Can you grow indefinitely in rockwool?

[chinwag]

Hi,

Bit of an odd question I know.

I received a Hydrocotyle in rockwool, stuck it in a tiny pot and soaked it just to keep it alive until I could plant it properly.

It's really taken off and I kinda like it where it is, I'm getting the hang of not killing it.

It's still planted in just in the rockwool though.

I'm assuming eventually, the roots will overtake the rockwool and it'll got potbound like anything else.

Can I just plant the entire plug when this happens or does the rockwool have to be removed at some point?

Thanks.

 

[zozo]

Yes you could keep it indefinitely in th erockwool if you like. Tho if the plant grows bigger the roots will grow out, as long as these have no restriction and are in fertilized water there should be no problem. Professional crop growers also use rockwool slabs e.g. a metre long and maybe 10cm thick. Here happens the same the roots grow through and hang in the water. Even more popular is growing on rockwool flakes mixed with PU flakes, because it is less dense and lose flakes roots have less restriction and grow even faster.. It's the same principle as Hydroculture clay beats or Ceramis you see in office buildings, here also a constant puddle of fertilized water at the bottom is required.

 

[tam]

It roots at all the nodes, so if you wanted to grow it in soil, for example, rather than try and remove the rock wool, I'd put the soil pot next to it and press some of the stems to the soil - it will root and eventually you could cut away the rock wool and original base. Or just take a cutting - it roots really easily.

 

[chinwag]

Cool, thank you both!

I originally bought it to combine with some other plants and try one of these mini bowl ponds @parotet posted some time back, but it's doing so well I'd love to just see what it does, and I'm still getting a feel for the various plants requirements.

@tam - I didn't know it would root like that so I might take a cutting if it keeps growing at this rate and that will give me another plant or two to experiment with, thanks.

@zozo - I'm quite interested in substrate options, thanks again for the extra info. I visited the Sky Garden in London a few weeks back and they had a lot of interesting planted walls in the reception area but it was very hard to get a good look at them to see how they worked! It looked like a large fibrous panel with rows of holes, the plants were growing out through the holes and it looked like water flowed down and out of the bottom, maybe the run off got fed back through again. Looking at the planting, the same three or four plants were repeated throughout, so they obviously found those to be well suited to it.

I'm going a bit off topic now!