soil or coco for my holidays?

[Lepreschone]

Hi folks,

Ready for morning-brainstorming time?! OK here goes.
My indoor growbox has room for a maximum of 3 Ugro coco slabs.
I took cuttings off my last grow and rooted them in soil (1L pots). Now that my grow has been harvested, I'm wondering whether I could/should transplant the cuttings in new slabs or keep them in soil.

Thing is, in about 5-6 weeks from now, I will be away from home for 2 weeks. I can store about 40-45L of water and use an automatic watering system, but would the plants make it? How many plants? Should I use only one slab? Should I use soil? Should I keep my plants outside?
I was thinking I could trim the plants heavily just before going away to shock them for a few days and reduce water needs.
I would also stick to a small light to prevent heat and minimize water needs. I was thinking 90-150W LED or 125W CFL (I have these already).

On one hand, slabs are good because they are "wrapped", so not much evaporation. But coco cannot dry, coco likes drain, coco needs nutes, coco needs proper pH...
I would prefer to use coco, but I'm not sure I can.

Also, I haven't decided whether the plants should be in veg or bloom during my leave...

The strains involved are small-sized indica-dominant, short flowering. The slabs are Ugro. The nutes are Canna coco A+B.


Cheers!

PS: I have many more plants in soil outside, so I'm not worried about possibly losing these plants, but I'd like to try that away-indoor experiment if at all possible.

 

[Lepreschone]

Nobody tried transplanting from soil to coco slab?

I guess I could use a bottomless geotextile pot and put it on top of a slab, but I'm thinking that with each watering, the soil will erode onto the coco and ruin it somehow...

 

[Mikell]

I've gone coco to soil, but not the other way around. It's been done before with success. My OCD would have me lightly breaking rootballs up and washing as much soil off under a tap or in a large bucket of water. Any sort or beneficial root product if you have it.

 

[Lepreschone]

Hi there,

With regular coco, I could wash the soil away from the rootball and transplant in the coco, but with a slab... I can't see myself doing that.

 

[Mikell]

I should stop skim - reading one day.

Suppose if the cuttings weren't very developed it would work. Though it doesn't sound that way. If you're not stuck on the idea of a slab, why not just use the coir?

 

[Dready_jake]

Aren't the blocks supposed to be hydrated and broken up?

 

[Lepreschone]

The slabs are meant to be used as is (wrapped), the advantage being that the medium is not exposed to air/light/bugs/..., the disadvantage being that you can't look at your roots (and hardly move the slabs around).

I suppose I could break them up and add a filter in the "slab pots" so that the coco doesn't go down the drain, but it's not really designed for that and I imagine it would make a mess somehow...clogging, root tangling, or coco drying perhaps... Doesn't sound like the best plan for my two weeks leave

Guess I'll take new cuttings off them if I want to stick to the slabs, and keep them in soil otherwise!