Clones might not make it

[airavata]

My clones are about a week and a half in. Still no roots, which I think is fairly normal, but their leaves are dying and falling off like crazy. I'm keeping the humidity high. The temperature usually gets a little too high in the morning before I wake up and open the door to the tent, but the temp. is usually around 75-77. I mist the humidity dome with RO water. There is a seedling mat under the tray to keep the roots warmer than the foliage. The problem doesn't seem to be mold. It doesn't smell moldy or mildewey, just like dead leaves. I am running a 125w cfl. Is that too much light for them? It's about 2' above the canopy. That's the only thing I can figure. Any ideas?

 

[Sky Rocket]

Odd for the leaves to turn yellow so quickly. Did you use any rooting gel? Also your clones look kind of tall and lanky. Did cut these cuttings yourself? If so was the mother plant or doner plant in good condition. Also if you did take the cuttings did you make a 45 degree cut of your clones?

 

[airavata]

Odd for the leaves to turn yellow so quickly. Did you use any rooting gel? Also your clones look kind of tall and lanky. Did cut these cuttings yourself? If so was the mother plant or doner plant in good condition. Also if you did take the cuttings did you make a 45 degree cut of your clones?

Hey, Sky Rocket. They do look lanky but that's more because of the leaves they've lost. I did use cloning gel. The mothers were a high planes and a NYC Diesel plant and they were pretty healthy, although the soil was harboring gnats which were starting to cause minor deficiency symptoms. Also, I did make cuts at a 45 degree angle.

 

[Sky Rocket]

When you have the clones in the rock wool is the rock wool staying moist and not saturated in water?

 

[airavata]

For the first couple days, I was letting the rockwool get too dry because I was paranoid about it being too saturated. When I smelled the clones cooking, I pulled the light up a foot higher and started rewetting the clones more often. That slowed down their leaves dying, but they're still doing it. I think it might be they have too much light but I don't know.

 

[airavata]

I cut the light back to 35 watts from a cfl 3 days ago. Haven't had any of my remaining leaves die or discolor further. I still have no roots showing through the rockwool though. I just counted and it's been 18 days.

 

[Sky Rocket]

Wow 18 days something should have rooted. On january 2nd I took I took about 30 cuttings (different strains) and just about all have rooted and ready for veg but I use a different method than you do without using a hunidity dome.

Yes I have some plants with yellow leaves and those are the ones that are having a problem rooting. I just pulled them off. Once they yellow there no good.

 

[Captain Kronic]

This is just my opinion but... maybe next time, don't leave so many big leaves on the cuttings. Also, your cuttings are a lot bigger than what I start out with... I cut mine much smaller; that way there isn't as much plant to take care of! I find it is easier "for me" to manage smaller cuttings... my theory is, smaller cuttings do better because they don't have those big leaves to take care of... have you ever noticed that the big leaves always wilt first?
If the cutting is focusing on saving leaves, it takes away from the plants ability to make root... make sense?
Also, I feel you can up your success ratio if you cut back on the light... I run a 18/6 for the lil ones, they do their root making in the dark... I didn't see where you said what you were doing in terms of light hours!

Also... did you cut your stems so there would be nodules under the medium... by nodules I mean where the leaves/stems come out of the main stalk... by having a nod or two under the soil/rockwool/whatever will help the plant get roots going!

Anyways, I just woke up and am probably not at my best right now... I hope some of what I have mentioned helps.... peace and best of to you all!

 

[airavata]

I just got done looking and I have 4 plants out of 10 that have pushed roots through the rockwool. I was really starting to worry.

Wow 18 days something should have rooted. On january 2nd I took I took about 30 cuttings (different strains) and just about all have rooted and ready for veg but I use a different method than you do without using a hunidity dome.

Yes I have some plants with yellow leaves and those are the ones that are having a problem rooting. I just pulled them off. Once they yellow there no good.

Yeah, I think the added stress from all the extra light I was giving them was causing the roots to slow down but I think they're back on track now.

