A Batch of Clones in Rockwool

VictorVIcious said:

I will make it there before you get here. My wifes next business trip is going to be to Australia. They usually stay in two different cities, 3 to 4 days each. Don't know the details yet.

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coolio.

You did notice I still have one of the 400 watt hps lights in use right? I am going to use it for about 10 mothers here in the next few months

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No, I didn't see that. You have a 400HPS for mums but fluoros over your flowering plants?

IF you have the time I would appreciate it if you could post one of your clone pictures in my blues thread. I want to use it to explain the difference between running an op that is alreay set up and going and the shoestring operation I am running and I think having the picture right there will help drive the point home. VV

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Nothing stopping you from linking to imgs in my gallery, mon. Will get to it myself if I can.

mreverything said:

I have a question that is sort of relevant to this topic, but i didnt think it was worthy of making a thread, does rockwool germinate seeds well? BEcause i had tried to germinate in rockwool and it didnt work, so i threw it in a wet paper towel and in a bag and it germinated in 24 hours but i left it in for an additional day, but i only left the seed in the rockwool for about a day and a half, i think i was being impatient and didnt give it time, but does it work in rockwool bc i dont think i left it in for long enough.

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I use the old 'damp paper towel in a partly open plastic bag in a warm place' method, myself. Works a treat, as you also found.

Putting a seed on a block of damp anything probably won't provide a humid enough environment to crack the bean. Even on a heatmat, a small (40mm) RW cube won't warm all the way to the top, where you might put the seed.
For as rarely as most growers will be cracking beans, the old standard low-tech method is great.

You are right Al I can copy the picture, And I will credit your for it. No, I don't have it over the Mothers yet because I don't have the mothers yet. I am switching strains because of the flowering time for the WW, Ice and Crystal I did have, I have three blue berry varieties now, two weeks in flowering on 4/20. I started with 3-400 watt hps lights. And like you said I could always go bigger, I am satisfied with the income at this level running about 2000 watts max for the 12/12 cycle and less than 800 right now for the veggig lights, fans etc. Remember I went from 60 amp service, having to be careful about what was turned on to 200amp, haven't blown a breaker since type service. And during that time all three of my wifes cildren moved in, soo use is already up enough for right now. VV

Way cool, VV. 2kW in the flowering area (and some dedicated effort) will butter your bread without leaving home.

Question for you Al.

I'm in the 10th day of flowering with two BC Big Bud plants. Soil grow, using 1000w MH. Have just determined that one is male, one is female.

I decided that I'd just finish out the flowering to get seeds from the female for my next attempt.

But then...I got to thinking about cloning....and was wondering if cloning the female, pulling the male, and going back to veg for a few weeks. Would this work well? You're an expert I'd say (from reading many many many of your posts and threads) so I thought you might be the guy for this advice. Thanks for your time.

You can do some cuttings off the female, but do more than you think you will need- and do them sooner than later. Because the plant has been flowering for a while, your strike rate may be low.

When you do get them to strike, they will take several (6- weeks in veg cycle light and a few passes of pruning before they return fully to veg habit. In the interim, you will see some odd, mixed veg & flower growth such as single bladed fan leaves or large seed bracts at the nodes. This habit will eventually resolve to a more normal veg pattern, just keep cutting the plant back rather severely every couple of weeks until it decides to play nice.

Thanks.

I've got a friend who works in at a vineyard and said he'd hook me up with gel, its what they use for the grapes. You say powder is better? Should I clone straight into the soil, or use the rockwool cubes? I've got quite a few mason jars I can use for domes. Your thoughts?

Mr. Marge said:

Thanks.

I've got a friend who works in at a vineyard and said he'd hook me up with gel, its what they use for the grapes. You say powder is better? Should I clone straight into the soil, or use the rockwool cubes? I've got quite a few mason jars I can use for domes. Your thoughts?

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You can get both gels and powders with varying concentrations per kg of butyric acid rooting hormone. 8g/kg will do for cannabis. Stronger than that is used for rooting woody stems, as one may find in a vineyard. If looking at a shelf full of rooting powders, select one labelled for green or soft stems instead of for woody stems.

Yes, powders form a paste which stays put better than gels through waterings, particularly in rockwool cubes. Gels tend to wash off after a few waterings.

RW cubes work better than soil as they can be used with a heat mat. Their shape allows heat to be transferred efficiently into the damp cube. They also allow you to keep very tight control on watering. RW cubes will protect new roots better than soil when moving new clones about or planting them in the grow media.

