The Battle has been cast
Roux called out Jellypowered here
It’s a clone off ladies and gentlemen!!
It’s the “state of the art, fancy pants” ebb and flow vs the “northern hillbilly backwoods” DWC!!
** The Competitors!!** @Jellypowered with the ebb and flow @Roux with the DWC
Terms
Any plant and clone. (if more specific, feel free to edit) EDIT by @Jellypowered
User with the best root systems in 14 days wins. Best of luck!
Cuttings are from a female K-Cup (original) mom that survived.
I know that there is nothing scientific about my method for cutting. I am trying a new thing (to me) this time, I had a few long cuts so I decided to see if a internode would root too. I have two of them in there, can you pick them out?
Well, this will be fun. @Jellypowered looks like you are off to a great start. I think we are all interested in your experimental cloning system. Would like to thank you for taking your time to enter this friendly competition and for showing us your methods, I think we will all learn and benefit from this. Good luck!
First tagged each cutting I wanted from each plant and marked them accordingly. You’ll see in the picture, I use a tag and attach it with a zip tie (I flip the zip tie backwards so I can adjust it or remove it without clipping it.)
Once selected, I removed 10 cuttings at a time and held them in a container with water. During this next part I used a utility knife with a fresh blade and some cloning powder.
When I select each clone, I make sure they have at least 3 nodes. That being, I’ll be slicing through the bottom node and using that as my rooting point. I remove any leaves or growth on the bottom node and then make a 45º cut through the node, then a generous dip in cloning powder.
I load up the neoprene pucks (I did 5 clones per puck) then put them in my clone bones to secure them. I try to make sure the stems all come down at the same length.
Once they are all loaded up I made sure the tips of the cuttings are just about 1 inch above water line. Then I will keep a humidity dome on them for the next week.
I use 6 gallons of pure RO water (NOT treated), water temp set at 70ºf. The tent temp is 75ºf with 85% RH in the clone chamber.
Well that is it for now…the cuttings will remain there for a week for roots to show. I’ll provide the progress updates as they come up.
Wow, you are WAY more technical than I am. I don’t even look for nodes I just use “That looks about right” method to decide where I cut and all that. lol.
…I was having slow results with that method too, but better than some clonex+perllite cuttings I did.
The big lesson this year on cloning for me is: healthy, vegging mother. My last cuttings + water gave 100% rooted in <15 days. I also kept the temperatures mid-70sF and elevated them with no thermal contact(wire mesh table).
Covered(my "dome is just a clear rubbermaid bin) for the first day or 2 or 3.
6’ from a single 15w SIL(weeeeaaaak light).
So… I attribute this last batch’s speedy success to: mom & temps.
As they rooted & got transplanted I gave them some refracted sunlight in the bathroom. Very likely gave them a needed boost.
Well, here we are 6 days in, and got some definite signs of root growth.
They are looking way too yellow right now and I should have added food 2 days ago (when I seen the first root pop)…but whatevs, they be ok.
I added 400 ppm of food for them today, they should perk back up here and give some new green growth once roots pop. Going forward I will probably start them in 400 ppm treated water…the hungry ones just don’t have enough to cannibalize its lower leaves, it cannibalizes its entire self (not good)
Shouldn’t be long now before the roots are everywhere!
Jelly I know your in hydroton and you wont know until they pop out the bottom…but I would have to guess yours are doing similar things under your medium.
@Roux certainly appears to have the first/best/most roots - BUT - we cant really call that until @Jellypowered digs into his pots or they start showing outside. With the way his setup is built, I suspect we may not know for sure until the babies are removed from the hydroton.
On the other hand, it looks to me like @Jellypowered has better looking plants up top. Less yellowing and wilting - other than the one that looks dead
So far, Id rate this a toss up at this early stage.
No visible roots out the bottom of the basket yet. The two “mid node clones” I took are the only ones looking terrible/like they might not make it.
Some data:
Lighting: 18/6
Flood Schedule: Every hour, for 10 minutes during lights on only.
Food: Custom GH mix coming in at 800ppm… 1.6 EC on the ol meter. (This will either kill them or slow them down is my hypothesis but it’s worth a shot, logic tells me since these were from a healthy vegging plant they can take it)
10 days down, and 4 to go…Your clone are looking very green and healthy on top @Jellypowered , Just waiting for yours to explode in roots and for you to take me out of this comp.
…Mine are yellowing on top but starting there new growths…but we got some barely legal root porn
Day 13:
No visible roots out of the baskets, last night they got a epsom spray after lights out.
The “dead one” had nubs, but no formed roots.
The K-Cup was notoriously slow to root, the fact that they are still alive is promising.
With only one day left, the obvious winner is @Roux. I will continue to await actual roots, but it’s apparent that my method is NOT the fastest, however they haven’t died off yet… so i’d say it CAN work.
Well damn Jelly, thought they would have popped out some roots by now…Well it was fun anyway, and who knows, they will probably shoot roots out soon just update when they do.
But I am here to wrap up this competition between us gentlemen. You will see that all clones didn’t have as easy of a time rooting, we are a bit yellow on top, but new growths are becoming more rapid for most of the clones.
15 Clones rooted out of 20 in 14 days, so…%75 (not great, however I will leave them in there and they still may root, they got the root bumps)
And if you are wondering if the clones are hard to separate? They are not, with a little gentle tug they free themselves from the others
Damn impressive this little clone was, she pops roots out in 6 days and within another 8 days she is a full blown plant with secondary growths starting to take off (even on only 400 ppm of feed)
The whole cloner will get a bump in food this week to 800 ppm, see how they fair and keep the best for moms, then cull the rest.
Thanks once again @Jellypowered for running this with me and to all who have followed along.