Going to be taking clones from my mother plant and putting them into a 1.5 gallon clone box. Should I give them nutrients or just leave them alone for the first week? Pictures of mother plant will be included below.
We use Clonex products for cloning. The Clonex rooting gel is the best stuff I know of for taking cuttings. There is also a Clonex cloning solution that you mix up and use to feed them while they're creating roots. Always take your clones from the lower, more tender growth. It just sprouts out roots much faster than the older, more woody tops. We cut below a node on a 45 degree angle, dip the cut in Clonex rooting gel and put into Rapid Rooter antibacterial rooting cubes. They're worth the expense over rock wool because it makes it much harder for them to get root rot. I've discovered over the years that keeping the cubes saturated for the first 3 days is good. But as they get on into day 4, I start to let them dry out a bit each time before rewetting. Keeping them saturated with the Clonex solution is feeding them. So if you let them begin to dry out a bit, it forces the roots to look for some food instead of it just being there all the time at their disposal. I also start taking the humidity dome off around day 3...first for a few hours at a time, and then leaving it off completely about day 5. When I take the dome off, I start exposing them to more light. At first, they need more heat than light, so putting a heating pad under them on low is something commonly done. Once they stabilize, around day 3 or 4, and actually start building roots good, they can take more light. It's sort of an advancement through the week. We get roots by day 6 or 7 99.9% of the time and I rarely lose one. You don't have to keep mother plants either. I take new clones off the ones I'm vegging to restock the flower room. I just take the little sprouts that grow out at the bottom of the plant. They're tender and root easily. Since I trim up the stalk a bit on each of my plants anyway, it's just using something that I would normally chop off and toss. The thing with letting them begin to dry out some also goes toward preventing root rot. When I started out, I was using rock wool and every time I took a batch, I ended up with root rot. The Rapid Rooter cubes stopped that and that's why I use them. But now, looking back on it all and knowing what I know now, it's the letting them dry out a bit after the first 3 days or so that would've prevented the root rot in the rock wool. Cloning is something you kinda have to figure out for yourself. But hopefully, some of this will help you along. It's really the easiest part of the process once you get used to it and learn how to work with them. These are weeds anyway. It is their mission to grow and they'll try their best to do it under the most awful of circumstances. I took a leaf once just to see if I could get it to root and in 6 days, it did. So cloning isn't hard. Just kinda use these tips here and hopefully, you'll have good success with it. Best of luck. TWW
You can also use Aloe Vera juice (from a fresh Aloe plant) to dip a cutting in..works just like the chemical stuff albeit a few days slower