Cloning Failing? Tried Everything? Found the missing link?

Bird of Hermes said:

I've had near 100% success rates for years by cloning in mini hempy cups filled with perilite. I start with 12oz Styrofoam cups with a hole punched in them a inch or so from the bottom and place them in one of those short long clear storage totes. The tote acts as a tray to catch the excess water when you water the hempys and I usually use 2 trays and move them from one to the other after watering them to drain the trays more easily. No humidity dome, no heating mat, no additives or hormones just plain perlite and bottled water. I use the same mini hempy cups to start seeds in perlite seems to be a good substrate for plants to start in and cuts down on dampening off occurrences. For clones the tip rests just above the level of the drain hole and seedlings get buried a little over a inch.

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This what I do. Except 12 oz. cups I use the little Solo shot glasses with holes drilled through the bottom.

Those sit in a plug tray sitting in a regular tray filled with RO water that sits on a heating mat set for 80*F.

If the cuttings remain turgid for 48 hours, they'll grow roots.

ETA- I just pulled all of my clones out after 10 days. I took 4 cuttings off of 7 plants for 28 cuttings. 5 of them went limp in 48 hours and were culled. The remaining 23 have at least 1 inch roots (1 was a bit stunted for some reason) if not 6-7 inch long roots (the vast majority of the remaining cuttings).

Since I am only saving one clone from each plant, one of the remaining clones have been placed back into the cloner for the next 4-5 days to ensure the planted ones survive, the rest went into an extra bed I have in the flowering room. (Normally I will veg a clone for at least 14 days. These went straight into 12/12 just to see how they'll do.)

I have 30% free chlorine, which makes my product 45% calcium hypochlorite.
I want to use 3g per liter in my stock solution. 900ppm.
1ml of stock per liter of tank= 0.9ppm

The metric system works.

This threads opening post gives about 0.18ppm
1ml of my solution per gallon will be about 0.23ppm

Sometimes my maths is wrong. Sometimes, I can't even spell it

I'm about out of DM Zone finally. Is Calcium Hypochlorite still the go to for chlorine.

Some things I've learned over the decades is humidity, humidity, humidity.
If the rh never drops below 90% nothing will go limp or wilk away.
Then also

• temps are important, but if you don't let them fall below roughly 20C/68F you're good
• Never let the medium the cutting is in be saturated. Keep it moist, never saturated. If the rh is high, you will rarely have to mist let alone wet the medium

I take my cuttings with a pair of scissors and put them in plain tap water, no razorblades or sterilising or desinfecting of any sort. Then I stick them in root riot plugs that I have wetted and then squeezed so they are moist, not wet. Then I spray them down with tap water and they go in to a plastic box that's also sprayed down and i put the lid on. The box goes next to my bonsai mums under weak light (10w LED/sqf) and if I may add my cuttings are rarely taller than 2"/ 5cm. A hygrometer on the inside tells me about the rh. I usually don't even open it for the first week or so, then check occasionally, but other than that the lid stays closed until there are visible roots (normally 10-14 days depending on cut) at that point the plant can keep up turgor herself and I open the lid (I put the plugs in transparent shot glasses). If the medium is wet you might get damping off. If only moist I have not had any problems.
I have not lost a cut using this method in a long time and I'm starting to think too much care (which I can 100% relate to giving) might kill a lot of clones...
So humidity and patience is what it takes I conclude ;-)
CC

Chevy cHaze said:

I take my cuttings with a pair of scissors and put them in plain tap water, no razorblades or sterilising or desinfecting of any sort. Then I stick them in root riot plugs that I have wetted and then squeezed so they are moist, not wet. Then I spray them down with tap water and they go in to a plastic box that's also sprayed down and i put the lid on. The box goes next to my bonsai mums under weak light (10w LED/sqf) and if I may add my cuttings are rarely taller than 2"/ 5cm.

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I've monitored a lot of cannabis fora, for a very long time, and other than one guy on RIU, you're the only one whose clone procedure is almost identical to mine. Amazing. Almost everybody gets so wrapped up in the 45° angle, totally sterile procedure, using root hormones, creating the perfect/optimum environment, etc., they end up creating fragile / sickly orchid like plants that have to be pampered just to survive.

Chevy cHaze said:

I have not lost a cut using this method in a long time and I'm starting to think too much care (which I can 100% relate to giving) might kill a lot of clones...
So humidity and patience is what it takes I conclude ;-)
CC

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You are correct sir or madam! I'll occasionally lose a couple but since I've been cloning like this for 20 plus years now, my clones and plants are fucking Terminators.

