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I started a bunch of basils this fall. using oasis, and they seemed to be slow, but most are taking off now. The dill also seems slow. Still, it seems that some of the seedlings I pulled off the surface of the cubes, and dropped into the hydroton, so the roots were constantly in the water, seem to be doing much better, and I don't see any roots breaking through the bottoms of the cubes (only 1"x1 1/4"). I am thinking of cutting them in quarters vertically, so there is less to go through before getting into the water. Almost all of the seeds (parsley, cutting celery, dill, and 4 basils) I simply poked into the cubes germinated, so I had far more than I needed! And parsley, which usually takes a couple weeks to germinate in soil, came up in 5-7 days, so germination is fast.

I'll have to make some pots up with a layer of coir on top (my original way of starting these kinds of seeds), and try them next to each other, and see if I'm just being impatient, or if that was faster.

I'm not following. Your concern is that things go slower in the Oasis cubes (since I don't do hydro, I had to look up what those are) and then you said germination is fast. So are they slow or fast? Is it that germination is fast and then they seem to grow slow after that? A little more specific would help. You said you started them "in the fall." Despite the weather, we are currently still in fall. If you started them (the basil) in Sept and they are not pretty sturdy little plants, with 3-4 pairs of true leaves, they are growing slower than they would in soil. If you started them the beginning of this month, they are doing well if they have any true leaves.

@pepperhead212, when you told me about that I kind of wondered because Oasis is kind of dense. Do you think that is the problem? I have no experience with it so I don't really know.

What if you drill a hole through the Oasis and refill the hole with the crumbs (or coir?) then sow the seeds?

The oasis comes out of the box of one inch cubes, 162 cubes to a sheet. One sheet fits a long tray with a little room to spare. When the sheets are put in the tray they are thoroughly saturated so aid wicking. A 1/4 inch drip tube line is taken off the main line. and passed through a hole in the tray and into the top of the tray and bottom waters the cubes constantly keeping the tray wet. The tray is also tilted slightly to help with the return back to the hydro tank. The seedling trays are in the sunniest part of the hydro house. Pelleted seeds are used since they are easier to handle to get one seed in a plug. Most of the seedlings are ready to go out into the rail, aero, or gravel beds in a couple of weeks. If the plugs are not flat on the bottom it does not matter in the gravel or hydroton beds but they will not sit upright in the rail or aeroponic tower.

The seedling trays are being run off the same hydro system as the rails so the water contains the nutrients and does not need to be supplemented. Constant flow in the trays prevents problems from stagnant water conditions and the tilted trays make sure that not too much water sits at the bottom of the cubes all of the time.

https://www.superiorgrowers.com/oasisr-r ... edium.html

rainbowgardener wrote:I'm not following. Your concern is that things go slower in the Oasis cubes (since I don't do hydro, I had to look up what those are) and then you said germination is fast. So are they slow or fast? Is it that germination is fast and then they seem to grow slow after that? A little more specific would help. You said you started them "in the fall." Despite the weather, we are currently still in fall. If you started them (the basil) in Sept and they are not pretty sturdy little plants, with 3-4 pairs of true leaves, they are growing slower than they would in soil. If you started them the beginning of this month, they are doing well if they have any true leaves.

I was inexact when I said "fall" ( ), and it wasn't even as the seasons changed, so I can't use that as an excuse.

Most of the seeds I planted in the oasis were on 10-25, and they did germinate quickly. And besides putting one in the hole in the cube, I poked a bunch of them into the surface of the cube, and most germinated. But after germinating quickly, they didn't grow fast, with only the parsley showing roots coming through the cube a month later. The Genovese compact basil is the best of the ones I haven't moved:


The aromata is also starting to show some growth, the best ones being those I moved into the hydroton from the surface of the oasis. Some looked like they were growing roots on the surface, so I figured I just pull them off, and not many roots were broken, and they recovered very fast.


I'm probably just being impatient, as I'm more used to getting basil plants from cuttings! Here's the largest Thai basil, to show you what I mean, along with several other things growing around it.


As imafan26 noted, these cubes are more for ebb and flow systems; I only got them because a place was going out of business, and I paid next to nothing for them! They are incredibly light, but it seems the roots are having a harder time getting through them than through coir, so I might try applestar's idea of drilling a hole for the coir, and leave a thin shell. The main reason I was trying these (besides the next to nothing price! LOL) was the fact that they seemed cleaner, w/o coir plugging up the filter. I'll have to try some side by side tests, to see if I can get them to work as well.

When the seedlings are planted out from the oasis, we only go by plant height and not by roots. Once the plugs are set in the hydroton or gravel beds, the roots come out mostly off the top of the plug rather than through it. It is best to put out the plugs when the tops have grown as crowding in the tray will limit growth.

Interesting - I have never seen the roots come through the top, only the sides and bottom. Mine are in deepwater systems, but I'm not sure what difference that would make; only that the cubes weren't designed for DW. Some basils are starting to take off now, but the dill and others are still lagging behind.

Today I am going to get some coir rehydrated, and ready to put in the pots, and I'll get some things planted in it, to compare the growth rates.

Well, maybe I should look again. It seemed like I keep pulling the oasis cube out with roots growing above it.