Bingo! BB gets my vote for "Clone Producer of the Month" with that post. 
Really appreciate you sharing.
Stay Safe!
Really appreciate you sharing.
Stay Safe!
For the clone-experts : Best commercial setup for moms/clones
- Thread starter Moppel
- Start date
have your mothers in a hydro setup such as a water-farm or DWC. they grow faster that way. easier to flush before taking clones if needed.
cloning is a personal preference... aero... plugs... rockwool... whatever works for you.
a diy hydro cloner can be fun to tinker with while you have traditional "plugs" rooting on the side. master both methods.
cloning is a personal preference... aero... plugs... rockwool... whatever works for you.
a diy hydro cloner can be fun to tinker with while you have traditional "plugs" rooting on the side. master both methods.
well... more and more manufacturers are making domes for their 2x2 & 2x4 ebb&flow tables. a couple 2x4 tables with rockwool or oasis cubes would make easy mass cloning.
also... Cloning Rack Tray by Microclone. trays designed to fit the commonly used shelves as shown in the picture, with E&F fittings. get yourself some propagation trays with the mesh bottom...
http://www.bghydro.com/BGH/itemDesc.asp?ic=TRCRT
also... Cloning Rack Tray by Microclone. trays designed to fit the commonly used shelves as shown in the picture, with E&F fittings. get yourself some propagation trays with the mesh bottom...
http://www.bghydro.com/BGH/itemDesc.asp?ic=TRCRT
V
Veg N Out
I run 4kW MH for mothers over an 8x8 space , I have 3 shelves and run 9 4 bulb T5s for rooting / pre veg. On the shelves I can root up to 300 clones at a time and veg out 192..I also believe that it is best to keep more medium sized plants rather than 1 large one or many many tiny ones as the donors....
I keep the room set to 79 degrees and shoot for the trays to be 75-78 degrees.
I keep the room set to 79 degrees and shoot for the trays to be 75-78 degrees.
i think your looking at things the wrong way... thats a huge space... lets go with your needs.... how many clones from how many moms at once??? thats the key...
bonsai moms rock and in a 2 foot mom you can easly have 30 cuttings... but they take time to train and take care of...
what are you trying to do here?
bonsai moms rock and in a 2 foot mom you can easly have 30 cuttings... but they take time to train and take care of...
what are you trying to do here?
thats a cool setup but to me its SCREAMS SEND ME TO PRISON!!!!well... more and more manufacturers are making domes for their 2x2 & 2x4 ebb&flow tables. a couple 2x4 tables with rockwool or oasis cubes would make easy mass cloning.
also... Cloning Rack Tray by Microclone. trays designed to fit the commonly used shelves as shown in the picture, with E&F fittings. get yourself some propagation trays with the mesh bottom...
http://www.bghydro.com/BGH/itemDesc.asp?ic=TRCRT
hehe though in a perfect world i like it...
just wanna find out if there is better ways as i have been doing always.
I like the effects of Infa Red Reptile heaters under my cubes/medium, it heats up the medium, not the air.
Place the mat under the tray, keep 2" of water in the tray bottom, keep the cubes/plugs above the water. Run the heater via a remote probe thermostat, put the probe in a cube/plug, put a thermometer in a cube/plug, adjust to 23, carry on rooting...
The heater warms the water and the meduim, plenty of fresh humidity from the 2" of water below means you can run with the propagator top more open/vented.
I have not run a side by side experiment with a "normal" heater, but the experiences with the infa red gives really good results.
For a larger scale setup, I would think about using an Ozone generator just for the air hygene, it kills pathogens and molds before they can start.
Click the link in my sig about Bonsai mums.
You don't need to be organic, but this is efficiency at its greatest.
