weeks old.

Uh... what type of tray do you have them in? What medium is surrounding the rock wool cubes?

It is no biggie to see the roots growing out of the cube. It is a big concern if you don't have anything covering the exposed roots from light though.

It's a Lowe's concrete mixing tub with a plastic tray in it with holes so it doesn't sit in water. The light isn't hitting the roots yet, they're coming out the bottom.

You are going to need a container about 2-4 times that for the life of all 4 plants! You will need to submerge the rockwool cubes and fill the tray with some sort of medium(hydroton, perilite, etc.) You will want the cubes to be 2-3 inches off the bottom at the very least in the new container.

That is to start!

^Slanty said:

You are going to need a container about 2-4 times that for the life of all 4 plants! You will need to submerge the rockwool cubes and fill the tray with some sort of medium(hydroton, perilite, etc.) You will want the cubes to be 2-3 inches off the bottom at the very least in the new container.

That is to start!

Click to expand...

I disagree with you. This size container (20"x26"x8") and medium is just fine for nice sized plants. It is a flood and drain system so no submerging is necessary except for 15 minute increments a few times a day. Hydroton in the system is optional. There is no need for them to be a full 2-3 inches up, the ridges in a hydro tub aren't that deep...

I get that information from this thread: https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/358562-dyna-gro-vs-general-hydroponics.html

He was using the 2'x4' tub and was growing 6 nice sized plants. I don't think I'm going to grow mine as big as the ones in that thread.

Any other input? I'm taking everything into consideration, just would like multiple opinions

I use a similar setup just bigger (6" cubes), you said you were flooding the cubes for 15 min few times a day? At that stage I hand watered them once a day (just a few splashes on each cube). Maybe they are over watered, try to flood only once per day. Those cubes hold a lot of water.

I would think that as well except for the fact that there's roots coming out of the bottom and only 2 are drooping.

johnny32 said:

I use a similar setup just bigger (6" cubes), you said you were flooding the cubes for 15 min few times a day? At that stage I hand watered them once a day (just a few splashes on each cube). Maybe they are over watered, try to flood only once per day. Those cubes hold a lot of water.

Click to expand...

I took your thought into deeper consideration and did some more looking around on the net and I found a few good points. How would my plants be rootbound when there is no container to restrain it? I picked up one of my cubes and water dripped out of it like crazy just from me lifting it up. Since the two that aren't drooping are the ones more elevated I figured I'd cut the middle water cycle off and allow them to dry more. I'll post what happens, thanks for your input

I disagree with this poster. I grow this way all the time and put out great harvest every time. There is no way that those plants are root bound yet in the pic. No way. If you are worried , you can place those 4" blocks on top of a mat or a 6" block. You do not need perlite or Hydroton on the bottom . I always grow with my blocke right on the table like in the pic.
If you would like to see what I am talking about , please feel free to check out the grows in my Signatures and see for yourself,.

^Slanty said:

You are going to need a container about 2-4 times that for the life of all 4 plants! You will need to submerge the rockwool cubes and fill the tray with some sort of medium(hydroton, perilite, etc.) You will want the cubes to be 2-3 inches off the bottom at the very least in the new container.

That is to start!

Click to expand...

dadio161 said:

I disagree with this poster. I grow this way all the time and put out great harvest every time. There is no way that those plants are root bound yet in the pic. No way. If you are worried , you can place those 4" blocks on top of a mat or a 6" block. You do not need perlite or Hydroton on the bottom . I always grow with my blocke right on the table like in the pic.
If you would like to see what I am talking about , please feel free to check out the grows in my Signatures and see for yourself,.

Click to expand...

Your grow and homebrewer's threads are where I got all my information for this grow, so I'm glad that you back me up on that disagreement as well

Like I said earlier I'm now leaning more towards the overwatering from the signs I've seen.

Edit: Can you link me to the mat you're talking about? A few people have mentioned mats but all I've ever seen were slabs.

My biggest recommendation is to try a small slab. I have seem them at my grow shop in small sizes. Like 6" x 8 " x 3" high. you can put you block on top of this short slab and really increase your area for more roots. This way you will always have the ability to move your plants around a bit if you need to. I like to move my taller plants to the outside of the table and shorter ones in the middle. Sometimes you need to rotate to keep buds from hitting the light. Gotta do what you can to keep the light as low as possible.

How many times are you flooding per day? If it's more than twice then you're flooding too often. To be honest, it takes my girls a week or so to really get going when they're that size. That being said, your plants look fine and so does that setup. Four inch blocks may be a tad small but I guess that depends on how big you plan on growing them.

I was flooding 3 times per day, but I stopped and now they're flooding once a day. I didn't flood them tonight since they already had plenty of water still, should I switch it to every 2 days?

Here's a picture of my setup now that I added a cover to it. They're still drooping but hopefully that clears up. Is sitting water still a problem if it's covered and my plants aren't sitting in it? With my setup the way it is right now I can't have holes dripping the excess into my res, but I plan to get a new tub and res next water change so I can make it simpler, I kind of over thought my setup.

I accidentally just flooded my plants for about 3-4 hours, is that going to hurt them? They're dropping like a bitch now :\