Q&A Cuttings & Propagation

Iamnumber · Sep 3, 2017

Hi,

I decided to make a Questions and Answers thread for Cuttings and Propagation section.

Posting questions to a single generic thread will make it easier to browse through threads and find threads about specific technique.

Now..

I have some chlorine cleaning agent (powder). What ppm level is 'should be ok' and what would be 'plant will die' when considering a cuttling?

What would be the same (should be ok / plant will die) levels for hydro peroxide? (in % of solution as bottle has only % and no info about diluting to specific ppm)

I wish to use chlorine as it is readily available for me. Plan is to put chlorine (or hydro peroxide) to the water where cuttling will grow roots (or what is used to water cuttling if put to a medium)

How strong solution (ppm or %) should I use (and what would be harmful level) for washing my hands / disinfecting my tools and cloning area?

Iamnumber · Sep 3, 2017

douh..

forgot to write down that the my intention is to prevent disease and/or pathogens killing my plants by using chlorine (or hydro peroxide)

(cant edit my post)

GMT · Sep 3, 2017

Don't use poisons to grow your plants in. I don't care about common practices, I don't care about public swimming pools, I do care about people living in an environment that has poisonous gas in it or smoking buds that will damage their lungs.

Lester Beans · Sep 3, 2017

Just use normal tap water. Cuttings will root in plain water most of the time.

I have never had an issue after cloning 10's of 1000's of plants, cannabis and others.

No need for chemicals.

clown baby · Sep 3, 2017

Use regular, unscented clorox (or generic brand) bleach. Regular bleach. Don't get the non-foam. Plain bleach. Active ingredient is 8.25% sodium hypoclorite.

8.25% means 82,500 PPM sodium hypoclorite from the original bottle.

Make a 20% dilution of 1 part bleach to 4 parts water. This will be your stock solution, 16,500 PPM sodium hypoclorite. (82,500 * 20%)

There are 3,785 mL per gallon.

Which means adding 1mL of your stock solution per 1 gallon of reservoir water nets you 4.36 PPM sodium hypoclorite in your reservoir. (16,500 / 3,785).

This concentration wont hurt your plants, but it should keep pythium at bay under normal conditions. Add every 3-4 days or whenever you change your water.

People get freaked out about using bleach, but it's a common practice in commercial hydroponics. At a reasonable dose, it's not going to infect your lungs and kill you from the inside like GMT suggests. Municipal water that comes out of your faucet is treated with chlorine. Chlorine's a micronutrient that plant use. Even hobby fertilizers like dynagro intentionally add it to their products. Going to take a leap of faith and say it's not putting you, your plants, or your loved ones in any immediate danger at the proper dose.

GMT · Sep 3, 2017

That all depends on the levels used. Sleeping in an area that has inaccurate levels being heated will seriously damage your lungs. Asking a stoner to risk their healths on never fucking up is crazy talk. I sleep at night having given the advice I give. I wonder how others do that reading some posts here.

clown baby · Sep 4, 2017

@iamanumber: if you're on the fence, google sodium hypochlorite water treatment. Don't rely on weed forums.

@GMT yes it all depends on the levels used. I'm talking about 4PPM, as explicitly stated. We're not talking about huffing a bag of chlorine gas.

RumblefishTwist · Sep 4, 2017

Bleach in small doses is harmless, you can even purify drinking water with it in an emergency situation. You just have to make sure not to use too much.

Hydrogen Peroxide is even more harmless, so i recommend that for any sanitization purposes. You can brush your teeth with that shit. Don't drink it though.

Chlorine...don't see the reason to go there as other stuff is so cheaply readily available.

OldSSSCGuy · Oct 14, 2017

Totally agree with Lester Beans. I used to go the whole sterile route, gloves, sterilized razor blades, etc and overthought everything. Over time I ended up just grabbing a pair of garden scissors, trimming up a new cut, dipping it in hormone and sticking it in the dirt. Like zero clean freak - and I can still get 99% rooted without fail. A lot has to do with the mother but I've cut deaths-door mothers and been just fine.

Less chemicals, less thought, less worry, more success.

DRM Ranch · Oct 24, 2017

clown baby said:
Use regular, unscented clorox (or generic brand) bleach. Regular bleach. Don't get the non-foam. Plain bleach. Active ingredient is 8.25% sodium hypoclorite.

Regular strength bleach contains 5.25% sodium hypochlorite, not 8.25% as is so in bleach marketed as "concentrated"

--------

Use rate for bleach will depend on the levels of chlorine and or chloramines in your water. For what it's worth, most questionable water can be made safe to drink by adding 2 drops per quart and allowing it to stand for 30 minutes so the bleach can kill any pathogens.

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H2O2 in the nutrient solution, 30mL/gal of the drug store 3% stuff, 3mL/gal of the 30% version. At this minor dose it isn't going to cure any current issue but if you are starting from a sterile situation it will help stave off issues.

T_B_M · Jan 2, 2018

Why is everyone so paranoid about cleanliness as if they were growing in a hospital? The best is using a new blade every time clones are taken. LMAO. I have been using the same razor blade to cut clones for about a year now. Is your environment really this dirty and full of bacteria? I think people go a little overboard because they don't know any better. I experimented for years after being extra cautious and clean when i first started growing and what I found was that the extra steps of cleanliness are unnecessary and a waste of time.

