I did not know those plugs were not peat. I thought you referring to a different product skunk, because they definitely are not made of rubber. i wasnt aware of any fertilization on them.. also i tried cloning directly in soil and had poor results. These things make it easy and they are pretty cheap. I find it wotks alot better if you use some kind of heating pad underneath the tray...
RapidRooters (the type) work. They work well. Think of them as training wheels perhaps. Once a gardener gets the process down and learns the most important thing in rooting a cutting - leave them alone - then the mystery is gone and one can expand to do this like it's been done for over 3,000 years. In the mean time, spray the inside of the dome and not the cutting. Keep the moisture level as beaded as possible on the inside surface. Humidity not moisture is the goal for the actual cutting. LD
Oh, ok. So they are wood product cellulose sponges with VAM...well that's an improvement in what I was thinking, I saw some in the nursery (they are trying to take a chunk from the local hydro folks) and they felt like rubber...so I laughed and put them back and didn't much think about it until now. I kinda like the control of what I put int he soil I use too. Totally agree, leaving them all alone is key We do all like to fuck with stuff don't we!
You can make the RapidRooters work better by simply mixing up an Aloe Vera juice mix and soak them in that for several minutes and gently squeeze out the excess. That will give you additional fungicide benefit, enzymes (which is what really causes a plant shaft to push out roots), a verified rooting compound, etc. Again - they work and they work very well. Around here they sell them in bulk for $.25 each - something like that. Same thing with 1" Grodan Cubes. LD
SK 4x peat moss, 1x worm castings watered with Aloe Vera - massive root development. Can't get any cheaper than that! LOL LD
4x peat moss, 1x worm castings watered with alfalfa tea= massive root development. Probably pretty close. Willow tips in spring tho, I will go try the aloe next, I have a couple of happy ones. Thanks.
[quote name='"SkunkPatronus"']4x peat moss, 1x worm castings watered with alfalfa tea= massive root development. Probably pretty close. Willow tips in spring tho, I will go try the aloe next, I have a couple of happy ones. Thanks.[/quote] Could you explain more about what parts of the willow to use please? Just the new buds? I was thinking I could just soak some of the bark and maybe a small peice of willow root or branch in a serum to use along with Aloe. I don't want to wait till spring if I can. BeZ...V
BeZ Willow shoots = Salicyclic acid at medium levels Aloe Vera = Salicylic acid at uber levels Usually a gallon of a non-preservative product (like "Lily of The Desert" - aloe vera is a lily) will run around $24.00 per gallon. Rate of application is 1/4 cup to 1 gallon of water so a gallon will give you almost a year's worth even if you're a heavy user like myself and others. On the Lily of The Desert products, they have both preservative and non-preservative so keep that in mind. The ingredient that you do not want to see is 'Sodium Benzoate' but Potassium Sorbate is okay as well as Citric acid (best one, IMHO) HTH LD
...or avoid the one sodium hydroxide I'm guessing? That's what's in my lily of the desert aloe. -OSUB
I must have five bags of them. Everytime one of my grow friends buys or makes a cloner they give me their rooters. And I hand them out to new growers that I try to help. I'd give you a bag if you were close. I've been soaking the rooters in a weak kelp meal, humic acid and water mix, dip the cuts in whatever, plant the cut in the rooter that by now has been squeezed of excess water, and plant the rooter in straight pro mix. All this goes in a beer cup with holes in the bottom, and the fledglings gets a top dress of ewc. The youngins get watered, then go under a dome for a week or so. In that time they do not get water at all, but I spray the dome one or twice a day to keep the air humid. That's it, and most everyone I taught this to does well.....MIW
The growing tips are high in some auxin or another, more so than most plants because of the specifics of willows. salicylic acid besides...aspirin is an isolate of this, and it's what my mom and dad always used. The auxin thing is different, and ima going to play with them in the spring to see if it makes rooting happen faster.
I'm still gonna try this, too. The last time I used too many ewc's and made mud. In the meantime the little plugs worked well - not 100%, but well. There was mention a few posts back that some plugs contain VAM. I would think this would be useless until there are actual roots, at which time I would be more apt to use it then - at transplant, and not *during* rooting? Does this do any good during? Jerry.
Jerry The marketing blurb from the manufacturer is that by having these spores adjacent to the shaft will provide the earliest opportunity to get the new roots inoculated. That's their story and they seem to be sticking to it. The problem is that the product comes from Mycorrhizal Applications down in Grants Pass whose claims about some areas of endo are pretty amazing. Dr. Mike A. comes from the ecto side of things. The 1990's saw Dr. Mike at many symposiums around the world on reforestation. In that regard he's pretty much on target. In the past year there have been at least 3 articles in Acres USA Magazine written by Dr. Mike - it would appear that he has a far better handle on ecto vs. endo inoculation. He's pretty much up there with Advanced Nutrients in some of his claims about his products and the strains included. BioAg VAM is what I use. LD
Rooting can take 7-21 days, depending on methods used. I simply put clonex gel on the cut(45 deg and spliced down the middle and scraped on the side) and put into ph'ed water under CFL's. Works for me. I get roots in 10-14 days.
Not even close. There are no organic rooting products that I've ever found. Heck - you can't even find a single one that doesn't contain a warning about not using on food crops. Not organic - any food plant. I guess that since we don't make cannabis salads then it's okay to use it on the medicine you're going to smoke or extract the compounds from. Good eats! LD Alton Brown's Associate
Plant Tissue Culture Kit - Complete I'm getting me one of these because it's both easy and fun! It says so right on the web page! LD