How to dispose of rockwool cubes and plant material?

Indoor Growing
#1

Ok, I accumulate already too much 4" rockwool cubes. Problem is that I dont know how to dispose of them safely. The cubes have a stem with eazy starter plugs inside and the top of the rockwool is covered green with algae. And of course the cube is full of roots. Around the cubes sides is the grodan paper.

How can I dispose many of these rockwool cubes? Does rockwool burn in the wood oven? I guess not…

Also what about the plant materials. Leaves, too sick or too small plants, which I had to cut, where to dispose of them? If I put that in the wood oven, probably I would run into trouble with my neighbours? Maybe bury it in the garden???

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#2

Iv recently thought of this as well iv thought about tearing them up and using them filler material in potted plants or aeration aides in different types of media will be interesting others thoughts on the subject.

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#3

Rockwool dont burn, so the wood burner will only take care of roots and stem.
It’s not decomposable either, but it’s made from melted rocks.

Personally I toss my clone cubes in my compost in the yard, without plastic wraper as thats removed then I pot the clone.
Over time as I turn the compost, it’s broken into smaller peices and eventualy will be mixed into the compost soil.

Another option, would be a compost shreader, dry the cubes and remove the plastic wrapper.
Toss the cubes into the compost shreader, and just dispose of the bags with shredded rockwool n roots at the local dump/recycling center. Opening a bag like that, will look like old nasty insulation.

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#4

Might serve as a microbe habitat as well in organic setups my guess they’d be a pretty good moisture reservoir that the roots could tap into as well .

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#5

Before we were legal here I used to go for bike rides through the woods with a small bag of leaves etc in my backpack. Hop off the trail for 2 seconds to ‘take a pee’ and dump them out in nature.

Never had rockwool, but I’d probably break it up/shred it and find somewhere discreet to chuck it

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#6

hmmm… seems like i ran into a problem. Is there another medium which I can use for flood and drain with many small plants which I can reuse or dispose after without much problems? I have a garden that nobody can see into. So if it would be soil or decomposable I could mix it in there. But I dont want to put rockwool continually in my garden…

Edit:
If I put it in the garden, will it decompose somehow? Or i there an acid or something which makes it decomposable? How does a shredder which you would use for rockwool look like?

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#7

A while back, I was at a grow shop when a customer came in and asked if she could throw her rockwool in their dumpster. It appeared to me that she was a “regular” customer and had done this before. They told her it was no problem, and she proceeded to throw a bunch of large black trash bags full of rockwool in their dumpster.

So give your local grow shop a call and ask if you can dump your rock wool in their dumpster. Of course, it helps if you’re a “regular”, and if you let your rockwool dry out before loading it in the trash bags.

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#8

I’d research making Mapito out of your used rock wool blocks , and reuse it !

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#9

hmmm… I think the shops here are surveilled or if you give police any reason they will raid the shop…

#10

is it with mapito a different sort of growing than ebb and flood? Maybe I could recycle my mapito always.

With the rockwool cubes I can’t do that because when I clean them of the roots then I would destroy the cubes…

#11

I toss it right into the compost pile. There they live until they finally disintegrate.

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#12

I historically had much more of a problem dealing with waste, I used to have to find somewhere to dump many litres of used compost but then I shifted to Rockwool and found that to be just as much of a problem, and more obvious to boot.

I decided to rid myself of the problem entirely by not using any medium at all. I have lengths of gutter making multiple NFT trays with bare roots in running nutrient solution.

Pull out the roots and put them into the compost bin. Clean the gutter and trays, refill.

For stability, I use the neoprene discs that come with the aeroponic rooter. I just leave the cutting in the disc that was holding it before and adjust the height so the roots are in the solution and the plant is vertical. The gutter has tops made from the box section lids that you get for NFT trays, with small holes for the clones to go into. When the plants get larger they burst out of the discs but by that time they are large and supported by plastic coated fencing.

Then the only waste is a few small black neoprene discs that easily get lost in household waste.

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#13

@MicroDoser, pretty discription there, any chance you can throw up a picture or 2?

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#14

Surveilled, huh? Geez, if that’s true, I hope you don’t buy from any shops there, because if they’re surveilled, the cops already have your name and address. Heck, they might be surveilling you right now! If there was only some way you could contact your local shop and see what they have to say, but at this point, any communications you might attempt could be compromised; as could the employees/owner of the shop… :spy:…:scream:…:dizzy_face:…:smirk:

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#15

20180404_203243.jpg2764×3685 2.5 MB

20180404_203252.jpg2764×3685 2.33 MB

20180412_115052.jpg2764×3685 2.4 MB

This is an image from before I started using the neoprene discs for support. After upgrading my pump, the plants started getting pulled down a bit when the roots grew.

20180327_194155.jpg750×1000 676 KB

On a good cycle I can get 1.3GPW with HPS in 11 weeks from the time the clones enter the system to the point they get cut.

The aeration with this method is pretty incredible. I have changed the stopcocks to be plastic ones, the metal ones leached copper.

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#16

I am curious how your compost looks. Can you post a picture of it? How long it takes rockwool to disintegrate?

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#17

Rock wool does not decompose, but it breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces over time.

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#18

Just dry the cubes out, in the sun, and then you can pulverize them. As already stated, rockwool is just rock, so it won’t decompose. But it will get bone dry and can be easily crumbled.

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#19

Here’s a thought how about just throwing them in to a nice bed if coals and burn out the roots then reuse them already sterilized it would work wouldn’t it? Not sure if they’d loose the porosity but maybe worth a shot!

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#20

clay pebbles …

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