I cut mine with the same scissors I trim my bud with. They get a lick of a stone and bleach cleaned after trimming & into their box so they are clean to cut.

I jam them into take away tubs 12 at a time in root riots too. They really hold that magic moisture level.

I sit them in a warm bath in a heated prop, happy days.

Agree on the humidity but we open the lid everyday to wipe it inside. Avoid mold

If youve tried everything abd still have probs then maybe try with rain water? Especially if recent.

Didnt read the whole thread so dont know if im repeating advice already given:
- you can try cutting the tips of leaves on your cutting to get it to focus on roots.
- ive seen talk about giving special nutrient regime to your mothers before cutting them. It went the along the lines of high brix growing or Calcium based nutirent regime but never tried it. Infact my growbuddy is always doing the cuttings with never more than 1-2 lost cuttings per 50 so weve not been in need of solutions.

CharlesU Farley said:

I've monitored a lot of cannabis fora, for a very long time, and other than one guy on RIU, you're the only one whose clone procedure is almost identical to mine. Amazing. Almost everybody gets so wrapped up in the 45° angle, totally sterile procedure, using root hormones, creating the perfect/optimum environment, etc., they end up creating fragile / sickly orchid like plants that have to be pampered just to survive.

You are correct sir or madam! I'll occasionally lose a couple but since I've been cloning like this for 20 plus years now, my clones and plants are fucking Terminators. View attachment 18961437

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Same same same. Kinda.

Cut with scissors, some root hormone around stalk and stuffed into rapid rooter/rockwool cubes that have been soaked in chlorinated water.

I never covered or cared about RH.
Most things rooted in 2 weeks.

Some strains like my old MOB OG took up to 4 weeks to root.

I tend to let my rapid rooter or rockwool dry up a bit to draw those roots out between watering.

I'd say 95 - 100% success.

Tried a bubble cloner once... couldn't get any to root lol

I have well water and the clone king 36 and 64 site units. My ph is about 8.2 out of the tap. I don't often buy new razor blades, but I sharpen them before every use on a whetstone until they're basically disintegrated and I need a new one. I'm a sharp knife fanatic, so this is just par for the course. You wouldn't want to have a doctor with a dull knife, and you wouldn't want to cut a ripe tomato with a butter knife, would you?

My process is the following. Fill the cloner with water, adjust fish tank heater to 73 (only in winter, in summer I'm good), ph to 6.0 with home made HCL ph down, put 2 shot glasses of clonex clone solution (the feed, not the rooting hormone) in the 64 site, 1 shot glass in the 32. I cut limbs off with scissors and put them in a glass of water, and when the glass has a dozen or so I take them out and clean up the undesirable growth. Cut at a 45 with an alcohol dipped razor knife (actually an exacto knife) toss in the cloner. Alcohol dip between every single cut. Come back 3 weeks later (maximum), 100% success. When I'm done, I follow the cleaning directions. Empty out the cloner. Rinse it all out, including guts of the pump. Wash everything with soap and water, including the neoprene plugs. Rinse, refill with water and 10% bleach solution, run for 20 min. Empty it out, rinse, refill, run for 20 min. Empty, rinse, refill: ready for more cuttings For years it's worked.

Last year I did get the dreaded slime. I did the same washing procedure, except I got new spray emitters and neoprene pucks, voila! Fixed. Ready to roll.

I used to have an EZ cloner 15 years ago that always got infections. Not sure what's different. Probably lack of sterility, and just being too stoned. I do not get our water tested regularly, so perhaps there's a variable that's in there. Works for me, but I've been in the tough times too (different house, high iron in the well there... a factor?!- would be curious to hear if that makes a difference)

Herborizer said:

If you think cloning is easy and doesn't take any effort at all, and you can't understand why anyone would have any problems. Congratulations, I envy you. This thread is not for you. Please move on.

I know exactly how you feel. Cloning can be one of the most aggravating parts of gardening. For so many people they have such an easy time with cloning. I have read stories over and over about how some people just take a pair of rusty scissors, make a cut, and just stick a cutting in some random medium. Then have roots in a few days. While I am so happy for them, it drives me crazy!

If you are like me and have researched just about every forum, forum thread, article, etc to learn the secret combination that could solve my cloning problem, you will notice some very interesting patterns.

