What is your favourite media to use for clones?

[disco survivor]

I use cottonwool balls for both cuttings and germinating seeds. Place 3 damp cottonwool balls in a seedling pot and place the cutting (dipped in rooting gel) in the centre. Into a heated propagator and that's it. Water after 1 week if needed then transplant usually after 14 days but sometimes takes longer depending on the plant species. Biggest mistake I used to make when I first started cloning plants was over watering the cuttings and stem rot would set in. Only other time I failed was putting the heated propagator on a South facing windowsill on a sunny day. Came home to stir fried Apache Chilli cuttings !

[Subutai]

Thanks everyone for your input 

[a handful of grapes]

I've used a glass of water with some tin foil on top with holes poked in, jiffy cubes, root riot plugs, and some straight coco I had to spare. These were all from back in '09 or some such when I was taking many many cuts off a bonsai mum in a 2l pot just for maintenance so there was room to experiment. No cutting juice or rooting hormones in any of them. Far as I can tell the worst is a tie between root riot and glass o'water where about one in five cuts would just up and die, jiffy cubes were consistently slow and seemed to impede root growth, and moist coco without any nutes was bang on 100% every time the cuts wouldn't even sag a bit. Fortunate really cos it was kind of a hail mary kind of deal, had this bit of spare coco and might as well fuck it see what happens. What's more with coco the roots it starts pushing out look like hydro roots, very nice and developed.

 

But the trick here is the mum plant should have been fed recently, or had its roots pruned, so all the shoots it's making are full of nitrogen. Otherwise it'll have a bad time in any unfertilized medium I'm sure. They do also want nutes in coco fairly quick, and biobizz grow is fairly strong so and makes a mess in straight coco so I've had to dilute it down a fair bit even pour some down the drain.

 

Can you tell I like coco? Well I do, it's the dog's bollocks

Edited September 24, 2023 by a handful of grapes
Note the actual trick at play

[Underdog]

I use coco plugs.

 

I actually did an experiment with clonex, organic rooting powder and just straight into the plug.

 

Clonex and organic rooting powder rooted the same amount and time.

 

Straight into the plug with nothing, they rooted almost as much just a bit longer.

 

 

[Yosser Hughes]

Aero cloner hands down  

[Axiom]

I'm the only one using Rockwool cubes then...

30g wet maybe 32g with the cut.
Heat mat and low LED light.
Doff rooting powder. Lasts forever. 
I get about 80% strike rate

I use a plastic tote as a dome and cut 7-9 inch clones. 

 

I throw used cubes up into the loft of my garage in hopes of insulating  

[Goohfy]

Normal propagator sat on heat mat root stimulator gel powder whatever I’ve got bottle to mist just not to much as to make the plants lazy make em put roots down rock wool is good for a nice contact but that’s just one of many ways.peace Goohfy.

[golf.007]

Eazy plugs deserve a shout better than riots imo.

 

G.

[Subutai]

As a follow up to this thread, i have some results to some experiments that i done.

 

Took 4 clones off the same plant.

I used rooting powder and water 

I wired a 13w led house bulb into an old pc case box and left on for 24/7 and used this as an enclosure for the propagator and beakers

Temps are a constant 25 to 27.C

 

1. cutting into rockwool and placed into a propagator.  (20 days now and still no roots)

2. cutting into riot cube and placed into propagator. (roots seen after 11 days)

3. cutting into a riot cube and placed into a small plastic beaker with soil around the riot cube, with another small beaker placed on top and sealed with cellotape. (roots seen after 7 days)

4. cutting into soil and placed into a small plastic beaker, with another small beaker placed on top and sealed with cellotape. (roots seen after 14 days)

 

So for me option 3 was by far the fastest.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Subutai

[M Pamplemousse]

I favour root riots in party cup sealed up. 

 

But just to counter your experiment slightly;

I recently took a number of cuts off same mum, all.in exactly the same conditions.

I had roots for one cut in 4 days. Another couple after a week. A few took 10 days. So there can be a large variation in the times taken to root despite the techniques used.

[Subutai]

On 20/10/2023 at 9:13 AM, M Pamplemousse said:

I favour root riots in party cup sealed up. 

 

But just to counter your experiment slightly;

I recently took a number of cuts off same mum, all.in exactly the same conditions.

I had roots for one cut in 4 days. Another couple after a week. A few took 10 days. So there can be a large variation in the times taken to root despite the techniques used.

Fully agree mate.

Also do you think that the first one to root is the main one to keep (if you are only keeping 1) as its more vigorous?

 

My main reason for trying different ways to start clones was that i have always used rockwool.

But lately i have noticed that it was taking ages, average of about 21 days to get roots with a 50% success rate.

 

This is definately down to me, my old propagator was dropped and i had to get a different one, so its probably a combo of new propagator and my actions.

In my defence, i do a perpetual grow, so i often had clones at different stages in the propagator which is probably a bad idea.

 

Thats why i like a plastic cups so much, as they have their own environment, it works better for a perpetual grow.

 

[Eldo]

I recently switched from Coco plugs to riot cubes and noticed a massive difference 

[M Pamplemousse]

21 hours ago, Subutai said:

Fully agree mate.

Also do you think that the first one to root is the main one to keep (if you are only keeping 1) as its more vigorous?

.

 

I don't know tbh. Good question. I'm generally taken several cuts to flower at the same time. Maybe someone else has a view.

[cypher79]

Jiffy pellets, dip the cuttings in clonex and then into a standard propagator with a white hand towel over it, and under either a 55w T5 or a 26w LED, depending on the time of year. I also use a fresh scalpel every time I take a batch of cuttings, and give the stem a light scrape with it around where I take the cut, before I dip in the clonex....100% success rate since I started using this exact method.

[sweettooth]

aero cloner for me was a wasted purchase, big, takes up space, too much faffing about, root riot cubes or easy plugs and clonex, 24 degree heat mat and 90% RH - roots in 7 days. doubt i can use the cubes this time, got some lovely plants to top so will be gowing stright into dirt as stems will be too fat