Domes are not necessary. If the clone can get sufficient water uptake from the medium through its stem cut, it won't wilt. If the stem cut is not neat (use a sharp scalpel, scissors crush capillaries) or the blade/watering solns are not sterile, water uptake can be blocked. Stem tip rot can be exacerbated by excessively wet media- and it's very easy to overwater RW cubes. If your clones show signs of wilt in 3-5 days post cutting, they can be recut- just take 2-3mm off the tip, dust it again in rooting powder and poke it in a new cube which has been soaked in a sterile pre-soak soln.

Al B. Fuct said:

Yes, powders form a paste which stays put better than gels through waterings, particularly in rockwool cubes. Gels tend to wash off after a few waterings.

RW cubes work better than soil as they can be used with a heat mat. Their shape allows heat to be transferred efficiently into the damp cube. They also allow you to keep very tight control on watering. RW cubes will protect new roots better than soil when moving new clones about or planting them in the grow media.

Domes are not necessary. If the clone can get sufficient water uptake from the medium through its stem cut, it won't wilt. If the stem cut is not neat (use a sharp scalpel, scissors crush capillaries) or the blade/watering solns are not sterile, water uptake can be blocked. Stem tip rot can be exacerbated by excessively wet media- and it's very easy to overwater RW cubes. If your clones show signs of wilt in 3-5 days post cutting, they can be recut- just take 2-3mm off the tip, dust it again in rooting powder and poke it in a new cube which has been soaked in a sterile pre-soak soln.

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I would like to add my personal experience to the Guru's advice.

Soil is shitty for cloning.

Sterlizing is the most important next to the rooting powder.

Rockwool cubes and a heat mat are essential.

Nutrients aren't necessary, but phosphorous does help in the root development.

Al, could I add some P nutes in a very light concentration to aid in root stimulation?

Say, after day 3-5?





Enigma

Enigma said:

Al, could I add some P nutes in a very light concentration to aid in root stimulation?

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I think I would wait until after they have some roots before feeding them anything. You can have roots out the bottom of 40mm cubes in 5 days with pH 5.8 water, H2O2 and controlled conds, including a heat mat. If you are getting good roots in 7-10 days with a profusion of roots in 14, you're doing OK.

You certainly can play around and see what happens. By experimentation, I found that veg nutes in the watering soln for pre-rooted clones slowed rooting, corroborating other anecdotal evidence I'd seen. I did a control group and a test group with 400ppm nutes, the test group was about 5 days slower and less profuse, but caught up with the control group when in the flowering area.

Al B. Fuct said:

I think I would wait until after they have some roots before feeding them anything. You can have roots out the bottom of 40mm cubes in 5 days with pH 5.8 water, H2O2 and controlled conds, including a heat mat. If you are getting good roots in 7-10 days with a profusion of roots in 14, you're doing OK.

You certainly can play around and see what happens. By experimentation, I found that veg nutes in the watering soln for pre-rooted clones slowed rooting, corroborating other anecdotal evidence I'd seen. I did a control group and a test group with 400ppm nutes, the test group was about 5 days slower and less profuse, but caught up with the control group when in the flowering area.

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I figured you would say that.

Thanks Guru!





Enigma

Hey AL B great post!

Im also doing Sog style grow but had a question about the cloning.
Im want to use kind of like a aero cloner, and then put them in a small bucket or net pots with hydroton rocks in a flood table.
Is there anything wrong or less effective by doing this?

Mrgrow626 said:

Hey AL B great post!

Im also doing Sog style grow but had a question about the cloning.
Im want to use kind of like a aero cloner, and then put them in a small bucket or net pots with hydroton rocks in a flood table.
Is there anything wrong or less effective by doing this?

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You can certainly use aerocloners if you like, but I've used them in the past and get more consistent results in RW cubes on a heat mat. RW cubes also work to stabilse and protect new roots as well as gives the clone some mechanical stability when planting into pots of media.

I've run my system in the past in pots of pellets. Using pots of pellets in a flood system has ups and downs. On the upside, you can flood pots of pellets more often than you can flood absorbent media, which allows you to move more oxygenated nutrient soln through the rootmass than you can with absorbent media like RW floc or Fytocell.

If you do use pellets, make sure that your RW cubes are placed so they are 1/2" ABOVE the flood line. The flood level must not be allowed to touch the RW cube; this will saturate the RW cube. Saturating a RW cube with a small plant in it 3x/day will cause overwatering-like symptoms. Plants newly placed in pots of pellets can have the pellets (not the cubes!) handwatered for a week or so until roots seek their way down into the damp pellets.

The downside to pellets is that they are about 2-4x heavier and thus harder to dispose of by comparison to floc and Fytocell. Pellets are technically re-usable but in practise are difficult to sterilise and clean totally free of old root matter, meaning root diseases and pests can be transferred from crop to crop in re-used pellets. Even if you do clean and sterilise them, pellets will accumulate nutrient salts and will eventually have to be disposed of and replaced with new material.

