My biggest issue, like I said, is the darn humidity thing here in the winter. Its just too darn dry. I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with the whole humidity thing in the winter. It seems to be such a fine line when using the domes - the clones end up too wet/humid or too dry. I end up propping up one end of the dome so that they arent too wet in there... I swear I've never ever had issues with something as simple as this...*lol* I'm at the point where I'm just taking way more than I need, knowing that some of them are inevitably going to end up rooting... jerry./
Jerry Having nothing to do with cannabis, I had to build a rooting chamber a few years back for some special plants under a contract basis with a large nursery. These plants would definitely fall into the 'hard to root' category. Here's what I did which worked and didn't cost much at all. Build a box with white walls. Use whatever lighting system you have been told to use. I'm not going to go there. You want a cover on the box (removable) to contain to some degree the moist air. In the chamber an important component is humidity. Here's the easiest and least expensive way that I know to get you there. Go to any department store and buy a humidifier. You want to get a model that has a hose and not a fan. Drill a hole one side of the box to accommodate the humidifier hose. Drill a smaller hole(s) on the other side of the box for some ventilation. Buy one of the cheapest timers you can find at Home Depot - you want the type that use the little plastic pins (2 different colors for ON and OFF) and set it up so that the humidifier comes on about every 2 hours for 10 - 15 minutes. There's your humidity issue resolved. The rest I'll stay out of. HTH LD
if you have the room in your space add a small saucer of water. same in your grow space if that also is a problem for you. some gardeners take a drip container/overflow saucer, layer it with small gravel, fill it with water and set their container right on top of the gravel. it helps keep things moist. might give it a try.
Hey there jerry. My dome has vent/windows on it. When I first take cuts, they are mostly closed and the dome has moisture beaded on it. I try to look at my cuts every day, even twice a day. After about three days I open the vents more, keeping a close eye on how the cuts are doing. The leaves will generally tell me what they need and after a bit you can tell when they need more moisture or more dry. At about day 5 or so the dome comes off, but they still get misted. Like LD if i have to wet the cuts while the dome is on, I spray the dome, not the plants to increase humidity. However I rarely have to do that as the pump in my cloner is constantly spraying water and th ehumidity form that gets into the dome area.
If you want to clone organically, why not use your favorite soil mix and water and stop fooling with all the gels and powders. LD has listed many ways to add hormones to the cutting if you really have to do this to feel good about your propagation. Marijuana, roots very easily if the water relations are kept in balance in the rooting media, even when other environmental factors are less than optimal. A well drained potting soil, bottom heat and some good observations and lots of practice are all it takes to clone easily. Use your favorite soil mix and change the drainage components ratio to 60/40 or 70/30, drainage amendments to organic media. Use actively growing branch tips, not hard woody stems for cuttings. Two to three inches long is plenty for good cuttings. When making cuttings, smaller is usually better. I always cut the fan leaves in half to reduce transpiration losses and allow for more air circulation between cuttings. Remove any leaves from the node(s) under the soil line. Marijuana will root in the inter-nodal sections, but it is best to bury at least one node under the soil line. When making multiple cuttings, uniform sizing of each cutting is helpful to ensure success. Bottom heat will speed things up if the soil is kept ~75F. Keep the soil media damp, but not soaked. The first few days mist the cuttings, not the soil, 2-4 times as needed. When watered properly the cuttings will stay standing up without the need for domes or other covers. Smaller pots are better for rooting than larger ones, 2 1/2" or less is best. Try to keep the leaves from drooping onto the soil media or the plastic trays while the rooting is starting. The biggest problem people have when trying to clone is too much water in the rooting media. If you could squeeze the soil ball and water dripped out it is probably too wet. The soil should be similar to a lightly wrung sponge, not dripping but uniformly moist. With a little practice and close observation it should not take long to get 90% takes with nothing more than the pot, soil and a cutting. Most cuttings will root in 10-14 days but may take longer if temperatures are cooler or the cutting stems are too woody. PW
I take a cut and put it in a glass of water for about 1/2 an hour. I then trim what I want off and put it in a wet rapid rooter cube. I put the rapid rooter clone in my veg room. No 'dome', no misting, no hormones, nothing. I use water only. Roots in 10-14 days. I've found the more I try to do, the more it goes wrong. I leave them out in fan driven air, with humidity of around 40%. When I use heating mats, the stems get some sort of rust. The drier you let the cube get between waterings the better. I've started to get really cheap. I 'reuse' the rapid rooter cubes. I pull the clone out after about a week. If it has little root nubs, it goes straight into my potting soil and gets watered when dry.
