Root Question

I want to set up a flood tray with my plants in net pots. I didnt want to fill the whole tray with hydroton just in the net pots themselves. Will it hurt the plant if the roots grow out the sides of the net pots and are exposed to light??

Light kill roots.

so fill the tray with hydroton?

Anyy inert media that does not float will work. Most inert medias even work better than hydroton as hydroton aholds fertilizer as aly ts as it is too porous. Gravel works well but it is quite heavy. Coares sm and, broken pottery crushed glass. Marbles, cubed rubber from recycled tires. Many things work.

I want to set up a flood tray with my plants in net pots. I didnt want to fill the whole tray with hydroton just in the net pots themselves. Will it hurt the plant if the roots grow out the sides of the net pots and are exposed to light??

Click to expand...

Yes, this is fine. However, you'd be better off just using regular pots with holes in the bottom with your particular setup.

Light kill roots.

Click to expand...

This is a fallacy, light will not kill roots. Low humidty/lack of water will kill roots. I have had roots extend up to 6" out of the holes in my pots on my flood table and continue to live throughout the grow in areas where the table stays moist/wet. Sometimes algae will grow on them, but this is of no consequence as long as you provide sufficient nutrients.

No more fallacy that any differing opinion. In general roots do not do well when exposed to light. Sat yinglight kills the palnts is just a generality. Light over heats them, it dehydrates them, it encourages algae growth on them. In general it usually kills them. Due to all the problems associated with delicate roots being exposed to strong light you wil have a hard time finding many wideky accepted growing systems where the roots are not at least shaded and usually they are behing an opague surface. Plant roots expsed to light are a PITA to protect against death yet alone expecting them to perform as well as those that are not.

At time if I said the suns produce light many of the people on this forum would argue that was not true.

what about the light root pruning the plant, so as to use the light to serve a kind of purpose like that spinout product that folks in the advanced thread like uncle ben experimented with? I hear that root pruing in the pot but of course letting the topside go wild gives a bushier plant in the same size pot because their is no rootbound issue. Like the plant has to keep gorwing cuz it thinks it has all kinds of room and the other roots grow more dense. I am wondering as I got some extra netpots that might be fun to put to use.

Fatman is right on, many people who run sog setups in trays dont have this issue simply from the pots being tight and the canopy blocking the rest out, if your plants are spaced out throw some white poly over the tray, this will keep the root system nice and moist

No more fallacy that any differing opinion.

Click to expand...

It's not an opinion, it's fact based on observation.

In general roots do not do well when exposed to light.

Click to expand...

This is probably more accurate than "light kills roots", however light isn't the real issue. Low humidty/moisture and/or lack of water is what kills roots. Where there is intense light, there is usually low humidity and/or lack of moisture and this is why light is associated with killing roots, but the light itself does not kill the roots. I was simply making the point to let Growcheese know that he doesn't have to worry about the roots being exposed to light. Roots will air prune due to low moisture/humidity but they will not prune due to light alone.

Sat yinglight kills the palnts is just a generality. Light over heats them, it dehydrates them, it encourages algae growth on them. In general it usually kills them. Due to all the problems associated with delicate roots being exposed to strong light you wil have a hard time finding many wideky accepted growing systems where the roots are not at least shaded and usually they are behing an opague surface.

Click to expand...

This is why I suggested using regular pots for his setup instead of using net pots, to conserve moisture in the pot.

Maybe I'm being a nit-picker, but I simply wanted to emphasize that roots have no specific aversion to light, it's the lack of moisture that is the problem.

in my experience light is bad for roots. you could make some kind of cover or light shield for the tray.

Fine, the heat is produced by the light and the heat tends to dry out the roots and that "really" kill the roots not the light. A fan blowing on exposed roots doesn't kill roots it is the fault of the air not being moist. Right I get it. But the light that causes the action does not do the killing, just as the fan does not. Right I got that. That is sorta like guns don't kill. The people pulling the guns trigger kill. No that would mean the light and fan killed. Sorta like not eatting does not lead to death. A lack of nutrition leads to death. Oh it all makes a lot of sense now.

lol thanks guys