One of those in particular is that there are many people who have been cloning successfully for years and years, and then they move to a new location and can't clone for the life of them.

I have heard many people attribute this to some "mystery of cloning", dumb luck, bad luck, etc. This has never sat well with me because in theory, if all elements are the same, the result should be the same. Which lead me to the belief that there must be a missing link in cloning that is not obvious, and is causing SOME people to fail miserably, and or just take a very long time to get clones to root.

Not by a discovery of my own, but some random thread I found recently, I believe (for some of us, this is not inclusive) that link may have been found. WATER

I know the idea of quality water is not new to cloning. Just about every manual, article, forum post, etc talks about it. Though there is a particular aspect that I have not seen discussed until recently. CHLORINE levels in the WATER. Or calcium hypochlorite/soduim hypochlorite.

Interesting enough, this really isn't a new discovery. Cities, Agricultural Industries, and other businesses have been using CHLORINE for over 200 years as a safe way to sterilize water. So in fact, the very water that you have coming out of your faucet, may contain a low level of CHLORINE. At low levels it is considered safe and used on a very large scale. Even biologists and the agricultural industry believe that plants actually require chlorine (low levels) as a key element and helps them thrive.

So, getting to the point finally, we all live in different places. Each one with different water sources. Some on city water (with varying water treatment techniques) and others with well water. I would safely bet that the mass majority of us are using city water and that city water contains chlorine. Personally, I have well water and not city water.

So recently I experimented with adding calcium hypochlorite (shock chlorine) to my well water for my clones. I also ran clones without any chlorine added. Everything else being the same. Guess what. I got roots in 6 days with the chlorinated clones. It was an ah ha! moment!

So the thread that I read that lead me to this point was written by this person who tried a relatively new product on the market made by EZ-Clone called "Clear-Res". Clear-RES is used by adding 5ml (of clear-res) per gallon of water and re-added every 3 days in the same amount. This product is relatively new, but if you search around you will find that the people who use it have pure success. So anyway, this person checked out the ingredients of Clear-Res and discovered that it was simply Chlorine water in a bottle. 16oz of chlorine water for $20. Two and two together, an experiment was done to discover how much pool chlorine would be needed to reproduce the same strength found in Clear-Res. Using a non-ph buffered pool shock (or pure calcium-hypoclorite) that you can commonly find at most hardware stores and walmart, the formula was discovered.

Here it is:

• Basically, this pool shock comes in powered form.
• 1 gram of this powdered chlorine should be mixed into 1 gallon of water, to make what is almost an exact replacement for a bottle of Clear-Res.
• Then, once you have this bottle of chlorine water, you would use 1 liquid oz per 5 gallons of water. Repeat every 3 days.

So for roughly $4 you can buy this pool shock that will make you roughly 454 gallons of Clear-Res!

$4 for 454 gallons, using this.

Or $20 for 16oz, using this

So if you are one of those people like me who has struggled with cloning and has tried everything, I suggest trying this. If you think about it, it makes so much sense. Could it be that many of those lucky bastards out there who never have an issue cloning, also have CHLORINE in their water? I think so.

If you are a Aerocloner guy, this water treatment has other benefits too. If you just use tap water with the chlorine added and nothing else, your Aerocloner will stay sparkling clean forever. Really should be nothing to clean between rounds (though I recommend to always clean thoroughly anyways, but the job will be so easy now). Also, with adding chlorine, you can now ditch that water chiller and all the other things you probably do to reduce temperatures of your aerocloner. In fact, when using chlorine, I bet that the higher the temperature the faster you will get roots. With no risk of getting slime/bacteria.

Here is the steps for what I believe is a sure fire method:

