DWC - Root Development in Seedlings

Hello All. I am kicking off my second grow early as I decided to construct a seedling / early veg box. I am about 2-3 weeks from being able to move these into their permanent home in my under current system so thought it was the perfect time to start my seeds that were purchased from seedsman. These went into a glass of water to begin germination last saturday, march 27th. I started with 4 Feminized White Widow / Big Bud seeds and 3 Blueberry seeds. of the 7, 6 germinated and were moved to my seedling box. in a few weeks, I will take the best 4 and move them to final home.

Here is my concern, all 6 are growing nicely. I had 0 nutrients in the water at first and one of the seedlings immediately started yellowing so I added a very small amount of nutrients (290 ppm) and growth immediately sped up and everything got bright green again. I use UC Roots to keep my water sterile and have 4 large air stones in this container. I also have a top feed system to use until roots reach the water. Water level is about 1 1/2" below bottom of 3" netpots.

As of 3 days ago all the WW/BB seeds had nice roots all the way down to the water but as of this am neither of the blueberry have roots coming out of the netpot at all. I can see lots of roots growing in the hydroton and the seedlings are growing great. I just am not sure if I am supposed to do anything to help the roots make it down to the water. its like they are growing in a circle around the bottom of the netpot. there are little spikes coming off the tap root that should come straight through the netpot when they start to grow but none have done that yet. I have the top feeder running for these about 4 or 5 hours a day. I shut it off because the rapid rooter gets too wet if I leave it on all the time. Just wanted to make sure there was nothing I should be doing. In my picture, the two on the far right are the Blueberry. I had to support one of them with an extra chunk of rapid rooter because its leaves were too heavy for its tiny stem.

THANKS!!

I would stop the top watering. I dont use hydroton, but in my experience, if shw doesn't have to look for the water and nutes, she won't. You said your rapid rooter stays too wet, then make her search. I'm not saying let her dry out completely, but take away the nutrition right in front of her and she'll HAVE to put out roots.

I followed your advice and you were right on the money. Two days after turning top feed off they both had nice roots down in water. Thanks man!

No worries. Glad to hear your girls are doing better. Just a practice of mine, but you may consider topping your hydroton with some perlite. Helps block little critters from getting into your root zone, at least it does with my style.

Johiem said:

No worries. Glad to hear your girls are doing better. Just a practice of mine, but you may consider topping your hydroton with some perlite. Helps block little critters from getting into your root zone, at least it does with my style.

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I'll give that a try! I have a bunch of perlite around so that works good.

I was worried about the tiny netpots and the large hydroton. Can't get enough in there to really make it sealed. Perlite would be small enough to fill all those little gaps.