Dr. Nate Storey: This is Nate Storey with Bright Agrotech and today we're going to talk
a little bit about plugs, rockwool, the way that we plant our seeds and the best kind
of mediums for transplanting seedlings in to our towers, specifically for indoor growers.
Dr. Nate Storey: Today, we're going to talk about a few different types of material here
for planting your seeds and getting your seedlings out.
We're going to talk about the good things about them, the bad things about them and
what I would recommend for anyone serious about indoor growing.
All right, so, you guys have probably seen the video that we did a while back regarding
our greenhouse production and how we just use regular growers mixes.
These are just like peat or coco coir mixes, perlite, vermiculite, traditional stuff.
We put those in plug trays.
We plant them.
We plug those plugs and transplant those into towers.
We really, really love those in the greenhouse and in fact even if you're using ZipGrow towers
indoors you can still keep using all of that same stuff.
We know a lot of you guys are a little bit concerned about having solids building up
in your indoor system, especially if you don't have really, really heavy aeration.
There are a couple of alternative to just using regular potting mixes or germination
mixes.
The most popular of those are flexible plugs.
What we have here are some FlexiPlugs.
There are a few different manufacturers that are making these now, but they're very interesting.
These area peat product or a coir product that is bound with a polymer.
They put kind of a plasticky rubbery material in there and it actually binds all of the
fibers together.
They can actually incorporate a lot of a slow release fertilizers into these types of things
so that these plugs they're are actually ... They can basically put all of the fertilizer for
starting your seeds in these things.
You can ditch the whole hydroponic aspect of your seed starting, which is kind of nice.
These are great little plugs and you'll see how they compress which makes them a great
fit for towers because they'll compress very nicely going in and they're really nice and
easy to deal with.
The drawback to these is they aren't as compostable as just say growing mix or something like
that or regular potting or germination mix.
They're a great material and they're very, very popular with a lot of people who grow
with ZipGrow towers indoor and out.
The one drawback to these is they can get a little pricey if you're buying them in small
quantities.
In large quantities they're still fairly pricey if you can just compare them to traditional
germination mixes or something like that.
They're well worth the money if you're doing things in kind of a small and medium scale.
They're very, very easy to work with.
When I think small scale, typically we're talking several hundred to several thousand
of these plugs.
A larger scales would be 10 thousand to 100s of thousands of these, at that scale.
There are a lot of things you can do with these.
They can be really useful to you and I would definitely think about getting together with
some other growers if you're thinking about ordering these to try and get a better price.
All right, another alternative is rockwool.
This is an example of rockwool.
It's basically a type of rock that they cook at a really high temperature and run through
a machine that spins it out into a fiber and you end up with this product here.
It's also used as insulation, right.
It's a great, great product by and large for seed starting and especially for cloning,
if you're doing a lot of cloning.
It's one of those things that I would tend towards more of a more natural product like
peat or coir over rockwool most of the time simply because this stuff does not biodegrade,
it doesn't breakdown.
It will go a landfill and it will be here till the end of time.
That's always a little concerning when we create things that last forever and ever,
that always concerns me a little bit.
By and large it's a good product.
It comes in a lot of different ways.
One of these ways is these little cubes like this.
These guys tear off individually, so basically each little piece will tear off there.
If you drop your seed in hole in the top, it just kind of tears away and you can transplant
the seedling with the plug in it.
It's handy stuff.
It's nice because it holds itself together and you don't really need a plug tray or anything
like that.
We just use these trays here for our seedling station.
The seedlings will grow in this, tear them off to transplant them.
It's handy.
It's useful material.
Again, the only drawbacks are that it can get kind of pricey at scale and it's doesn't
breakdown, it will be here forever and ever.
That is definitely something to consider when you're thinking about the different types
of growing medium that you can use.
There are a few other alternatives out there and a lot of people will ask about things
like Jiffy pellets, about Oasis products, that kind of thing.
Jiffy pellets can be used and they're great.
I've just found them to be a little pricey and a little hard to handle.
Man, if we could get them in bulk and if we had the automation equipment to automate planting
Jiffy pellets they would be great.
I really like Jiffy pellets.
Oasis is another thing that people ask about.
What about Oasis products?
In our opinion, Oasis products they tend to smash up when they're compressed within the
towers, and you end up with plastic bits in your system which isn't always the best thing
in the world.
We tend to advise people to avoid Oasis products and focus more on Jiffy or peat pellets that
type of thing if the rockwool or the polymer bound FlexiPlugs aren't your thing.
One last thing that people talk about or ask about quite a bit is bare root plants.
Can I do bare root?
Absolutely.
You can do bare root especially if you're using wicking strips, you can definitely use
bare root plants.
The problem is is transplanting.
A lot of people will grow them out in a hydrogen system and when they pull the seedlings out
they'll just sprinkle seeds, when they pull the seedlings they actually damage a lot of
roots.
The shock going into your system when you plant that bare root plant can be pretty significant
and slow down your product cycle, we're talking several days.
Aeroponic, folks that are doing mist systems or high pressure aero, something like that,
they take their plant and they plant in these systems, that's not the best way to transplant
those plugs because it will again damage your root system and you end up with some seedling
shock which slows down your production cycle.
Of all of the things we've talked about, we do recommend starting your seedling in some
type of growing medium.
Whether it is something like rockwool, whether it is FlexiPlug, whatever it ends up being
if it's in a plug, some type of contained thing for the root system that's always going
to be better than going with bare root.
Once you transplant those things they're just going to root out really fast and they're
going to take off and you're going to be really, really happy with the results.
Today, I talked about different types of growing medium, the stuff that we recommend or that
we like or that a lot of our customers end up using.
We'll talk a little bit more about what that transplanting process looks like here pretty
soon.
Today, we talked about a lot of different growing mediums that you can use for getting
your seedlings started and for transplanting those seedlings.
If you're just getting started I would say your first step is to start with a flexible
plug type product just like this.
Eventually over time once you get comfortable with this, once you learn how to grow with
these types of products, you can transition out, try new things like rockwool and of course
the ultimate ideal is always get down to some type of loose growing medium because it's
compostable, it's newable, it's something you can take after you're done growing and
compost and use for gardening or something else.
That's always the ideal, but in the meantime I would start here because this is going to
be a really easy and fast way to get started and you're going to have really high success
rates right out of the gate.
Hey, thank so much for watching this video today.
I hope it was useful to you.
If you have any questions about this kind of thing feel free to get a hold of us.
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