Soil(less) Cloning

going to put clones in a sunshine peat mix. Going to use olivias cloning gel, and use a humidity dome. what should humidity in the dome be maintained at? ive heard misting the actual cuttings slows root growth, should i spray dome instead? What about feeding, ive read the they should be on just water for a week before taking cuttings, and other people say nothing of stopping the nuts? How should i handle sticking them under light? Should the light intensity be lessened for 48 hrs or so? i have a 6800k 105w cfl that is super bright, and i have the daytime florescents as well, not sure what light ill use.

Humidity dome will do its job containing the water that evaporates from the media. If the media is kept relatively well moist (not soggy) all should be fine. To specifically answer your question, I've had anything from 75%-95% rH work. Heat/warmth in the root zone seems to be a big factor for speed. Try to get a warm ambient to get a 70-75F media temp.

Ensure the media doesn't contain residual salts and wet it well with ph'd water.

Don't worry about feeding the clones. They'll have enough to survive on in the snipped leaves you'll leave.

I'd do it in a starter tray or a clear cup so I can see when the roots start growing. Once roots are visible, start feeding.

quisqueyano said:

Humidity dome will do its job containing the water that evaporates from the media. If the media is kept relatively well moist (not soggy) all should be fine. To specifically answer your question, I've had anything from 75%-95% rH work. Heat/warmth in the root zone seems to be a big factor for speed. Try to get a warm ambient to get a 70-75F media temp.

Ensure the media doesn't contain residual salts and wet it well with ph'd water.

Don't worry about feeding the clones. They'll have enough to survive on in the snipped leaves you'll leave.

I'd do it in a starter tray or a clear cup so I can see when the roots start growing. Once roots are visible, start feeding.

Click to expand...

great post quis!

no need to ph the water though.




soil

also the mama just needs to be very healthy an not dry. stick um right under that light ..... no need in dimming it.

I'm pretty new to growing too, but I had great success at my first cloning attempt.
My veg plants are just in Happy Frog soil, so no stopping nutes for me.
I used rooter plugs, your mix is the same idea ... Just keep it moist, not sopping wet.
my clones got sprayed with plain filtered water with a neutral ph. I used my solo pump sprayer and sprayed the clones, root plugs, and dome whenever the humidity got low or I otherwise felt like it.
I also used Clonex.

After a week I had some roots. After 2 weeks, all cuttings were officially clones, and transplanted to cups.

This round, I'm doing largely the same thing but I've only sprayed the cuttings twice. I have more clones in my dome this time, so the RH is higher to begin with and I don't feel the need to spray. Everything looked fine as of yesterday.

For light, I use my t5 (2 ft, 4 bulb) but I raise it up pretty high. I could get by just fine with one or two 14 watt CFLs on my 18-6 timer, but I already have the t5 hanging there. Point being, don't sweat the light. They don't need much but a little extra probably wont kill them either.

Hope that helps, good luck

wyteboi said:

great post quis!

no need to ph the water though.




soil

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Roots grow best at a ph of 6 i believe. So wouldnt ph treating water to 6 help drop soil ph temporarily?

well its not soil , its peat moss , the ph of peat is around 5 ..... sunshine adds lime in their to buffer it to a higher ph, so no matter what ph you put in , the dirt will buffer it back out to between 6 an 7 very quickly. using ph'ed water would only help on used peat mix using chems for food and even then it wont help much.




soil

thankx for the knowledge

Humidity domes work okay for about the first 48-72 hours, opening for 10 mins every 24 hours, but then you should remove the dome or you welcome too much bad bacteria onto the clone.

I think people say to starve the mom a little before taking clones based on the fact that when a plant is hungry or dehydrated, it naturally changes hormone a little to create more roots to seek out water and nutrient for survival.
Taking clones from the lower branches means in theory that they would have elevated rooting hormones and thus root faster
I have only ever found this to be theoretical though.

Cheers Jimmy.

If you don't remove the dome completely after 2-3 days, at least leave it cracked. I leave mine on but I open a vent or two after a few days to a week and I have good fresh air flow, YRMV.