How to select a mother and can I take cuttings already?

Indoor Growing Hydroponics
21

The soil is very wet. But it needs to be wet for the roots to grow yes?

Actually I am not handling everything very sterile. Sometimes I disinfect something. But only sometimes.

One reason I dont work to sterile is that, I can take as many cuttings as I want. If a third or even more of them just die, I replace them the next day with new ones…

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22

Technically they need some moisture, at intervals, my cloner only sprays water on the stems for 5 minutes every hour for 22 hours then nothing for 2 hours and then starts again. So the majority of the time the stems are just moist and able to get air. If the soil is soaking all the time, the plant won’t bother to waste energy making roots, when it can suck it straight up the stem, any time it wants a drink.

You have to force them to do it, with wet and damp cycles which allows the roots to get air as well as water once they start to develop. Remember they will take the humidity through their leaves which is why you need a humid environment.

The bacteria/fungi that cause damping off are always present, you just have to not give them the perfect environment to thrive in. Which is wet and cool.

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23

so cool is good or bad for the bacteria?

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24

Depends on the bacteria they all thrive in different climates. For the bacteria causing damp off, rapid cooling and humid is bad.

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25

Those def look like they have been kept to wet, try sterilizing your scissors with isopropyl alcohol and quickly dipping the cutting in it before sticking in the cube. You do need moisture for roots to grow but you also need air, I have a aquaponics cloner that holds them suspended in air with a constant fine mist, but 99% of the time I just use cubes and a dome. Once you find out that perfect moisture ratio you will have alot higher success.
I always use sterile scissors and root gel but the rest is just extra precautions for particularly hard to root varieties.

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26

Really from my expeeience i clone everything or try to. Label them. You dont know which mother is a keeper til you harvest. I usually take the little lowers for clones early so they grow up with the momma. Then ill send one to flower n keep the smaller ones chugging along til i know if shes a keeper or not. Dont want to mother a watered down cut when the one next to it could have twice the terps n bang to it. Never know til chop in my opinion. So copy everything n toss the ones dont meet expectations. If any.

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27

I have good success with the clones now.

What I did:

  • Always put the rooting gel in extra clean glas. Not dipping the cuttings in the main bottle.
  • also I changed the rooting gel to clonex
  • Disinfect scissors and hands and rooting glas.
  • While taking the cuttings, I put them first in water glass until I you have all the cuttings for using the root gel with.
  • No standing water reaching the rooting cubes. But I have standing water in the bottom of the humidity dome. This has the advantage that the humidity stays high, even if not check the humidity dome for a whole week. And the other good advantage is that when the plants grow roots, the cubes maybe dry out but the root of the plant is reaching down to the water. So after I took the cuttings and closed the dome, I dont need to do anything more. Sometimes if the water gets dirty I pour in hydrogen peroxide. Then the water gets clean again. Not too much hydrogen peroxide because plants roots will suffer.

I think the most effective measures in my case are not dipping in the cutting in the rooting gel bottle and have standing water in the humidity dome but not in direct contact with the cubes.

success rate maybe around 90 percent. Thats enough for me.

oh and temperature in the dome is 25 to 35 degree celsius (depening on the amount of lights and dehumidifiers running nearby). But I am not really sure what is the sweet range for the clones.

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