Starter pots for seedlings

[Gazza2001au]

You can grow the seedlings in a small pot of coco than depending on root to coco mass either plant the whole thing in the clay balls or if the roots haven't filled the whole pot just rinse the roots and place the plant in the clay balls

 

MedGrower1 does this on youtube so do quiet a few other people its called "Coco to Hydro Transplant" of course its DWC i would imagine the coco to cause problems in a re-circ system with small 4-6mm feeders

[Sir PsychoHashy]

Whilst I'm not the biggest fan of rockwool, I've never found them to be a problem with photoperiod plants.  I feel the same way about water retention as you, and stress about damping off while they are babies, but it's never happened, and once the plants get properly established they seem to sort of destroy the cube as the trunk fills out, so I still happily use them on my photo plants when I do flood and drain in expanded clay balls.

 

However, I've found auto's hate them, so I bypass using them when growing auto's in flood and drain.  What I do is sprout the seeds in paper towels until the tail is 2-3cm, flood the balls so they move around more gently and freely, and very carefully place the sprout in trying to get the seed head at the height the water comes up to.  So far I've managed to not kill any .

 

 

 

Works fine, but it takes longer until the plant gets a solid grip in the medium.

 

Starting them in perlite is another option.