This is just my opinion but... maybe next time, don't leave so many big leaves on the cuttings. Also, your cuttings are a lot bigger than what I start out with... I cut mine much smaller; that way there isn't as much plant to take care of! I find it is easier "for me" to manage smaller cuttings... my theory is, smaller cuttings do better because they don't have those big leaves to take care of... have you ever noticed that the big leaves always wilt first?
If the cutting is focusing on saving leaves, it takes away from the plants ability to make root... make sense?
Also, I feel you can up your success ratio if you cut back on the light... I run a 18/6 for the lil ones, they do their root making in the dark... I didn't see where you said what you were doing in terms of light hours!

Also... did you cut your stems so there would be nodules under the medium... by nodules I mean where the leaves/stems come out of the main stalk... by having a nod or two under the soil/rockwool/whatever will help the plant get roots going!

Anyways, I just woke up and am probably not at my best right now... I hope some of what I have mentioned helps.... peace and best of to you all!

Hey, Captain K., good advice. I totally agree. I did cut the bigger leaves way down but you're right. I did put nodules below the rockwool but I meant for one more set to fall under the rockwool and it just wouldn't fit b/c my cubes were smaller than I estimated. So I ended up with more plant above root level and less exposed cambium layer below than I was shooting for. Next time my clones will be smaller for sure. Oh, also, they are already on 18/6, 125 watts, apparently, was just too intense for them.

Thanks to everybody who took the time to help me get back on track.

 

[Captain Kronic]

Glad to hear it M8... I am about a week into some cuttings and I'm thinking I should pull off the domes for a while and see how they do

This is only my second time ever using humidity domes so, I'm still working up a recipe for doing my clones. I believe I read somewhere that you should only use the domes for a few days and then pull them off and watch to see if the cuttings start wilting or do they stay strong... that is what I am looking at as for a plan of attack on these... make sense to anyone else?

Once again airavata, I'm glad you are making progress... good on ya!

 

[airavata]

Glad to hear it M8... I am about a week into some cuttings and I'm thinking I should pull off the domes for a while and see how they do

This is only my second time ever using humidity domes so, I'm still working up a recipe for doing my clones. I believe I read somewhere that you should only use the domes for a few days and then pull them off and watch to see if the cuttings start wilting or do they stay strong... that is what I am looking at as for a plan of attack on these... make sense to anyone else?

Once again airavata, I'm glad you are making progress... good on ya!

Thanks, bro. I appreciate that. I would guess that your clones would fare a lot better with the humidity dome until they're able to put out roots, otherwise you risk your cuttings transpiring more moisture than they're able to take back up. I'd be curious to see what kind of results your experiment yields though.

 

[VolcanoVapor]

What ever you do, do NOT drink or feed reverse osmosis/distilled water to your plants without first BALANCING the water molecularity. The human body along with plants was designed to run on water that exists naturally on our planet, water that contains traces of inorganic minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium. Nowhere on Earth does de-mineralized water occur naturally. Distillation and R.O. systems produce de-mineralized water with an acidic pH. Many recent reports claim that prolonged consumption of distilled or de-mineralized water can only lead to some form of mineral deficiency (your plants.) Water by nature has to balance itself, when the minerals are stripped from water it causes the pH to drop and water to become acidic. It then seeks to balance itself (a basic law of nature) and does so by taking on minerals, primarily calcium from your teeth, bones, and your plants stored mineral reserves. If we consume de-mineralized water, it will actually pull minerals from our body to balance itself with. This has been demonstrated and reported in many recent books and studies.

Do not get the wrong idea! I encourage you guys to use reverse osmosis or distillation systems (fluoride, a neurotoxin is removed) to lower the PPM in the water from the hundreds in tap water to <20PPM but you must re-mineralize the water with calcium, magnesium, and potassium to increase the PPM to a safe level before adding nutes. Please take this into consideration and ignore the RO and distillation manufacturers falsifying information with their market share interests in claiming they are for "drinking water," that is just not true without first balancing the water, which they neglect to mention. From my personal experience after drinking water from a 5 stage RO filter for 2 weeks straight and let me tell you, my throat started burning as if I was drinking hydrochloric acid! If you don't believe unbalanced PURE water is unsafe, count how many days it takes your throat to burn from drinking it without re-mineralizing it but I do not recommend it as it will pull calcium from your body.

