Duct tape does not do too well. I have been able to use the foil tape for duct work with some success on some small light leaks. Still does not hold great, but does the job.
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Thanks, I’ll look into that stuff. I had the thought of using spray on adhesive, but I don’t want to use anything with fumes, it’s in a room with my pet birds. Most likely I’ll try that tape for now, then as time goes on I’ll prob just get a second tent for veg and take that partition down.
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Looking good! Besides being able to hold itself up, what else should a lower have to be used for a cut? Also, glad to see youre chiseling away at getting everything setup!
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They don’t have to hold themselves up to qualify, since they fall over from being too long and skinny. I’ll be making my cuttings short enough that they can hold themselves up. plus most of it will be supported by the peat/coco pellet. Ideally, a cutting should be taken from a healthy plant, several hours to a day after the plant was watered and fed with a well balanced fert (in soil). I’ll try to take pics when I do it.
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kk. Thank you! I didnt know about the watering part. When I looked the lowers on my plant looked a bit deprived of light. I was thinking of cutting them and trying to root for the hands on practice.
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Well things have calmed down on the home drama, I got 3/5 of my lights mounted and hung in the tent. I plan to put 2 more strips on their own frame so I can adjust for shorter plants. The younger plants, 1 ethos cookies and 3 banana kush bag seeds, unfortunately got neglected a bit and have stretched/stunted a bit. One dried out too much and didn’t make it. Since I got the new fixture hung, I can dedicate the original light to the little ones, I’ll be transplanting them soon. The big plants are going to need a good pruning before I can flip them. I didn’t think I would ever have this problem, but they have grown way too tall to flower in my 6ft tall tent.
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Not much has changed, I had to raise the lights, still haven’t gotten the exhaust fan yet so the door is kept partly open 
. I only have 12x 9w LEDs in there now plus the light bar for veg until I get the fan. Then the bulbs are going to be swapped out to 15 (25 total when the other strips go in too) of the 15w bulbs. I’ve been super cropping along each stem/branch to strengthen them and help slow the vertical growth. I have made decisions on where I want to cut each plant, giving me about 8 or so colas per plant, reduce the height, and a much more even canopy.
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Well I got busy last night. My exhaust fan is getting delivered today, so I went ahead and got the plants ready for bloom. Since I way over vegged (9 weeks old now) for the height of my tent, I had to do some drastic pruning and supercropping.
Before:
Critical mass X
Grease monkey X (two plants are nearly identical)
After: Now all 18” tall with 10-12 growth tips/cola sites
Critical mass
Grease monkey x2
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Now what I did with some of the pieces I cut off.
I take cuttings that have 4-5 nodes plus the growth tip. Then I soak them in cold water for at least 30 mins.
After that, I prep them by stripping the bottom node or two, always leave at least two nodes plus the tip. peel the leaf downward to strip some of the skin
If it doesn’t expose enough tissue underneath, I’ll scrape the skin with a blade or edge of scissors
Then cut leaves in half, remove any that are just too big.
Dip in rooting powder/gel and insert into peat/coco pellet. I prefer peat pellets, but with coco, just use them upside down and poke a new hole, they stand up better that way. Just make sure it’s wet but not soggy, a little water should seep out when you gently squeeze it, but not dripping wet.
Since I don’t make a bunch of cuttings at a time, I prefer jars and containers instead of a whole plant tray/dome. The container should ideally be just big enough so there’s some air space between the leaves and the walls/top, that minimizes the amount of moisture needed to maintain humidity.
I’ll leave it alone for a day or two, then I’ll start opening it just long enough to wipe the condensation off the sides of the container and put it back on. That will slowly allow the pellet to dry and make the cutting search for water by growing roots. Once roots pop through the pellet, I’ll transplant and put a container over the new clone, just like the soup container I soaked the cutting in. Let it vent just a little, either with small breathing holes on top, or leaving it propped up just a little to let it breath through the bottom. After another day or so, I’ll start taking the dome off until I see it start to wilt, then cover again if it does.
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nice idea…had not thought of reusing jars in this manner. Filed. or as @oleskool830 would claim …written into the book
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Yea with less air volume, I don’t bother misting them at all. Then condensation drops back down keeping the pellets moist but not wet. But if you don’t remove a bit of the moisture, the plant has no reason to grow roots to search for water.
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I realize I didn’t take a whole tent shot last night right after it was all done, but here it is a day later.
My light rig
I’ll be switching all these 9w bulbs to the 15w bulbs like the one front and center for flower. These are all daylight 5000K, I’ll be using roughly 50/50 mix of 2700K and 5000K bulbs for bloom, maybe with 4 reptile UVB bulbs mix in later on.
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Thank you for the step by step! Looks like a good program. I have some cheeseball containers that would be perfect if the bubble cloner is full. Going to clean them out!
The lights look good too!
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So after getting my 16oz container challenge seeds planted, I was checking out a funky growth tip on one of my smaller plants. I noticed a small slender bug move around on a leaf… I believe I have thrips! After doing some quick research, I’m going to have to get some spinosad spray and try to deal with this before I start my bloom cycle. Aside from that… the big plants are growing back nicely after their date with the scissors.
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Update: not much has changed. the cutting still haven’t rooted, but they were taken when the plants were becoming a little deficient so that’s kinda to be expected. The big plants have been rebounding from the chop, and I’ve been super cropping as they do. The three smaller plants are doing wonderfully after I transplanted them into amended promix. Now I just need to make sure the thrips are gone, get some exhaust tubing, and get the final light strip to finish the array for the flower side. Then transplant into 5gal buckets for bloom.
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Surely there has to be some plant growth to take a picture of! 
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Had to give you a hard time lol. Hope you had a great weekend!
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Looking good SMonkey!!!
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It’s been another very rough week. Tough to deal with still. I actually put both of my dogs down to sleep on Wednesday, so I’ve been kind of in a haze. They were almost 13 and 15.
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