Cuttings dying - Help

[Zecc]

Hi people,
I'm having problems rooting my cuttings. I did this about a decade ago and I was successful, don't know what is failing now.

I cut a few branches, I used rooting hormone following the instructions carefully, and then I planted them into soil. I stored these cuttings inside a tupperware container, with a little bit of water and drops of peroxide to avoid water contamination. The cuttings are not in contact with the water with peroxide.

The first days it seemed to be all right, but suddently the top and smallest sprouts of the cuttings started to turn into a brownish color, which now is spreaded throughout the plant. Now they're like this:

What is happening here? What did I do wrong? Perhaps an overdose of rooting hormones?

Thank you!

 

[GreenMachinee]

Was it in any kind of humidity dome???

 

[Major PITA]

Looks to me like they simply did not have enough water.
Transpiration exceeded water uptake from the stem.

 

[Twox]

Are you using a spray bottle to mist those babies?

 

[GreenMachinee]

I keep my clones in a humidity dome for 1.5 weeks. dont touch them or even look at them. after a week and a half you will have roots in most. I use clonex gel in peat moss rapid rooter plugs. The humidity dome under my grow light stays at about 90% RH which is perfect for clones. no need to spray them or give them any more water then the inch of water at the bottom of dome tray. if you leave them alone they will root. But these are pretty necessary components if you want to have a good success rate.

 

[Twox]

I keep my clones in a humidity dome for 1.5 weeks. dont touch them or even look at them. after a week and a half you will have roots in most. I use clonex gel in peat moss rapid rooter plugs. The humidity dome under my grow light stays at about 90% RH which is perfect for clones. no need to spray them or give them any more water then the inch of water at the bottom of dome tray. if you leave them alone they will root. But these are pretty necessary components if you want to have a good success rate.

Intersting, I don't leave water in my tray but I mist a few times a day.. My clones root but they don't look happy once they do. How do the clones look after they root sitting in water? I'm curious because my current technique works but I'm not happy with it.

 

[GreenMachinee]

My clones come out looking pretty healthy. light yellowing on the original big set of fan leaves that I cut the tips off of but thats to be expected lol. Ill post a few pics here shortly once i check my plants, I have some clones that are a week off the plant and still look like i pulled them yesterday. I also have a clone that rooted close to a week ago so i can show you what they end up looking like.

 

[Twox]

I get nice roots but they look like sh!t once they do.... I'll try switching it up on the next batch.. I would Luv to see some pics..

 

[GreenMachinee]

The little ones havnt rooted yet but they are a week off the plant so id say they look healthy. The second one (big one) has been in the solo cup for a week building its roots before that it took exactly 11 days to show roots. Ill wait for it to fill solo cup then transplant to 1gal.

 

[GreenMachinee]

My tray looks like shit... ill need to clean that after these clones root lol

 

[Twox]

Nice, they look very healthy. Good job. Next time I cut clones I'll give the GreenMachinee method a try... do you use straight water in your tray or does it contain a mix of nutrients?

 

[GreenMachinee]

I have tried light nute solutions but they seem to prefer plain water. If anything I would take some fresh aloe vera gel and blend it with some water to mix well and add that solution to your tray. You can also replace clonex or other hormone gels with fresh cut aloe (just cut of a peice of aloe and dip fresh cuts in the gel and plant as you normally would in root plug). Im using clonex this round though because my aloe plant needs to heal and grow some more.

 

[Zecc]

Yes, they are in a humidity dome which is a closed tupperware container with 1/2 cm of water in the base to keep a high humidity inside.
I'm not misting them because I supposed that a high humidity would be enough.

Anyway, today I found one of the cuttings with the stem twisted, and I pulled two of them out of the soil and there was no sign of root formation.

At this rate, the other two cuttings will be dead before rooting. I guess I'll have to try again with the whole process, but it's pretty annoying not to know what happened...

 

[GreenMachinee]

did your plugs dry out? sometimes if they are not set low enough or if you dont have enough water in your tray they can dry out too much and then your clone will dry out and die. you want the water to touch about a centimeter up on the plugs.

 

[Zecc]

I'm not sure if the plugs were dried. I remember I watered the plugs when I saw the first symptomes but the cuttings continued withering.

Anyway, I've repeated the process now considering things that I overlooked before and we'll see what happens

 

[Cultivator]

My tips for cloning are as follows (ive cloned 100000's)

Take a light nute mix of a grow base nute and mix to strength of 0.8-1.0ec. This will condition the medium and will start to feed clones as soon as they root. Sooak medium for couple hours, whether its rockwool, jiffy pellets or other medium. ph to 5.5 in rockwool or 5.8 in other mediums.

select healthy clones from a healthy mother plant.

After taking clone place immediately into a pot of water to prevent an embolysm.

Leave 5mins or so.

Dip in clonex or great white mycorrhizae, but plain water is fine.

place clone into the medium, make sure its a snug fit but dont force the clone in so it damages stem.

place into a grow tray.

add humidy dome if ambient room temp is less than 60RH

no need for a dome above 60RH

Trim tips of leaves off too prevent clones drying out.

Keep medium damp but not wet.

Just leave clones in the tray and dont tamper with them.

In a humidy dome you souldnt need to moisten medium at all for a week. open vents after 5 or 6 days.

Do not place under direct light, this is the biggest mistake people make. It resukts in yellowing of the clone as it feeds on its reserves trying to photosynthesise and root. Place slightly off the the side of the light unless using a really low powered T5 or CFL.

You could try aerocloning which is really very simple and 100% success rate.

Trim tips like so

dip clone in great white mycorrhizae instead of clonex for results like this

 

[Twox]

Thanx for the post Cultivater, your post was better than the how to guides all over the Internet ...

 

[Cultivator]

No worries. I do have cloning tutorials in some of my journals but not sure on a page.

Have a look through these because i think theres some info in them...

Cultivators Play Pen
Cultivators 7200w Build And Grow Perpetual

these are older journals but still some good info.

 

[Twox]

Bringing back a old thread to say thanx to Green machine and Cultivator for there fantastic advice on cloning.. This batch came out much better and the knowledge I gained from you two was priceless.