 

[airavata]

What ever you do, do NOT drink or feed reverse osmosis/distilled water to your plants without first BALANCING the water molecularity. The human body along with plants was designed to run on water that exists naturally on our planet, water that contains traces of inorganic minerals such as calcium, magnesium and potassium. Nowhere on Earth does de-mineralized water occur naturally. Distillation and R.O. systems produce de-mineralized water with an acidic pH. Many recent reports claim that prolonged consumption of distilled or de-mineralized water can only lead to some form of mineral deficiency (your plants.) Water by nature has to balance itself, when the minerals are stripped from water it causes the pH to drop and water to become acidic. It then seeks to balance itself (a basic law of nature) and does so by taking on minerals, primarily calcium from your teeth, bones, and your plants stored mineral reserves. If we consume de-mineralized water, it will actually pull minerals from our body to balance itself with. This has been demonstrated and reported in many recent books and studies.

Do not get the wrong idea! I encourage you guys to use reverse osmosis or distillation systems (fluoride, a neurotoxin is removed) to lower the PPM in the water from the hundreds in tap water to <20PPM but you must re-mineralize the water with calcium, magnesium, and potassium to increase the PPM to a safe level before adding nutes. Please take this into consideration and ignore the RO and distillation manufacturers falsifying information with their market share interests in claiming they are for "drinking water," that is just not true without first balancing the water, which they neglect to mention. From my personal experience after drinking water from a 5 stage RO filter for 2 weeks straight and let me tell you, my throat started burning as if I was drinking hydrochloric acid! If you don't believe unbalanced PURE water is unsafe, count how many days it takes your throat to burn from drinking it without re-mineralizing it but I do not recommend it as it will pull calcium from your body.

Can you site your sources? I've been drinking RO water exclusively for 4 months without any adverse side effects. Tap water is full of antibiotics, hormones, and toxins. I don't follow your logic about "balancing water molecularity". I don't think water has any inherent need to balance itself with minerals. While the minerals in natural spring water are beneficial, I don't believe that there is anything unhealthy about pure water. But, again, I'm curious to see the recent studies that you mentioned. I'd be happy to eat my words if you can demonstrate the validity of your theory.

 

[Sky Rocket]

Not to deter you but if you ever decide to switch your cloning technique I think you should try out aeroponic cloning. No humidity dome needed. No medium needed except foam inserts in a bin. Tap water phed to 5.8 with misters from a $14 dollar pump spraying your plantson a 1 minute on 5 minute off timer.

 

[airavata]

Not to deter you but if you ever decide to switch your cloning technique I think you should try out aeroponic cloning. No humidity dome needed. No medium needed except foam inserts in a bin. Tap water phed to 5.8 with misters from a $14 dollar pump spraying your plantson a 1 minute on 5 minute off timer.

I think that's a great idea. Ultimately, I want to root my clones aeroponically, like you suggested, and have my veg and flowering plants in a DWC system. I kind of want to fine-tune my technique with the setup I have first though. I think I know where I went wrong now, but I want to actually see the results before I jump to a new system that I know even less about.

 

[VolcanoVapor]

Can you site your sources? I've been drinking RO water exclusively for 4 months without any adverse side effects. Tap water is full of antibiotics, hormones, and toxins. I don't follow your logic about "balancing water molecularity". I don't think water has any inherent need to balance itself with minerals. While the minerals in natural spring water are beneficial, I don't believe that there is anything unhealthy about pure water. But, again, I'm curious to see the recent studies that you mentioned. I'd be happy to eat my words if you can demonstrate the validity of your theory.

