Rockwool slab for soilless growing, 100 x 15 cm
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This Grodan Vital rockwool slab measures 100 x 15 x 7.5 cm and stays wrapped in a white film that limits algae. Once soaked in nutrient solution, it takes rooted growing blocks and carries tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers or aubergines through to harvest.
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The summary
- Dimensions: a 100 x 15 x 7.5 cm rockwool slab, in white film.
- Fruiting vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and aubergines grown soilless.
- How to prepare it: saturate it with nutrient solution, then place the blocks.
- What it provides: moisture spread throughout the slab and roots that settle into it quickly.
Inert grow medium slab for growing fruiting vegetables soilless
The Grodan Vital slab is a stone wool grow medium measuring 100 x 15 x 7.5 cm, around 11 litres, under a white UV-resistant film. Saturated with nutrient solution, it takes rooted Grodan blocks and carries tomatoes, peppers or cucumbers watered by drip emitters. In aquaponics, it serves a separate plant loop for a single season.
Large-scale soilless crops, tomatoes and cucumbers above all, are often grown on rockwool slabs laid out in rows, with each slab carrying several plants. The Grodan Vital slab measures 100 cm long, 15 cm wide and 7.5 cm thick, which is a little over 11 litres of grow medium. Its fibres are mineral, inert and hydrophilic, meaning they soak up solution without adding anything to it or holding anything back. You therefore keep complete control over what reaches the roots.
🧱 A block under white film
The slab is delivered wrapped in a white UV-resistant film. This film keeps the moisture inside, reflects light back towards the foliage and deprives algae of the light they need at the surface of the grow medium. Inside, capillary action spreads the water evenly through the whole thickness, so the roots find the same moisture at both ends of the slab. The grow medium also re-saturates quickly after drying out, and both its water content and its conductivity are easy to control through irrigation.
Drippers and a timer to control watering
A rockwool slab cannot be rescued with a watering can: it is managed with small, regular applications. A daily timer connected to the pump triggers several short waterings through the day, and you keep the slab moist without drowning it, even while you are away.
🍅 From rooted block to loaf
Saturate the block
Fill the nutrient solution film through the planting holes and let the block soak up the solution completely.
Opening the drainage
Once the slab is saturated, make a slit in the film at the bottom of one side to let the excess drain away.
Place the blocks
Place the rooted rockwool blocks over the openings in the film, evenly spaced.
Watering with a dripper
One dripper per plant, pushed into the block, keeps the whole block moist over the days.
Gloves and a mask for cutting
Rockwool fibres irritate the skin and airways when the slab is cut or torn dry. Wear gloves and a mask for any cutting, and dampen the slab before handling it.
Seedlings are started in rockwool seedling cubes, then moved into a 7.5 or 10 cm rockwool block, before going onto the slab: the Vital slab pairs with the Plantop propagation block from the same brand, so your roots move from one medium to the next without changing material. Allow three to four tomato, pepper or cucumber plants per 100 cm slab. The guide to growing tomatoes in aquaponics then covers pruning, training and pollination of these plants in detail.
🧪 Vertical fibres and water content
The fibres of the Vital slab are oriented vertically, which lets the roots grow down easily through its full depth, and the slab stays firm until the end of the season. They bind neither nutrients nor crop protection products: everything you apply stays available to the roots. You manage this grow medium through its water content, meaning the share of the slab's volume taken up by water, adjustable between 55 and 78% during the day, or 6.2 to 8.8 litres of water in the slab's 11.25 litres. Your irrigations, their number and their duration, set this value, and a sensor or simply weighing the slab lets you track it. The slab does not need to be rinsed before saturation.
🐟 Grow plugs and aquaponics
In aquaponics, a rockwool slab does not replace a media bed: it is run with drip emitters and drainage, whereas a bed of clay pebbles is flooded and houses the filtration bacteria. It does, however, have its place in a so-called decoupled installation, where the fish water goes to a growing loop that does not return to the pond. Your row of slabs can then receive this water through drip emitters, topped up if needed with potassium, iron and calcium, which fruiting vegetables consume in quantity. The calcium and magnesium supplement is used in this plant loop only. In a commercial greenhouse, the drainage water is recycled from the start of the season after disinfection; in your home installation, it is more simply sent back out to the garden.
🔄 A single-use grow medium
A rockwool slab serves you for one crop and is then replaced. Over the course of the season, salts from the solution and dead roots build up in it, and a slab reused as it is may pass diseases on to the next crop. Rockwool cannot be composted, but a used slab, once emptied of its roots, can lighten the soil of a flower bed. To limit salt build-up during cultivation, always let a little water run off through the drainage at each watering, and check the conductivity of the runoff from time to time.
📦 In the parcel
You receive a Grodan Vital slab of 100 x 15 x 7.5 cm, dry and packed in its white film, ready to be laid flat and then saturated. Light as long as it is not soaked, it weighs several kilos once full of water: place it from the outset in its final position, on a flat support sloping slightly towards the drainage side.
Technical specifications
The bread
- Dimensions
- 100 x 15 x 7.5 cmThat is roughly 11 litres of grow medium
- Material
- RockwoolInert, hydrophilic mineral fibres
- Envelope
- White anti-UV filmLimits algae and retains moisture
- Water distribution
- By capillary actionEven moisture from one end to the other
- Structure
- Vertical fibresThe loaf stays firm until the end of the season
- Controllable water content
- 55 to 78%That is 6.2 to 8.8 litres of water per block
Starting the crop
- Crops
- Tomato, pepper, cucumber, aubergine
- Preparation
- Saturation with nutrient solutionNo need to rinse beforehand
- Watering
- One dripper per plantSmall, repeated doses, with a little drainage
- Duration of use
- A crop
2 further specifications are available in the detailed view.
In the box
- 1 Grodan Vital rockwool slab of 100 x 15 x 7.5 cm in film
Dimensions, film, capillarity, crops and cutting precautions according to retailers' data sheets. Fibres, water content, rinsing and drainage: Grodan Vital data sheet and brochure.
Documents & manuals
Grodan Vital brochure
Fibre structure, controllable water content and recommended crops, in English.
Document not showing? Some publishers block display inside a frame, so open it in a tab.
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Frequently asked questions
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6 key questions
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