Be clean. Be gentle. Use sharp scissors. Cut sharp 45. Put them in your cube and either get a dome over them on just a sandwich bag rubber banded around container. I grow at 7600 ft and I don't have any problem with drying. I don't mist I just pour bout a tablespoon of water and bio root. But the least amount of stress the better. Get them right back under lights. Good luck
That reminds me. I don't even clean the scissors (ordinary kitchen shears) before I take a cut/trim. Every time I 'sanitize' a razor, I lose the clone. When I don't, I don't.
FYI, those little peat cubes seemed to work well so far. I got a bunch of the clones put into those little cubes showing roots. The only thing I added to the water was a little of the "Lily of the Desert" Aloe Vera juice, and then a couple days ago when I hadda water anyhow, I put a little bit of kelp tea to them as I had some extra and figured it probably wouldn't help. Stankie and Mtn Man, thanks for the input.
Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I'm bored and waiting to watch the Donkeys. I'm cloning a skunk-cross male I have, so I thought I'd take a pic or 2 to show what I do. I'm a small time grower, so only need a clone here or there. Planning on keeping this cut around as a dad. My main problem in rooting cuts in the past has been stem rust/stem being digested under the soil line, so that is how my method is tailored now. Everybody seems to have a little bit different method, so whatever works, eh? I take a Rapid Rooter cube and soak it in water. My RR cubes are completely dry. I take a cut after I put the cube to soak. After I cut the clone, I cut it at 45* under a node, then pull down on the leaves right by the base (to expose the inner flesh), then I trim the first set of leaves. I soak this 'finished' cut for about 30 min -1 hour in spring water from a bottle. Pretty standard to this point. After soaking the cut and the cube, I 'expand' the hole in the cube with a bamboo chopstick, then insert my prepared cut. I do not use any hormones or additives besides water. I took this picture to show how I trim a cut for rooting. IMO, too many people who have trouble with cuts drying out leave way, way too many leaves on the cuts. From what I've witnessed, the fewer the leaves on a cut the less it tries to grow without roots and the quicker it gets to growing-out roots. If you notice, I tear off a small piece of the corner of the cube and stuff it down the hole to better secure the cut and to better block light from getting down in the hole. After the cut is in the cube, I put it in a glass and into my veg room. I guess I do use a dome of sorts, but it is not to really keep any humidity in. It is just to keep the direct fan blown air off the cut. There is very sufficient air movement in my veg closet, so I use this as a wind block and as a light blocker. This container is actually just the bottom of a spinach package you would buy from the grocery store. I use the label to block the direct light, and the package itself to block some air movement, for about the first 3-4 days. In my past, if I'm gonna lose a cut, I'm gonna lose it in the first 3 days. If I make it past there, I pretty much am guaranteed root nubs in another 7 or so days. I'll try to take a pic of when I check for nubs. If I see nubs/tiny roots I plant the clone in some soil. I am trying to avoid planting the clone with the RR cube still around the roots. I'm cheap and don't want to buy anymore, so I'm trying to reuse them. Plus, I'm just not sure WTF they are made from
so, i just picked up some aloe gel from my local health store. some big aloe extract bottles were damn near $30 (jesus christ!) luckilly, there were some that were much cheaper. i grabbed two bottles.....one i picked up is just aloe but the other one i picked up sounded pretty interesting to me. it seems like it has lots of beneficial ingredients...other than the bisabolol, which i think may create some problems for me. and the ethanol. heres the product & what is in it. tell me if ya guys think i should use it to clone, or if it should go in the medicine cabinet: Ingredients: Aloe Barbadensis, Anthemis Nobilis (chamomile) extract, bisabolol, caprylyl glycol, cucumber extract, dehydroaxanthan gum, dimethicone, bladderwrack extract, ginkgo biloba extract, lavender oil, sea kelp extract, sweet clover leaf extract, panax ginseng extract, phenoxyethanol, polysorbate 20, sodium pca, symphytum officinale (comfrey) extract, vegetable glycerin -OSUB edit: your method looks good stanky but i personally just dont like those root riot cubes. used em before and im just not a big fan...idk. when i did use them it was in my old house, which was 100 years old and full of mold, and the cubes always got all nasty (thank god im outta that place.)