Acidity in nature
Properties of water - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure water has the concentration of hydroxide ions (OH−) equal to that of the hydronium (H3O+) or hydrogen (H+) ions, which gives pH of 7 at 298 K. In practice, pure water is very difficult to produce. Water left exposed to air for any length of time will dissolve carbon dioxide, forming a dilute solution of carbonic acid, with a limiting pH of about 5.7. As cloud droplets form in the atmosphere and as raindrops fall through the air minor amounts of CO2 are absorbed and thus most rain is slightly acidic. If high amounts of nitrogen and sulfur oxides are present in the air, they too will dissolve into the cloud and rain drops producing acid rain.
"Water left exposed to air for ANY length of time will dissolve carbon dioxide," that is from the most biased website on the internet, Wikipedia. I can site more sources if you would like.

 

[airavata]

Acidity in nature
Properties of water - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pure water has the concentration of hydroxide ions (OH−) equal to that of the hydronium (H3O+) or hydrogen (H+) ions, which gives pH of 7 at 298 K. In practice, pure water is very difficult to produce. Water left exposed to air for any length of time will dissolve carbon dioxide, forming a dilute solution of carbonic acid, with a limiting pH of about 5.7. As cloud droplets form in the atmosphere and as raindrops fall through the air minor amounts of CO2 are absorbed and thus most rain is slightly acidic. If high amounts of nitrogen and sulfur oxides are present in the air, they too will dissolve into the cloud and rain drops producing acid rain.
"Water left exposed to air for ANY length of time will dissolve carbon dioxide," that is from the most biased website on the internet, Wikipedia. I can site more sources if you would like.

I see what you're saying but I still think stating that purified water is harmful is a huge stretch, based on that. Not mineralized? Sure, but there are other dietary sources of minerals. Reacts with other molecules? Definitely, that is an inherent property of water. It's a solvent. As far as pH, I think slightly alkaline is ideal for dietary purposes, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with ingesting pH neutral water. And yes, purified water is slightly ionized but isn't that another innate property of water? Also, anybody can post an article on Wikipedia.

 

[airavata]

Whoops, pure water has a net charge of 0. In the presence of mineral salts or weak acids it dissociates into H and OH ions but the net charge remains 0. So what I said about water normally being ionized is wrong.

None of these points really matter, though, unless you can demonstrate what effect a particular type of water has once it enters your system. For example, many alkaline foods have an acidifying effect on the human body. You have to directly observe or at least infer through experimentation what effect the metabolism of a substance has on the body. Simply stating how the substance appears before it is metabolized doesn't really prove anything about its effect on the body.

 

[McCrackin]

Not to deter you but if you ever decide to switch your cloning technique I think you should try out aeroponic cloning. No humidity dome needed. No medium needed except foam inserts in a bin. Tap water phed to 5.8 with misters from a $14 dollar pump spraying your plantson a 1 minute on 5 minute off timer.

So I have one of these aeroponics cloners and it works great but when I cannot get a particular baby to root, I wrap a rockwool cube around her and put her in dirt and pretend she is rooted and add her to the baby veg chamber. water regular in dirt and watch her either turn brown or green up.

This occurs a lot with big bud.

And I get about 60% of the stubborn ones to go but occasionally one will try and die no matter what I do, I babied one for so long she became a "ward" heading home from work at lunch to mist her and make sure she was comfortable. 29 days later, she had almost completely dried and browned, then bam, roots.....

I don;t throw in the towel on them simtimes until they remove themselves from the cloner.

 

[airavata]

So I have one of these aeroponics cloners and it works great but when I cannot get a particular baby to root, I wrap a rockwool cube around her and put her in dirt and pretend she is rooted and add her to the baby veg chamber. water regular in dirt and watch her either turn brown or green up.

This occurs a lot with big bud.

And I get about 60% of the stubborn ones to go but occasionally one will try and die no matter what I do, I babied one for so long she became a "ward" heading home from work at lunch to mist her and make sure she was comfortable. 29 days later, she had almost completely dried and browned, then bam, roots.....

I don;t throw in the towel on them simtimes until they remove themselves from the cloner.

Yeah, that's interesting how that works. I had practically given up on mine. I finally got them to root and then they still didn't do anything forever. I was afraid if they did start growing, it would be slow for their whole life. Then their roots hit the res and now they're growing like weeds (the ones that survived). It took a month and a half to see vegetative growth, but now I'm glad I gave them the opportunity to show me what they could do.