It took me forever to become a good cloner.The thing about most cloning books or even people trying to explain how to clone on here is they never tell you what exactly makes it clone.
as long as you know what makes the clone throw roots i do not think it matters to much about the methodology of how you do it.
This is what a clone needs to throw roots.
75 f constant room temperature,90 % Humidity rate.This and a moist stem is what keeps the plant alive until it throws roots.A soft light hung over the plants,I mean like a 15 watt cfl hung a foot over the humidity dome.If you keep the cloning media to WET and not moist it will not throw roots.If to dry it will not throw roots and die.Do not let cloning media sit in direct water.
You want the clones taken off of a healthy mother.The only food the clone has while it is throwing roots are what are stored in the cutting itself.If you feed it food it will not throw roots looking for food and water.
ALL of your cloning media trays and domes MUST be sterile or the bacteria will keep your clones from throwing roots.
It is best to have a separate cloning station or area in order to control light, heat and humidity.
The method used is only slightly different for people using aeroponic cloners .But the same conditions to throw a clone apply.The only difference is you are spraying the lower stems under the cutting with water injected with air via a bubble stone in order to make the roots develop.Some people who clone with a aero cloner put the pump on a timer to spray the stem at intervals to allow the stem to dry some drawing the roots from the stem faster looking for moisture to keep itself alive.Where as media cloning uses the air stored in the media to develop the roots.
What i use to clone;Propagation tray,dome,heat pad and temp stat,probe from temp stat set at 75 F inside the dome and tray,Root riot cubes. Stand to put root riot cubes into so they are held up out of any standing water in the bottom of the tray,around 3/8 water in the bottom of the tray.This provides humidity inside the dome.NOT to wet the rooting media.
The rooting media is soaked in ph balanced water at 6.Cutting is put in the media with cloning gel or powder on the stem and the cloning media is ONLY MOISTENED when the top of the media starts turning a light brown. Or with rockwool when they start turning a light white color.Spray with PH balanced water ONLY then.
It took around 3 years to figure out how to clone.After i figured it out i wondered why in the fook no one could explain to me how to clone reliable.
The main reason is they were telling me how to clone..not why the plant clones.
Review;Air at stem with moisture,Humidity above the plant to keep it alive,SOFT light,and stable temp.
Even hard to clone plants will clone with the conditions being set right and sterile.
The next thing i use to explode roots from the GET GO. is a product called power clone from botanicare,Yes it is expensive.VERY.
You will notice hopefully from playing with roots some root systems even on older plants may have one main tap root going down into the media exploding with roots in the bottom.
Growers are always concerned with root development of their plant..for good reason.I want HUGE root development from the stem.Not a small root development from the stem and huge root development latter.
You will notice the hard to clone strains you are running when they throw a root may only throw one root stringer.
The power clone helps develop MASSIVE root development from the stem of the cutting giving you a HUGE head start on massive root development.
People dont like to use it because it is expensive.
I hope this helps someone.
