odd propagation/cloning problem

[tokingmonkey]

I am fairly new to growing however I am doing well so far. I successfully rooted a couple clones in jiffy pucks in 5 days(the roots were just poking through). I am growing my plants in a soilless/sterile mix, so I thought I would just do my cuttings in the soilless mix. I took 30 cuttings and put them in one of those seed starter trays, filled it with the soilless mix, wet the soil good and cut drainage holes in the bottom of the tray and planted the cuttings. The medium seemed to keep an ideal moisture content however I didn't have a proper humidity dome so the humidity was lower than ideal. it has been 3 days and the cuttings looked sickly(droopy but very green still). I took a few out to see what was going on and noticed there was no sign of root growth and the base of the stems were turning brown. I am baffled as to what went wrong, the only things that I can think of is the foliar spray might have had some b1 and/or trace amounts of organic nuts. Any ideas on what may have gone wrong? Do you think the clones are salvageable?

I also heard somewhere(can't find it on the internets) that if you cut your cuttings right above the node or something like that you will get 2 good cuttings in a couple weeks for every one you took... is this true? how do you do it?

 

[sogbunn]

its like topping really.. theres 2 growth sites at every node, so if u cut it off rite above them then the 2 shoots will have to grow.. thats how u bush ur plants out

 

[tokingmonkey]

Ah that makes sense, I was thinking about removing some fan leaves on my mothers, because they are not allowing the light at some of the newer growth that would be really good for cuttings. I would just bend them but the plants are super bushy already since I didn't let the light stretch them much(height restrictions) Good idea? Bad idea?

 

[sogbunn]

Ah that makes sense, I was thinking about removing some fan leaves on my mothers, because they are not allowing the light at some of the newer growth that would be really good for cuttings. I would just bend them but the plants are super bushy already since I didn't let the light stretch them much(height restrictions) Good idea? Bad idea?

umm i dont like removing leaves, they r ur food makers.. u know u can clone a whole branch into multile clones... say ur branch has 10 nodes, jus cut above each node leaving the fan leaves on... after they root the nodes will grow those 2 shoots like it it would if it was still on ur plant.. that can minumize ur hieght.. i dont know hw bushy they r but if u supercrop them the shoots at ur nodes will grow vertical alowing u to clone them as well.. it will also open ur plant up so more light is avalible to the rest of ur plant instead of cutting fan leaves off

 

[tokingmonkey]

Any ideas on the stem rot. I am really confused about that one.

 

[sogbunn]

Any ideas on the stem rot. I am really confused about that one.

stem rot???

 

[tokingmonkey]

stem rot???

The bottom of the clones are brown and not showing any sign of rooting. I am fairly sure there isn't to much moisture in the medium... the first post explains everything I did in detail

 

[luvvin growin]

sounds to me like you know what you're doing,so the "stem rot"thing is puzzling,as if the stems had an air embolism,but I've never heard of a whole tray of clones going bad b/c of that.Did any of your clones from that tray make it?

 

[sogbunn]

hmm, that is puzzling??? perhaps the tray is comtaminated???

 

[tokingmonkey]

hmm, that is puzzling??? perhaps the tray is comtaminated???

That does make sense cuz none of them are busting roots... it was only 3 days but they shouldn't be rotting. I did just pick the tray up from home depot and didn't sterilize it. Should I just chuck them and redo with some sterile equipment or hold out and see if any take?

 

[sogbunn]

That does make sense cuz none of them are busting roots... it was only 3 days but they shouldn't be rotting. I did just pick the tray up from home depot and didn't sterilize it. Should I just chuck them and redo with some sterile equipment or hold out and see if any take?

well thats up to u but if u wanna combine the 2 ideas...wash the tray and cut the bottom off of plastic cups and put ur clones still in the jiffy pots in them so they dont touch the tray and recomtaminate the new 1's if thats the case... if they sit on the tray the contaminates can get bak in the water and evaporate into the tray agn falling onto ur new 1's

 

[luvvin growin]

just chuck em and start fresh with sterilized equipment.Wouldnt trust em to grow right,or have some disease that they could possibly spread to the rest of your garden.

 

[LT1RX7 Drifter]

humidity humidity humidity it needs to be 100% for the first week in a cloning cell, peat pellets suck, use rock wool plugs, use ro water to make your cuttings in, i use some cloning powder from lowes called greenlight rooting hormone, and dutch master replicator applied with q-tip to inside of plug pre soaked in ro water, then insert my clone with the rooting hormone on the cutting, and close the plug up with a toothpick and set in cloning cell and mist with plain ass ro water, no nute, no bullshit, I have almost 100% success rate and show roots in less then 7 days every time every strain oh yah its not contaminated its your cloning method, never clone in those dumb trays with lids they never seal right, i i have a couple of container used for the auto pet feeders with the lids that remove from the top well i cap the bottom with cling wrap and a rubberband and place my clones (up to 15 at a time) on the lid and place the container over the top afetr a few mist of ro water, 10 min air exchange a few times a day and they do there thing

 

[tokingmonkey]

I am using the same soilless mix I grow my big plants in... is that ok? Can Rockwol plugs be put directly into dirt?

 

[tokingmonkey]

Never mind shoulda just used the goog... I am gonna go get some sterile equipment and some rockwol and do a comparison between the rockwol and the soiless mix. I will post my results in a couple weeks to add some value to this thread. Thanks for the help guys!