Absorbent media like floc & Fytocell are disposable and so you use new, sterile media for every crop. Floc can carry the plant through a watering failure (dead pump, timer, etc) for up to 48 hours, giving you time to catch the failure before the plant wilts.

Fytocell holds less water than floc, so a 175mm dia pot of the stuff will only hold about a day's backup supply worth of water. However, Fytocell is about 40% air and is very hard to overwater. It allows you to flood more frequently than in floc. Floc can only be flooded about 1x/day, where plants in pots of Fytocell can be watered 2x a day, 3x for advanced plants, about the same as in pellets.

Fytocell has its downsides, of course. Having so much air content, naturally the stuff floats! Pots which float can also fall over and tip out the medium, making a hell of a mess in the flood trays. Fytocell is a crumbled polymer foam material and will fall right out of the drain holes in pots. I found one good workaround was to tightly pack about 50mm of RW floc in the bottom of my pots. Floc holds enough water to weight down the pot, stopping buoyancy. It also allows water to pass through itself but blocks the Fytocell crumbs from falling out.

YOU, SIR, ARE AN INSPIRATION!!! IF YOUR EVER IN FLORIDA MY WIFE AND HER SISTER ARE HOT AND AVAILABLE TO YOU 24/7

heh, I'll keep that in mind.

thanks al b! I just like the idea of the areocloner for its simplicity
What would i need to do if i place rooted clones from the areocloner directly into the pellets without rw? Thanks!

Mrgrow626 said:

thanks al b! I just like the idea of the areocloner for its simplicity
What would i need to do if i place rooted clones from the areocloner directly into the pellets without rw? Thanks!

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I like aerocloners too. You'll see the root nodes as they happen, can be as little as 3 days. Important to dose your aerocloner soln with H2O2, 50% grade @ 1ml/L every 3-4 days to keep pathogens controlled in the warm, damp rooting chamber and also to shield the chamber from light if using a transparent or translucent plastic container as an aerocloner.

Once well practised with them, I found cubes gave me more consistent results, but I can see why one would want to eliminate them. They are very absorbent and that causes problems for ppl not accustomed to using them.

They also can cause problems when used in pellets, unless they are nested in the pellets such that they are about 1/2" above the flood level. Pellets need flooding about 3x day. If the cube gets saturated 3x/day, young plants with few roots will have overwatering probs.

If you're in pellets, I can see why you want to go medialess. It would be an improvement over using cubes in pellets- the placement of the clone vis a vis the flood level is no longer a critical issue. Nute soln would reach the entire rootmass from day 1 in the pellets.

Downside is that roots outside of media are delicate and the plant needs either mechanical support to remain vertical- or to be handled gently until the roots knit in the pellets.

Pellets are great because you can flood often with no fear of overwatering. Gets more oxygenated nutes to the roots than by my method, in Fytocell. Downside is the weight and disposability as well as little backup moisture in pellets.

I don't use pellets because I have 92 plants in flower, harvesting 23 every 2 weeks. Each pot is about 3.5L (a bit under 1 US gallon). That's about 86 litres of media to dispose of or clean and recycle every 2 weeks. Getting all the root material out of pellets is tedious, almost as bad as manicuring, IMNSFHO.

Fytocell is about 20% of the weight of pellets, with similar airspace content. I bet a litre of pellets weighs about 250-300g. A litre of dry Fytocell weighs about 50-60g. Anyone could carry 2x 100L bags of Fytocell with one hand. This makes a big difference when you use the volumes of media I do and have to dispose of it, too. Fytocell has its own drawbacks, the worst of which is that it floats- but there's a workaround for that by packing 50mm of RW floc in the base of each pot, which also keeps hte Fytocell from falling out of the drain holes.

Al, I'm sure you covered this.. but there is a sale on these peat cubes.. like 76 for $6 with the trays and lids.. jump on 'em?

Put them in the rubbish bin before you jump on 'em.

Please don't use peat pots, jiffypots, etc in a recirculating hydro op. They tend to go to bits and the bits can foul pumps. Organic media can also support mould, where inorganic material like RW cubes cannot.

Al B. Fuct said:

Put them in the rubbish bin before you jump on 'em.

Please don't use peat pots, jiffypots, etc in a recirculating hydro op. They tend to go to bits and the bits can foul pumps. Organic media can also support mould, where inorganic material like RW cubes cannot.

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Shit.

What if the pump used a filter?

Clean the filter after every rez change (every 2 weeks)?

E

yeah, drop the pump in a knee-hi nylon stocking. Good enough. Check often if there's enough debris around to plug the filter.

Nylon stocking material is a pretty good all-purpose air & water filter for particulates down to about .01mm.

Tell the gf you want her old stockings (mind the ones with really bad runs, they go in the bin).... but it's not because you're a chair sniffer or anything...