Yet another Clone SoP

Many good clone SoP threads here already, wasn’t sure we really needed another one, but the SoP I have evolved over the last few years gets us close to 100% success rate, and leads the way in to a 10 to 15 day veg.

Roots at Day 16

Of course, start with vigorous healthy plants.

Big cuts will take another day or so to start busting roots, but will blow past small cuts very quickly. For genetics preservation, little cuts are fine, but for production, bigger the better.

Take big chonky cuts, using scissors.

Optional: Dunk in Athena IPM.

Place the cuts in a cup of water. Most tap water is sufficient. Don’t use RO or super low EC water, they need some EC to not get weird.

Leave the cuts in the cup for 4 hours.

Make a 45 degree angle cut using a scalpel, NOT scissors. Scalpels are cheap on Amazon. Important to not use scissors for this part.

Dip the cuts in Athena Cuts. I went from Clonex to Athena cuts and saw a big improvement. If you cheap out here, you will not get the same results.

Stick the cuts in small rockwool cubes. The 1.5" are popular. We take Grodan Uni Slabs and cut them in to 2" cubes. Remember to presoak rockwool at 5.3 pH, in your flower nutes solution. Don’t use veg juice, use flower juice, much better for starting roots.

Place cuts in a tray and put the dome on. Leave it for 4 hours.

Put them under low level lights designed for clones. The Luxx Clone LEDs are arguably in a class of their own, but very hard to find now. You are looking for 8k to 12k on a Lux meter.

After 4 or 5 days, open the dome vents. If they flop, close the vents again, but they should be ready for drier air.

Once the cubes get a bit dry, anywhere from day 6 to 11 or so, dunk the cubes in veg nutes.

You should have serious roots busting out anywhere from day 11 to day 16, and be near 100% success rate!

Edit: Typo

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Nice SOP @BigF! :green_heart:

Welcome to OG.

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Rodger that! :+1:
I’d also recommend avoiding X-Acto blades as they are not as sharp as they once were… :roll_eyes:

Cheers
G

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May I please ask why no scissors I’m a newbie to growing an haven’t tooken clones yet but I’m getting ready to do so like right now or probably not an will be tomorrow if I need a scalpel an THANK U @Gpaw

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Found these cheap, and they seem to work great:

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I was told that they aren’t sharp enough, that duller blades kind of more smash the plant material than cleanly slice it.
Success rate went up a good bit after changing to a scalpel.

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Ok that makes sense so I’m definitely gonna wait to get a scalpel no sense of rushing through oh shit nevermind I got fresh razor blades n a box knife/razor knife

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exactly! :arrow_heading_up:

Even the sharpest scissors can’t match a scalpel. (close but no cookie)
Check out the results with a loupe or magnifying lens.
A typical scissors cut looks like it was done with a tiny claw hammer at 20x… :smile:

Cheers
G

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Awesome thank u guys I appreciate it an I’m just gonna go get scalpel from Walmart lol

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I tried the Athena Cuts gel because of your suggestion @BigF, and it upped my game big time! I tried Foop brand cloning gel and got terrible results (1 out of 5 to root maybe). After switching to Athena without changing anything else I got 100% success. Thank man!

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Yes! That is awesome to hear, and how good does that feel too?

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It boosted my confidence big time, plus I hate wasting cuts that were sent to me too so it makes me feel better for that as well!

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Do you find this keeps some cuts from slightly wilting in the first few days?

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Yes, the number of cuts that flopped each time went down quite a bit when I started doing that. The entire SoP evolved over a couple years; adding each step resulted in improved success rate.

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The other reason why scalpels are better is how they cut scissors pinch the vascular bundles together before they start to cut. Using a scalpel you draw the blade along slicing without compressing anything.

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Tried your method of soaking for a while post cut. Didn’t make it 4 hours but did ~2 hours in a 1.5EC solution. They are absolutely more rigid than what I’m used to after 3 days.

Where did you pick this up? I’ve never seen it talked about. Thanks for sharing.

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Trial and error and error and error heh

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