A Batch of Clones in Rockwool

Hey AL, what is the optimum humidity level to root clones?

doggiepaddel11 said:

Hey AL, what is the optimum humidity level to root clones?

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Doesn't matter. Avoid humidomes. If the cutting is getting sufficient water uptake through the stem cut, they're not needed- and usually cause problems.

Pay more attention to rootzone temp (a heatmat fixed on 30C takes care of that) and air temp (26-27C). A clonebox should serve only to limit drafts/air motion to keep the temps stable around the cuttings.

Al,

Can you reply to this thread?

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/70682-thrive-alive-rooting-clones.html

Thanks much.

Al B,

I don't know where to get at you, but I want to ask you about breeding G-13 seeds. Check this out:

https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/73826-breeding-g-13-clones-seeds.html

As you know, you ARE appreciated.

Al, I've never used this forum or any other except for browsing untill now and I think you sound like a pretty experienced grower, so I would like to know is your clone tray fed manually or on a timer and roughly how much how often, also how tall do your mothers get (from the bottom of the stem) before they're replaced? cheers pal, all the best

DrGreenFinger said:

Al B,

I don't know where to get at you, but I want to ask you about breeding G-13 seeds.

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I'm not the guy to ask about breeding. I sprout beans and propagate by cuttings. I let others do the breeding work.

Sponge Ass No Pants said:

is your clone tray fed manually or on a timer and roughly how much how often,

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Please read the entire thread. Your questions all are answered in the discussion, but I'll cover them here out of courtesy.

I water clones by hand. Each cube is watered by dipping only a corner of the cube into a bucket of a watering solution made from 10L tapwater, 10ml 50% grade H2O2 and pH corrected to 5.8. I water cubes 2x/day at 12h intervals.

The trick is to keep cubes damp, never wet. A 40mm cube weighs 5g dry and 20-25g when properly just damp and not wet. Saturating cubes drives all air out of them. Oxygen is necessary for the formation of root nodes on stems and also to prevent opportunistic anaerobic pathogen problems, which can cause stem tips to rot. Overwet cubes will cause slow rooting if not the death of the cutting. Get it right and you will have roots out of the bottom of the cubes in as little as 5-7 days.

also how tall do your mothers get (from the bottom of the stem) before they're replaced? cheers pal

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The height of a mum on retirement is kinda hard to say as I am always cutting them back and really quite severely. I retire them when they are no longer vigorous or have signs of having picked up some gnats in the rootmass.


Before cuttings and after. Mums recover this entire mass of veg material in 14 days. They're about 500-600mm tall before cuttings, perhaps 225-300mm after.

After a number of passes of cuttings, despite repeated severe pruning back, the woody mainstem of a mum gets so long that there's not enough vertical room in the mum area for them to veg through 2 more weeks without the new material getting up into the light. I do retire mums that get too tall in this way. I always have at least 2 replacement mums being vegged up at any given time. I prune those back as needed, without necessarily using the clippings for clones. Usually takes about 3 weeks and at least a couple passes of maintenance pruning to get a new mum into shape to deliver cuttings in the style I need them.

With a flood system beneath them, the mum area needs about 1900-2100mm (~6.5'-7') vertical height from the floor to allow sufficient lamp-leaf spacing.

I don't spend a lot of time talking about the mums- perhaps I should.

Grabbed the cam when doing the last batch of cuts.



The two on the left are young mums, only having had a maintenance pruning so far in their roughly 3 weeks in the veg area, when they went in as ~200mm tall clones. About 550-600mm as shown. These two haven't delivered any cuttings for clones yet, but are ready now as pictured. Check the 12mm thick mainstems- those fatties will make some nice clones. The thinner stems will be cut back to a lower node, the material discarded and new, thicker stems will shoot up to replace it all in the coming 14 days.

The two on the right have delivered several passes (perhaps 3-4 post their ~3 week veg-up time) of cuttings. Note thick, woody mainstems. These are getting a bit long in the tooth and will soon be replaced by the ones on the left. As they lose vigor, mums tend to deliver thinner stems that don't root as profusely nor quickly. They can also become too tall, such that they're up into the light before the 14 day cutting interval has passed. I say so long and thanks for all the cuttings- as they go sailing into the compost bin, which feeds my all-organic veggie patch out back just fine, thanks.

Here's the whole mob.



Pretty obviously, there's a lot more veg material there than absolutely needed to deliver 30 cuttings. I do compost a LOT of vegged material. However, I get more stems to choose from to get the best quality for clones.



With plants out of the mum area, you can see just how small it is. It was built around the tray, which (I'm guessing) is about 300mm x 900-1000mm. Covered by a 400HPS, ventilation by a thermostatically controlled 150mm axial (200CFM) fan, passive intake.

The mumzone is built in one corner of the flowering area. The tent-like walls are formed by a single piece of 250micron pandafilm thrown over a 2x4 screwed to the ceiling, with white sides outward. This assures no light leakage into the flowering area.

My apologies Al I've just finished reading this thread in full as i only just realised there were multiple pages (wot a dumbass, but i am learning) and this typing buisiness is quite time consuming. Thanks for the info, its more than i thought to ask so here's another thanks.

