honey for rooting

[jimboyia]

Hiy'all,

Noob experiment: made cuttings of a landrace (poss Sat??) and used honey instead of rooting powder on the cuts - put these into some home-made paper pots filled with 50/50 verm/coir. Pots in little plastic tub, tub in nice tent with humidifier (which I have used to fruit mushrooms).



One possible issue: a couple of the cuttings were just at the point of flowering; will this affect rooting?

 

[G.Goo]

Honey will work .all will be fine just may take cuts a few wks to go back to growing in veg style

 

[G.Goo]

Love the dickface who neg repped me . Guess I got to go dig up the info and report I did on this at bbay. The honey works like a gel. The clones in flowering that were used will go back to veg phase . I used to take cuts after sexing plants from seed all the time . These cuts were 14 days or less into flower . Like stated it will take week or so before they take back off into veg once rooted

 

[jimboyia]

Love the dickface who neg repped me . Guess I got to go dig up the info and report I did on this at bbay. The honey works like a gel. The clones in flowering that were used will go back to veg phase . I used to take cuts after sexing plants from seed all the time . These cuts were 14 days or less into flower . Like stated it will take week or so before they take back off into veg once rooted

Can't imagine why anyone would do that TBH. Perhaps there really are folks out there who've done and seen it all and really do know better. But, I doubt it.

I also figure the honey is sterile so that must be, to some degree, a bonus. Plus I'm guessing that there is glucose / fructose in the honey that the cutting can utilize plus who knows what possible hormones. Time will tell. It will give me a big boner if I pull out even one rooted cutting from the 4 I made.

 

[G.Goo]

Can't imagine why anyone would do that TBH. Perhaps there really are folks out there who've done and seen it all and really do know better. But, I doubt it.

I also figure the honey is sterile so that must be, to some degree, a bonus. Plus I'm guessing that there is glucose / fructose in the honey that the cutting can utilize plus who knows what possible hormones. Time will tell. It will give me a big boner if I pull out even one rooted cutting from the 4 I made.

It will happen in 14 days or less . Use it like the gels . Like I said I did this experiment at bbay forums . had mass roots in 14 days used dome method with RW
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjC9aybFA5s . google search it at bbay "honey cloning" ( put breed bay here)

 

[jimboyia]

cuttings now 1 week in the tent. They get about 3 hours with a humidifier and then misted once or twice a day. Plenty moisture.

Lower leaf on one cutting went yellow and I nipped it off - what might the yellowing indicate?

 

[OrganicOzarks]

I have tested many things in side by side experiments for rooting. Honey was one of them. It did not speed things up at all.

The best thing out of them all was using nothing.

This was a pure organic test.

 

[G.Goo]

I have tested many things in side by side experiments for rooting. Honey was one of them. It did not speed things up at all.

The best thing out of them all was using nothing.

This was a pure organic test.

I agree . Skin them where the roots will form dip in powder be done with it

 

[Seaf0ur]

I have had personal success creating an organic rooting gel as follows:

95% RAW UNFILTERED honey.... you're best off draining it from wax (gravity is your friend)
2% Molasses
2% Powdered kelp (ascophyllum nodosum in my case)
1% Unchlorinated clean water

Just honey WILL work..... but I spice it up a bit for some of the trace elements.....


I also use
50/50 Vermicompost/Spaghnum moss

To make my rooting cubes.... I use paper towel roll cores to press them to shape.
Spaghnum contains fulvics... better spaghnum, better fulvics....... they work very well..

 

[justanotherbozo]

...the best of both worlds although i have to admit, my cuts root with or without the honey and with or without the rooting hormone, ...if the conditions are right, roots will emerge and neither honey nor powder is REQUIRED.

peace, bozo

 

[Easy7]

Does honey have hormones useful for rooting? I know the cuttings themselves have rooting hormones. I usually like to have a gel that has even more.

 

[ponocrookedbrah]

the benefits of honey and bee pollen are endless!

 

[ponocrookedbrah]

thanks for sharing and screw the haters brah

 

[Seaf0ur]

Cloning with honey goes all the way back to Egypt.... Honey is a natural antiseptic and a potent hygroscopic(water absorbing) material.... but it's a 2 edge sword. The enzymes are there but the sugars can cause infections. Honey is also weaker compared to rooting hormone.... It's really dealer's choice on how you go about your business, but honey does in fact work.

