Clones arnet looking so good...

[Grateful D]

hey everyone i am in the process of my grow and i just took several clones of three new york city diesel plants on monday night. I took the cuttings with sterile scissors and used a sterile razor blade to cut 45 degree cuts under water and dipped them in root tech rooting hormone and stuck them into plugs. all the cuts are 3-4 inches and they all seem to be drooping pretty bad, i dont know if this is normal or not. i have them in a humidty dome with a heating mat underneath and i have been spraying them reguraly. i cut some of the leaves off, and cut most of the remaning ones in half. they are under a 2 foot t5 i got from the grow store, which is hung about 6 inches above the cuttings. it is on 24 hours a say. i would really like some help to save my cuttings. is there anything else i should do? or is there anything i am doing wrong? or do they look alright. i hope i provided enough info. any help wold be apperciated. thanks

 

[B. Friendly]

looks like they wilted, did the medium dry out at some point??
I would bet that the root zone is black and dying???

 

[Grateful D]

the medium didnt dry out completley ever, though it got a little dryer than i would have liked. i pulled a couple out quick and looked at the tips and they seem to be alright. there is no root growth yet, they are only a couple of days old. is there any way to save them?

 

[B. Friendly]

ok then the only thing i can think of is heat. dont want to be over 85 degrees, probally best around 78-81 degrees???

The light does look close to the dome. Maybe getting to much light, they only need a little. raise it 2 or 3 feet.

 

[Snype]

I remember the stressful days of having to clone this way. Glad I got my EZ Clone machine. Here's what I would suggest.

Keep your temps at 75-78, don't let them dry out at all. I like to open the holes a little on the lid so it's not 100% humidity. But that's when the whole tray is packed with clones. I'm not familiar with your medium either. I use rockwool. Good luck!

 

[B. Friendly]

I have been contimplating purchasing an EZ Clone?? How long does it take to clone, is it faster than the above.
You seriously recommend it

I remember the stressful days of having to clone this way. Glad I got my EZ Clone machine. Here's what I would suggest.

Keep your temps at 75-78, don't let them dry out at all. I like to open the holes a little on the lid so it's not 100% humidity. But that's when the whole tray is packed with clones. I'm not familiar with your medium either. I use rockwool. Good luck!

 

[PharmaCan]

First of all, quit misting the cuttings, you are only weighing them down and making them droop more. Mist the inside of the dome if you must mist something.

Secondly, you are killing them with too much light. They're cuttings, not plants! I'd have a 16 watt cfl over your dome until the cuttings are well rooted.

DO Not take the cuttings out of the rapid rooters!!! You have tiny fragile roots forming and you fuck them up by removing the cutting and putting it back.

Your Rapid Rooter could be bone dry right now and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to how the cuttings look or if they droop or not. The cutting doesn't have any roots, so what would it do with the moisture in the rapid rooter? About every three days give the rapid rooter a few shots from your mister. Once roots show, it's a daily chore until the clones are planted.

PC

 

[Grateful D]

thanks pharmacan that was the info i needed. ill stop misting the cuttings, and keep it just on the dome, i already rasied the light quite a bit

 

[hydr1]

some strains really lay down like that for about 4 days....I just chopped a full try of OG and they did that.

some strains and ALL my sour diesel...lay down when they are sleeping and or stressed...they have alot of personality and express thier feelings.

mist once a day...keep the root zone at 80 degrees and give them a week and a half.

good luck

 

[Matanuskan Flo]

the consensus i have seen on here is to NOT mist the clones, albeit very rarely. misting the dome is recommended. Misting can easily cause mold in these conditions, could intensify light in certain spots, & does weigh the fragile plant down like someone said.

 

[Grateful D]

thanks everyone hopefully they will be alright

 

[PharmaCan]

some strains really lay down like that for about 4 days....I just chopped a full try of OG and they did that.

some strains and ALL my sour diesel...lay down when they are sleeping and or stressed...they have alot of personality and express thier feelings.

good luck

If you make sure that your donor plant is really well hydrated before you cut her, you'll have a lot less of this.

PC

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

"you are killing them with too much light." This is the real problem you're having. Move the light WAY further away. Mine are almost three feet from T5's.

 

[theHIGHlander]

i wouldnt say your killing them with to much light,,,yeh you dont need that much but you can sure use that T5,,just lift it up a foot...

like pharm says above stop misting them (you dont need to do this)..mist the inside of the dome if anything..

i would say your probs are with your cuts being top heavy+ the thin stem can support the weight..nick the big leafs of,,give them a week to 10 days in the dome, venting it 1/2times a day.. after 10 days take ya dome of if any cuts fall over thave not rooted yet

keep it green
highlander

 

[Stond_Face]

I think PharmaCan is right on FWIW

Don't forget about temps. If you are using the heating mat without one of those thermostat controllers, it WILL get too hot.

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

Plants 'lay down' because they're transpiring more water than they can replace. There's lots of possible causes, but genetics are not one of them. Light too intense, low humidity, too much leaf area (prune leaf ends first) are the main reasons.

 

[PharmaCan]

Plants 'lay down' because they're transpiring more water than they can replace. There's lots of possible causes, but genetics are not one of them. Light too intense, low humidity, too much leaf area (prune leaf ends first) are the main reasons.

I couldn't agree with you more, however, some strains do have softer stems than others, and some strains consume much more water than others. I've been doing some side-by-sides with my clones lately, trying to gauge exactly what's the best hydration level for the donor plants at the time of cutting. It turns out that fully hydrated donor plants are the best donors. (DOH - who'd a thunk, huh? lol) I grow in coco, so a little extra watering for a day or two is no big deal. I also water a couple of hours before I cut. My practice all along has been to make sure the donor plants are well hydrated, and I put out some pretty nice clones with few problems and a pretty high success rate. My experiments kinda confirmed that this was the best practice. When the mothers weren't really well hydrated, I had high incidence of stem rot, damping off and stem mold, as well as cuttings that just fell over and died. I don't really keep track but I'd guess my usual success rate is around 95% - with the clones from less-hydrated mothers I was down in the 70%'s. Pretty pathetic! lol

PC

 

[Easygrowing]

Right MR.Greengenes

 

[hydr1]

Plants 'lay down' because they're transpiring more water than they can replace. There's lots of possible causes, but genetics are not one of them. Light too intense, low humidity, too much leaf area (prune leaf ends first) are the main reasons.

geneticly the diesel and the og I run has bigger floppier leaves and tends to be really dramatic when they are in shock.

no matter how good the conditions are...these two strains tend to do it more than others...after a day or two they perk up though.

 

[Mr. Greengenes]

Any time clones are looking shocked, you can make some kind of improvement in your system. They should look fat, green and healthy all the way from the time their cut to rooted. If they're laying down, that means they're transpiring more water than they can replace. Did I say that already? Certain things play heavily into that transpiration rate. Light is probably the first one, with humidity second. As light gets stronger, the plant has to move more water through it's leaves. At some point, the rootless stem can't keep up with that, and the cut wilts. If you lower humidity in the 'dome', the cut has to transpire more. At some point, the humidity can be low enough that the plant can't keep up with transpiration, and it wilts. The leaf area remaining on the cut regulates the transpiration. Less leaf area, less transpiration. Cutting the leaf ends slows transpiration and prevents wilting. Genetics can have some hand in all of this, but if you look closer, you'll probably see that the main differences are coming from such things as the amount of leaf area on this cut compared to that, which of course, can be a result of genes in the first place. In other words, some very bushy plants need to have more leaf taken off to root as easily as a lanky one. The differences are genetic, but a simple slice here and there evens out the playing field.