Cubes from mineral wool for seedlings

Seedlings I always grow a tomato myself in a nutrient substrate. I've heard a lot about using mineral wool for this purpose. I would like to try, but a little embarrassed by the lack of soil. Tell us, what is it - cubes for mineral wool seedlings? How effective are they compared to soil?

Typically, truck farmers grow seedlings in the substrate - loose and nutrient soils. However, recently many people use mineral wool instead of soil, in particular cubes for seedlings. The material for them is an inert hydrophilic cotton wool with zero toxicity level.

Advantages of mineral wool

Cubes made from mineral wool are very effective not only when growing seedlings, but also for adult plants. With the help of drip irrigation and mineral wool, you can get quality, healthy crops and abundant harvest. Grow in such cubes you can all vegetables that are planted in greenhouses.

Such a soil substitute is not used for root crops.

The popularity of mineral wool cubes is due to the advantages:

1. Possibility of multiple use. The cubes keep the shape well, and the seedlings are easily extracted from them, without damaging the root system.
2. Absolute sterility, which excludes the possibility of disease.
3. Due to the special structure of cotton wool seedlings have the ability to free growth and better absorbs nutrients during feeding.
4. It is easy to monitor the development status of seedlings.
5. Plants grow and grow evenly.

How to use cubes from mineral wool?

Seeds can be sown either directly into cubes, or into small plugs of cotton wool. There they germinate, and only then the plug must be inserted into a special depression in the middle of the cube. Now the seedlings have more room for further growth.

The day before the use of the cubes must be pre-prepared - soak them with a solution. This can be done by irrigating from above, and immersing them in liquid.

"Fat" cube should weigh 580 g, while it does not take excess moisture. Further planted in cubes seedlings, using from 150 to 200 g of solution per plant only after the cube has lost the same amount of moisture.

Types of mineral wool

Mineral cotton wool is widely used for growing vegetable and berry crops by hydroponics. Depending on the purpose, the mineral wool can be of different types:

• plugs - they germinate seeds before sowing;
• cubes - for cultivation of seedlings (cork with germinated seeds is placed in them);
• mats and blocks - are used in large-scale cultivation of cultivated plants (they place cubes with grown seedlings for further cultivation).

Cultivation of plants on mineral wool - video