You want to bleach your plants? That sounds bad an unnatural. Tap water (especially city water) will be fine. It is already chlorinated it and will work fine for clone soaking.

Don't go overboard with the cleanliness and all that nonsense unless you REALLY need to. Keeping the clones too wet is usually the problem most have, then they think its a sterilization thing because the stem rotted. Well water does the same thing. If the stalk is always sopping wet, it will rot.

Iamnumber · Jul 19, 2018

I did have trouble with seeds and generating cutlings .. one plausible culprit is/was germs ..

Since then I have taken a lot of cutlings from my basil plant with fairly good % of success without worrying too much about sterile environment / tools.

I have been using tap water or tap water with root-complex compound. both work, seems faster with root-complex.

Q: How similar would you say basil is to cannabis in regards to taking cutlings? how about in building root system for plant? ( I mean how well would results about rootball development translate to cannabis? Trying to get some handle on when to transplant from small airpot to medium/large one)

izzypog · Jan 17, 2019

@TBM, the extent of how far people go to grow their plants disturbs me. The process is simple, fill a cup with plain water, take a cutting and make sure it is suspended in a cup of water, wait two or three weeks, you now have a mother plant, it is that simple. Farmers have been growing crops for thousands of years, they used trial and error method, they must have been successful as there are over seven billion people on the Earth now. I have grown successfully for four years with little failure in my grows, I never check ppm or buy three hundred dollar nutes, I have smoked with many people who ask me to score a bag of my stuff, they do not know I grow.

WFAMFARMS · Jan 23, 2019

What environmental conditions do y'all use for cloning? Room temp? Humidity? Style ie rockwool, rootriot cubes, aero, bubble? and what are your rooting times? I've heard of people claiming 4 days but in my own experience ten days is more like it.

methias · Apr 6, 2019

DIY Aero cloning machine

DIY Aero cloning machine

I just built a simple cloning/veg box.
DIY quantum board made from strip lights, two cloning buckets (2 gallon) with 7 slots each.

Now I am a newbie to cloning, OK, not new, just crappy. My success rate was almost 5% . Almost

.

As I said just built it, trimmed a donor clone, stuck a couple of cuttings in, set up a timer for 1 minute on 4 minutes off perpetual cycle to power to water pumps inside the buckets.
Tough part was locating 12volt water pumps that are good enough.
So far 1 rooted so fast I already put it in dirt. Sorry forgot to take pic

.

Just checked the 14 cuttings (filled the empty slot) and 5 more show white (pre root) bumps that appear scale like and one with a 1/8" root starting.
Not one cutting has died. All look healthy.
I was told that this cloning method often provides a 100% success rate.

Must break out my macro this weekend to show.

Just using tap water PH 6.2
It's chilly there, about 60 F max so I just put a heater under one bucket to see if that speeds things up.
Pretty sure 75 to 85 would be a better temperature.
It's already beat my record. If I can get it dialed in, who knows.

I'll be back

Vape on..

methias · May 21, 2019

Cloning bucket

Cloning bucket

HI all,
As usual I got distracted.
So busy with success cloning that once again I forgot to take pics.
Of the 14 cuttings only lost one. I was scrambling to find homes for my babies as I can only handle 2 or 3 at a time. All went to good homes except for one Double Dream I am planning to grow for myself.
I unfortunately put her in soil too early. She just sat there for 2 weeks slowly browning the leaves. I pulled on it and she slid right out of the dirt.
Just for giggles I fired up one of the buckets and put her in with the final trimmings from my Venom OG before going 12/12. Nothing but PH'd H2O in the bucket with the pump on for 1 minute and off for 4.
Aaaaand my Double Dream is rooting again. Thought I had lost her but she may be OK.
Cloning bucket cloning (with reasonable lighting) is giving me a nearly 100% success rate. :woohoo:

From 5% to nearly 100% success cloning :tiphat:

is a milestone for me.

Vape on.

izzypog · May 28, 2019

Cloning buckets are very nice to have. I use soil or water, when I use soil I use rooting powder, you can mix it with KY and make it into a sort of gel. You can use crushed aspirin mixed into water. Your saliva on the end can work as well. My favorite rooting hormone, aloe. The aspirin method should only be used if you are using water, the rest work with soil. I have a 99% success rate with cuttings, most of the time I take cuttings up to five weeks into flowering, strangely, not a single one has died. @methias, use what works, everyone has their own grow style, I just wanted to point out other options just in case.

mexweed · May 31, 2019

I recently topped a plant and am trying to root it, I soaked a root riot cube in a solution of 1 tsp/gal dirt md humic/fulvic and 1 tbsp/gal life cloning solution, I didn't want to mess with finding the clonex packets I have somewhere so I just dipped it in honey and put in the cube

I have the cube in a small half eighth bud container that has some of the dirt md life solution in it, placed it on one of my leds to keep it warm

methias · May 31, 2019

Izzypog,
I agree, there are loads of options for propagation and sharing what has worked, failed, and new ideas is (IMHO) what ICMAG is all about.
I think I may try the aspirin idea on side by side cloning buckets. Easy enough to test

Thank you.

Vape on.

izzypog · May 31, 2019

methias said:
Izzypog,
I agree, there are loads of options for propagation and sharing what has worked, failed, and new ideas is (IMHO) what ICMAG is all about.
I think I may try the aspirin idea on side by side cloning buckets. Easy enough to test

Thank you.

Vape on.

My fast favorite is aloe vera, it actually works wonders.

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