You don't need to be organic, but this is efficiency at its greatest.
used to run large numbers of trays... kinda reduces your perspective to what really works... and what is really simple.
no domes... 6 hours of darkness & low light levels afterwards has always shut plant transpiration down to a minimum... no wilt... no damping off this way too. cloned in the lower 30's to upper 20's this way even... for rh. that's my special assertion for the thread... ;-)
u can fit 8 flats under an 8lamp t5 ballast too... only using the two outside bulbs the whole time... 4 bulbs total. used to rotate the outside trays inward & spin em 180' every other day... but that's 784 under a 4'x4' footprint. no domes... lol
Domes are overrated. I usually just take unrooted cuttings, set them in dixie cups of coir, and they root in 10 days. If you keep a decent portion of the stem below the soil line, they will not dry out. I never even mist them once! The key is to NOT DRENCH the planting media. I squeeze my preflushed coco as hard as i can before i put into the cups. This method allows me to cut out a transplanting step completely. After clones first root in the cups, its at least another week or two until they need transplanted. Depending on strain and light intensity. I used think domes were mandatory, now i understand they are like training wheels, but shitty ones at that. Ive had more mold/fungus/diseases under a dome than i ever had with the method i use now.
how long do you guys keep your moms pumping on average? im always concerned that a mother will lose vigor after a year or so....lately ive been culling my moms at 1 yr, right after i take some really healthy top branches for the new generation of moms...but then generational drift is also an issue..
Mothers only lose vigor if you dont keep them happy. Which is hard to do sometimes. People replant moms yearly because all the hacking away at the plant causes it to become unmanageable. People have kept strains (one plant) alive for 20+ years with proper plant and root pruning. I see no real reason to go to this kind of trouble, but it can be done. Degredation is not something that your going to notice. It slow happens after thousands, or hundreds of thousands and even possibly millions of generations of cuts. What most people see as "degredation" is in fact lack of care of either the cutting or parent plant it came from. You can take one of these uncared for plants, feed it nice and make her happy, then clone her 20 times and pick the best strongest one. You can regenerate "degenerated" strains this way.
@Moppel... Take a cutting with a stem that is about 3 or 4 inches long. Size doesnt matter, as the concept is the same. The main idea is to cut away all leaf matter on the the bottom 75 percent of the clone leaving just 2-3 fans on top (less the better imo). Then you take your palm tree looking clone and scarify 2-3 inches of the stem and use rooting hormone of your choice (or none at all). You now bury that 2-3 inches into your rooting media in a party cup so that the top of the clone is about level with the rim of the cup. At this point about 75% of the stem is underground and soaking in water to keep the plant happy until it can root.. I didnt believe this would work until i tried it. You will be surprised. Easy low maintenance. Just be sure to keep the media warm because temp plays a huge role in rooting time and percentage. Humidity does also, but we solved the moisture problem by burying a large portion of the stem. Like i said before, dont make the media too moist. Squeeze it until it starts just slowly dripping and then it should be good.
@Moppel... Take a cutting with a stem that is about 3 or 4 inches long. Size doesnt matter, as the concept is the same. The main idea is to cut away all leaf matter on the the bottom 75 percent of the clone leaving just 2-3 fans on top (less the better imo). Then you take your palm tree looking clone and scarify 2-3 inches of the stem and use rooting hormone of your choice (or none at all). You now bury that 2-3 inches into your rooting media in a party cup so that the top of the clone is about level with the rim of the cup. At this point about 75% of the stem is underground and soaking in water to keep the plant happy until it can root.. I didnt believe this would work until i tried it. You will be surprised. Easy low maintenance. Just be sure to keep the media warm because temp plays a huge role in rooting time and percentage. Humidity does also, but we solved the moisture problem by burying a large portion of the stem. Like i said before, dont make the media too moist. Squeeze it until it starts just slowly dripping and then it should be good.
banana buds
Member
sounds great but here's my issues: it seems like you're adding a lot of man-hours to the process by having to do all that prep work on the cuttings, not to mention the extra space involved in each cutting getting its own cup. what kind of numbers are you able to manage with this method? i have no problem cutting a 72-plug tray every day without it interrupting the rest of what needs to be done around the shop, i don't see how i would ever be able to make time to scarify stems on each cutting and deal with beer cups at those kind of numbers. not to mention their annoying tendency to be top heavy and easy to knock over when you have a ton (dealt with that before i discovered sheet pots as an alternative for pre-vegging stuff).
banana buds
Member
this. i've found that after 3-6 months of cloning the shit outta mothers, they end up being REALLY dense and not throwing off the size of cuttings i want (lots of small stringy ones because they are so crowded). i think unless you are absurdly attached to a plant, constantly rotating out mothers to keep branching density and stem lignation in spec is the most labor efficient way to go.