What are the cubes made of, and why do you prefer for the plant to put out nubs into it, before you transfer to soil, rather than put the cutting into soil for it to put out nubs into the soil... sorry, that was probably confusing...why do you like the rubbery looking cubies over soil? What do you gain from this method over just using soil only? did the soil method give you problems so that you went to the cubies?
heres the product & what is in it. tell me if ya guys think i should use it to clone, or if it should go in the medicine cabinet: Does your clone have rough hands? You would do better to grow an aloe plant, and just pull a leaf at cloning time, i guess honey works too. Other than that, you could use 100% aloe juice or powdered aloe vera for teas and sprays like LD does.....MIW
they do look a little chapped........... cool. i have an aloe plant and organic raw honey. i guess i just like to save it speciffically for burns and stuff...but for my clones ill take a leaf off. i can always get another one. i think im gonna use a little bit of both honey and aloe from the leaf. the house is quite dry in the winter, and my lips are cracking and my skins pretty dry. ill make use of the two products i purchased... -OSUB
[quote name='"SkunkPatronus"']What are the cubes made of, and why do you prefer for the plant to put out nubs into it, before you transfer to soil, rather than put the cutting into soil for it to put out nubs into the soil... sorry, that was probably confusing...why do you like the rubbery looking cubies over soil? What do you gain from this method over just using soil only? did the soil method give you problems so that you went to the cubies?[/quote] The peat plugs allow the clone to get alot of air..makes the roots develop super quick.. super handy for hydro setups.or whatever. Plus its easy to clone 30, maybe 50 clones at a time w/ those.
They aren't 'peat' plugs, they are a rubbery substance with nutes added to them. Cups of dirt are just as easy to use, plus there is no danger of ripping off anything that has grow into the plugs when you remove them to put the clone into the soil...that's why I was asking what the 'gain' was from using this method, the 'gain' being something better than the soil method... I can see 'this is what I have always done' being a good reason, but they didn't have these rubber thingies that long ago.
SkunkPatronus What Stankie is using are the RapidRooter (type) product that is manufactured in Springfield, Oregon. They're made from wood by-products. The 'rubbery' effect comes from the cellulose. A couple of years ago they began to inoculate them with endomycorrhizal spores from Mycorrhizal Applications. They work. I've used them when getting cuttings ready for the clinics and other MMJ patients. They're not my first choice but they will get the job done. Like you, why not potting soil? Anything is better than the Peat Pots which are held together with some kind of netting. That's got to be really good for new roots, eh? LD
My cuts always die off if I put them straight in soil. RR cubes seem to make it easy as they seem to be very, very forgiving regarding moisture/humidity. Whenever I try to root straight into soil the stem that is below the soil line literally gets eaten by microbial life. The stem looks like a green slime when I check it. With the cubes, just give them a little water every 2-3 days. I had the cube go all the way dry last time I tried. The cut was limp and looked lifeless. After I soaked it in water the cut eventually came back and rooted faster than the ones that were wet the whole time. This is how I used to do it with a 'bubble cloner' as well. Use the bubble cloner till I got root nubs or tiny little hairs, then put them in soil as soon as possible. The RR cubes are easier than the bubble cloner, by far.