• Clean environment. Keep your garden area VERY clean.
• Sterile tools. I always sterilize my tools and working surface for cloning with alcohol.
• Wash your hands and buy gloves. Always wash your hands thoroughly and buy a box of those gloves used by doctors etc. Cheap. I use them every single time I enter my garden, for any reason.
• Healthy mothers. If your mothers look like hell, cloning is probably not going to go well.
• Use tap water. Distilled and RO don't work as well in my experience and slow down or prevent roots.
• PH your water to 6.3 and keep it there. I still don't know if this step is required, but when you have had as many problems as I have, you don't mess around and do what is considered a standard.
• Use a brand new razor. I buy a 100 pack of razors at the hardware store for like $5. They are cheap. A nice and sharp razor helps prevent crushing the stem when making your cuts.
• As soon as you cut the clone off the mother, put it in a cup of water for at least 5 minutes.
• If you use rooting hormone, never dip the clone in the bottle. If you have done this in the past, throw away that bottle. This simply contaminates the whole bottle. Don't use too much hormone. Simply coat anywhere a cut was made (end and nodes).
• Use the chlorine water formula described above. If using a medium, your medium should be moist and not wet. Really, they don't need much water because you will keep the humidity very high the first 7 days. If using an aerocloner, simply put your tap water into your reservoir and add the chlorine solution in as described above. Re-add the chlorine solution every 3 days.
• If aerocloner, humidity shouldn't be a problem. If using a medium, humidity is critical. For the first 48 hours I would seal up your clones in a dome and never open it. You want over 90% RH. After the 2nd day, open the dome for 10 minutes each day. Each day after add 10 minutes (day 3=20 mins, day 4=30 mins, etc).
• Keep temperatures in the low 80's. You don't HAVE todo this, but it will speed up the cloning. In low temps it could take weeks, where if you were in the low 80's it could take days. Don't forget, the chlorine is going to keep the nastiness from growing.
• Take larger clones, but only leave 1-2 sets up top. I also don't cut the leaves in half. I have heard this slows things down, but I am not sure. Still need further testing.
• Don't spray anything on the plants. To keep humidity up, spray the dome. Also, I have been putting a little pool of water in the tray (with the chlorine added). This helps keep temps stable and keeps the humidity high.
• Use VERY low light. This is really important. The plants need to root and not grow sets. A single 27w (2 foot) T5 located about 16inches above your clones is perfect. If you must use stronger light, put a paper towel on top of your humidity dome. Really, they don't need much light.
• No nutes, no additives, no snake oil. Just water and chlorine that is PH'ed. If things work out right, you will have roots in 6-10 days. Does it need to go faster than that?

Once you see a decent amount of roots, move forward with whatever nutes and additives you desire. This thread is about getting to the point of roots and not beyond that. Once the roots show, additives can speed up the growing of those roots. Wait until you have roots, trust me!


Good luck and if you try this please post back to this thread. This is very much a work in progress and we can work together to refine it.

P.S. If you are using an aerocloner, make sure you clean your aerocloner very very well between uses. Never let your cloner get dirty. Never let water just sit in it. After cleaning it, and if its not going into immediate re-use, dry it completely. Inside the manifold and pump especially.

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Very informative deep information. I'll have to try this out. I'm having issues with cloning. I've been looking to try something new. It takes 3 weeks for roots. And the clones look bad after it's been a while. I normally do is soak the rockwool overnight. pH water at 5.5-5.9.sometimes I used hygrozyme. Foop gel. I keep it in a humid dome. Misting the dome. When I water them I pH water and use great white microzyme. A few years ago I did the same method. I'd shave the stem cut it at an angle dip it to Root Tap gel. And dip it to great white. I've used a heating pad. Different result. I've had roots show up in 3-5 days. I plan on taking clones soon but I've been trying to research and see what will work for me

Redblueblur993 said:

Very informative deep information. I'll have to try this out. I'm having issues with cloning. I've been looking to try something new. It takes 3 weeks for roots. And the clones look bad after it's been a while. I normally do is soak the rockwool overnight. pH water at 5.5-5.9.sometimes I used hygrozyme. Foop gel. I keep it in a humid dome. Misting the dome. When I water them I pH water and use great white microzyme. A few years ago I did the same method. I'd shave the stem cut it at an angle dip it to Root Tap gel. And dip it to great white. I've used a heating pad. Different result. I've had roots show up in 3-5 days. I plan on taking clones soon but I've been trying to research and see what will work for me

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If you’re looking for a new method that worked for someone.

Rockwool Cubes don’t bother trying to find them if you don’t already know who’s got them local. Order them online.
Packs of Cloning Gel and Clonex Solution

Packet of solution makes one gallon/3.8l of water.

Soak rockwool cubes in that water for a few minutes.

Drain whatever you’re soaking the rockwool cubes in and dump it in your garden, you won’t need it.

Now start taking clones, skinning, trimming, dip the stalks in gel and place in cubes. That exact order one at a time.

You can even put two per cube if you don’t mind the extra training.

I had 15 cubes and took 17 cuttings which all survived with this method.

The weather was indoor Flourescent lighting probably 28C/82F

Moist dome. And spray water foliage first days.