Originally Posted by Alone

Something I forgot to add is that I scrape off 1/4" of the outer bark on 2 sides of the dipped stem.
The "bark", or outerskin, will produce hairy roots, with hairs like a "fern" or "ladder rungs".
The scraped part of the stem will produce noodle like roots. This helps with 2 types of root systems. 1 for nutrient uptake. The other for oxygen uptake.

Scraping and scoring are a given I apologize for not making this clear initially.

[Sam_Skunkman]

I never scraped or scored my clones, I just cut long stems with inter-nodes to grow, place them in a bucket of water (for a few minutes or for a few days refrigerated) until I chop them up to small pieces 4-6 inches with an inter-node to grow, and place them in a temperature controlled covered sand table. Rooting hormone seems to speed up the process by a day or two, but with over 95% rooted and thousands, maybe more then a million, run through the process, it is easy as long as you control temperature and humidity, with or without rooting hormone. Takes a week or a few days more to be ready to transplant. It helps if the mother plants used to make clones are healthy and vigorous...
Moist sand is nice when it comes to roots, easy to work with and easy to scale up, if you need more then you can make sand rooting areas on the floor and do tens of thousands+ at a time. I work in a greenhouse.
-SamS

[blackone]

Interesting method Sam - do just use sand from the beach or something? And do you sterilize or pasteurize it first?

Originally Posted by Sam_Skunkman

I never scraped or scored my clones, I just cut long stems with inter-nodes to grow, place them in a bucket of water (for a few minutes or for a few days refrigerated) until I chop them up to small pieces 4-6 inches with an inter-node to grow, and place them in a temperature controlled covered sand table. Rooting hormone seems to speed up the process by a day or two, but with over 95% rooted and thousands, maybe more then a million, run through the process, it is easy as long as you control temperature and humidity, with or without rooting hormone. Takes a week or a few days more to be ready to transplant. It helps if the mother plants used to make clones are healthy and vigorous...
Moist sand is nice when it comes to roots, easy to work with and easy to scale up, if you need more then you can make sand rooting areas on the floor and do tens of thousands+ at a time. I work in a greenhouse.
-SamS

On a plant with a lot of nodes, scraping and scoring isn't needed, admittedly, but using this particular cut of Blue Dream I tend to end up with long stems that don't have nearly as many nodes as i'd prefer, so I scrape and score to create more sites from which the roots can develop.

Thanks for gracing my thread with some star presence, and for your input!

[farmdalefurr]

How long do your clones usually take to root smurph?

I know some are strain dependent (longer time than others), but what's your usual time?

Originally Posted by farmdalefurr

How long do your clones usually take to root smurph?

I know some are strain dependent (longer time than others), but what's your usual time?

As you can see from my images and last side by side, I prefer to let my clones develop a larger root system in the machine before transplant, and this large root structure is typically ready between days 12 and 16.

[farmdalefurr]

Right on

Ill have to snap a couple shots of my Chem D that is at 13 days in the ez

If you don't mind me postin em

[Crusader Rabbit]

Did all these Blue Dream cuts receive the same Azamax treatment and cloner solution as with the EZ Cloner cuts in the last experiment?

Originally Posted by Crusader Rabbit

Did all these Blue Dream cuts receive the same Azamax treatment and cloner solution as with the EZ Cloner cuts in the last experiment?

Yep, Azamax at 60ml / gallon is given to my veg plants every week, so in general unless I specifically aim to take clones before spraying, they're never more than 4 days from being hit with that lovely refined neem extract.

Ty for pointing out that Cloning Solution dosage is not in the OP.

[Crusader Rabbit]

Originally Posted by SooperSmurph

Another idea was to dip the clones in water to rinse off excess gel / etc that has not been wicked up into the stem before placing them in the machine, do you feel perhaps that this will provide sufficient removal / dilution so as to minimize any effects upon the control group?

I somehow missed this question earlier, which was directed to me.

My personal opinion is that the way you're doing this experiment is about the best one can do using one cloner. You are trying to find which method performs best, and the methods people use include dipping the stems before going into the cloner. I don't think anybody dips and then rinses. Doing so here would be adding another factor that doesn't represent real world use. Or you could have started it up and then replace the water bath. But that wouldn't represent typical technique either, and there would still have been exposure.

The rinsed hormones in the bath represent a wild card, but with the undipped cuttings you have a control that can provide information. If the dipped cuttings do better than the un-dipped you'll have useable results. If the un-dipped perform the same or better then another experiment will be required to decipher what might have happened.

I think you've addressed the obvious assumptions being made here, and the reasoning behind those assumptions. Seems there's no hidden factors. Anyone following this experiment afterwards has the information to interpret the results and go from there whatever happens. Can't do much better than that.