Howdy. There are tons of teks on cloning, but what if they don’t work for you? What if...no matter what you do...you’re still not getting any roots, or very few. This is a tek that will attempt to explain why growers--even old, experienced growers such as myself--can encounter this problem. If you feel like your process is correct, your temps (both sub and room temps) are correct, and your mother is healthy and vigorous and you're still getting less than..say...65% rooted cuts...your problem is almost definitely water. I had this problem myself just recently after moving from Pennsylvania to maine.
To any growers who have never had this problem before, but then changed locations and all of a sudden you can't hardly get a clone to root...your problem is almost definitely water. If you're an organic grower, such as myself, you may not be in the habit of PHing your water. Tap water can wildly fluctuate. Mine goes from 6.8 to 10, depending on the amount of rain and runoff we have had recently. With a PH of ten, only the random pheno will be able to root. You may have checked your water one time and never again. No bueno. Follow this advice and you will succeed.
To any growers who have never had this problem before, but then changed locations and all of a sudden you can't hardly get a clone to root...your problem is almost definitely water. If you're an organic grower, such as myself, you may not be in the habit of PHing your water. Tap water can wildly fluctuate. Mine goes from 6.8 to 10, depending on the amount of rain and runoff we have had recently. With a PH of ten, only the random pheno will be able to root. You may have checked your water one time and never again. No bueno. Follow this advice and you will succeed.
- Use purified drinking water or water that has been filtered through an ro system. Filtered water--while not always necessary--it often is totally necessary. PH, TDS, and EC won't tell you exactly what is in your water. A water test will, but most of us don't really do that if we're being honest. So your tap water could have unacceptable levels of something that is detrimental to the rooting process. You just don't know. So use purified water.
- PH your water. Even if it comes from a bottle, check the PH and adjust accordingly.
- If you're using a power cloner, put the motor on a 15 minute cycle. This will keep the water temps from getting heated too much by the motor and killing your clones.
- This should have been one, but air and sub temps are critical. Too hot and you get slime. too cold and roots won't grow or they will start to grow, but then go dormant. If you're using cubes of any type or just cloning in a 50/50 mix of perlite/vermiculite like I do (it's the cheapest way and actually works vey well. When you're done, you can even sterilize the sub and safely reuse it! Beats the hell outta $20 for 50 Root Riot or buying new neoprene all the time. Just use a clean prop tray and premoisten the 50/50 blend to field capacity. Poke a hole and stick it.), then 72 deg. is perfect. If you're using power cloners, I'm told that you want to stay under 70 deg. water temp, but I'm no expert on power cloners (though I have used all of them. I just prefer my 50/50 blend.)
- Do not just continue to foliar spray because your cuts don’t have roots yet. Keeping the lid on your tray too long, or just continuously spraying your leaves will not only prevent rooting in some cases, it also opens you up to issues with mold. By day five and no later you should remove your lid. Sometimes a foliar spray or tow is necessary afterwards, and that's okay. But you want your cut to grow roots. It has no need to do this if it is getting all the water it needs through foliar spraying.
- If your cuts are woody, use a stronger cloning product than the standard Clonex. I recommend Dip N Grow. It's the only one on the market that actually has two different rooting agents in it and allows you to mix at different strengths. Hormex #8 also works very well on woody cuts. Also, IMHO, cutting the cambium works better than scraping it--but that's just my opinion and i’m sure others will feel differently.