I would like to show you my op at some point when i get round to asking my brother how to get pics from my phone, to this poxy laptop. please dont waste your time explaining it, i would appreciate it but probably wouldn't understand. I need to be shown an re-shown, im sure you know what i mean.

I think I might tackle the famous '2 week thread' now i have new knowlege, but its getting late here and the missus needs servicing, saying that i would like to iron the last few unanswered questions......

" Up the chair sniffing "

It costs under $40.

All you do is take a cutting, stick it in the neoprene sleeve and your good to go. Run straight water and you will have a 100% success rate.

StinkBud said:

It costs under $40.

All you do is take a cutting, stick it in the neoprene sleeve and your good to go. Run straight water and you will have a 100% success rate.

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Yep, I've done aerocloners before. They worked generally well for me, though I found dosing the water with 50% grade H2O2 @ 1ml/L improved the consistency across each batch. An aquarium heater in the rez, set for about 25C helps, too.

I went back to RW as I found I could get 100%, every time, with cubes on a heat mat as opposed to about 80-90% in aero. Glad you can get 100% every time out of aero- I never could.

Does your $40 account for lighting, enclosure and fans?

I'm guessing thats a no. lol VV

Al B. Fuct said:

Yep, I've done aerocloners before. They worked generally well for me, though I found dosing the water with 50% grade H2O2 @ 1ml/L improved the consistency across each batch. An aquarium heater in the rez, set for about 25C helps, too.

I went back to RW as I found I could get 100%, every time, with cubes on a heat mat as opposed to about 80-90% in aero. Glad you can get 100% every time out of aero- I never could.

Does your $40 account for lighting, enclosure and fans?

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ive had zero success in rockwool, it stays to wet. Are you getting 100% in rockwool on a heat mat? also if you put em strait on a heat mat it gets way to hot, you need the prop trey in between which will put your cubes in the mid 70's. still i had no success. good luck

Al is on holiday so I will take the liberty of answering while I am babysitting his grow (but not the thread!). We both grow the same way (well mostly). Both Al & I get 100% nearly every time in 40mm rw cubes. We both use heat mats, Al has his clones in a thin plastic tray on the mat, I don't bother with the tray. What temp is your mat set to? Should be 30C. Is it a horticultural heat mat or are you using something else like a heating pad for people? Heating pads get too hot even on low. I tried to use one and it always got too hot.

You're watering your cubes too much. See the 1st page of this thread for info on how to water rw cubes. Dip only a corner of a rw cube in watering solution for a second or so.

Overwatering will cause slow rooting, yellow leaves, floppy leaves etc.

bongjockey said:

Al is on holiday so I will take the liberty of answering while I am babysitting his grow (but not the thread!). We both grow the same way (well mostly). Both Al & I get 100% nearly every time in 40mm rw cubes. We both use heat mats, Al has his clones in a thin plastic tray on the mat, I don't bother with the tray. What temp is your mat set to? Should be 30C. Is it a horticultural heat mat or are you using something else like a heating pad for people? Heating pads get too hot even on low. I tried to use one and it always got too hot.

You're watering your cubes too much. See the 1st page of this thread for info on how to water rw cubes. Dip only a corner of a rw cube in watering solution for a second or so.

Overwatering will cause slow rooting, yellow leaves, floppy leaves etc.

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is this why i also get yellow burnt tips?

mine go straight on a horticultural heat mat and im doin good for succes rate they are just kind of droopy and yellow burnt tips. my watering skills could need honing as im still pretty new...

cmak40 said:

is this why i also get yellow burnt tips?

mine go straight on a horticultural heat mat and im doin good for succes rate they are just kind of droopy and yellow burnt tips. my watering skills could need honing as im still pretty new...

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yes sounds like overwatering as well. Yellow tips and margins (edges) on lower leaves as well as that sickly undercurl are indicative of starvation of water.

'Overwatering causing STARVATION of water,' you say? Yep. Overwet conditions favour pythium and fusarium which will rot the stem tip and block the capillaries, causing wilt. Very often people conclude the wilt is because the clones are too dry, so they set about giving even more water and perhaps misting too, which of course makes things worse.

You can rescue them. Recut the affected stems and plug into new cubes that have been soaked in pH5.0 water for 24 hours. Drain as much of the water as possible by shaking the water out of the cubes. Never squeeze. Dip the stems in rooting powder & plug into new cubes. Water clones immediately with a mix of water, 50% grade H2O2 @ 1ml/L, pH to 5.8, use about 15-20ml per cube. A 60ml syringe is pretty good for accurate watering.

great thread al.b, and even better tutorial. Its key that you stress not to overwater the cubes, glad to see you did that
I hate rockwool but its made me consider making an attempt with cloning with it again. I almost kind of miss it

Yep, the trick with RW cubes is simply to not allow them to suck up all the water that they are capable of sucking up. A dry 40mm cube weighs 5g. When properly just 'damp' they weigh 20-25g. Heavier than that is too wet- water will have displaced too much air from the cube, causing slow rooting and stem rot.

al why did you close the thread up.

It was a thread about a 2-week rotation SoG op- I described that any number of times. The thing got too long to use as a reference and folks were not bothering to read what was already there. I wound up answering the same questions over & over, even stuff that was covered in post#1.

Are you going to start a "ASK ALBFUCT" thread?
we need you! haha
Thanks for all the great advise!