 

[vostok]

One of my favourites

 

[Lovesponge]

Does honey have hormones useful for rooting? I know the cuttings themselves have rooting hormones. I usually like to have a gel that has even more.

Yes, but it's not as simple as going to the nearest grocery store and getting regular honey. You need raw, unfiltered, UNPROCESSED honey. It's going to looked crystallized, not like a spreadable sap. This needs to be mixed with warm to hot, not boiling water imo, since this form of honey has live enzymes, so I hypothesize that boiling water will kill them. Also note that honey is antifungal, antibacterial, and has one hell of a shelf life. Since it is antifungal and antibacterial, it may not permit bennies (beneficial bacteria; i.e. bacillus subtilis, trichoderma, mycorrhizae) to take hold if you are innoculating any clones at the same time.

 

[Only Ornamental]

Seriously, why the heck do those rumours about honey being anti-this and anti-that and containing beneficial enzymes only in unrefined form and so on not just die?
Sure it has some nice things in it but mostly, it's just glucose and fructose. The instant you add water, it will no longer be anti-whatever and become as good as any sugar water solution (well, maybe a bit better, especially the B vitamins inside are welcome for rooting purposes).
I don't know what kind of 'honey' is sold in the states but here around, honey is usually just that, honey without serious processing unless you buy cheap blended stuff where you don't know what it is nor from where it comes. Even if it's filtrated or heated to a degree; like that would change much apart from annihilating 'life energies' and 'cosmic vibrations' LoL. Depending on the flowers/nectar used, natural honey can be crystalline or liquid (depends on the fructose to glucose ratio), sometimes even creamy (apart from certain pure flower honeys, this is usually 'artificial').
Additional effects (everything beyond honey as a sweetener) are HIGHLY dependent on the flowers used to make it! Some honey varieties are even toxic, ask the Aborigine. Apropos Australia, there's that one specific honey from a tea tree variety which has indeed proven antiseptic/antibacterial activities; too bad that you'd need to consume so much honey that you'll likely die from diabetes.
Scientifically speaking, honey has a lot more proven negative and dangerous effects than healing or otherwise beneficial properties .

Now to the more useful part: There's a simple scientific explanation why honey works for rooting and why it's better than table sugar (sucrose) in this regard. Just read a bit about sugar sensing and signaling in plants, there's a ton of current literature available (also open access review articles with easy to understand coloured pictures -> not meant as an offence, figures can be really helpful ).

 

[Lovesponge]

Haha, no offense taken, Obi Wan! XD I didn't mean to sound so certain about my little spiel on honey. However, it is day five and I do believe I see the small white dots that signal the formation of roots about half an inch ABOVE the cube openings... Pics when I find a way to transfer them (no SD reader at the moment). As for the spit clones, one had a hard time standing up so I gave it a crutch (toothpick), but I fear the cloning area I took it from was very dark green (I scraped away the outer stem to the white part beneath, except there was no white) so we'll see what happens. And the seedling has grown to a full inch and a half in those mere five days with just water and the compost tea soaked cube. !!! I shall do some searching on that right meow. I had also heard that plain table sugar, sucrose is good for plants, however, an amigo told me that GLUCOSE would potentially be better, and that it is only absorbed by the root ball. Molasses must be processed, as it is a complex sugar, not a simple one, and goes from the root tips, turning into glucose at the root mass (if my studies have proven correctly...) Therefore, applying a diluted pure glucose solution via dropper to the root ball is an experiment he wants to undertake now, since I threw this same questioning pattern at him a few weeks ago, and have been wanting clarification since. (I always triple check, and then check again.)

 

[Only Ornamental]

Yes, plant roots can take up glucose quite well. They can also use fructose and sucrose though the latter is mostly broken down by plant enzymes into Glu and Fru before entering the cells and hence takes a little bit more time (but not much, the responsible enzyme is abundant and efficient).
The way I understand sugar signalling, using glucose and/or fructose for roots seems slightly better than sucrose but that also depends on the development stage, concentration, and other stuff.
Sugars can be absorbed through leaves too but only via stigma. But the effect of foliar sugars on the plant is different from root applied sugar.

 

[Lovesponge]

Scratch that, gentlemen. Three out of four clones have rooted in five days with the aloe/honey mixture. Oh yeah. I used a pinch of OG Biowar's Foliar Feed in the mixture as well. Should mention that. But... Hell yes!