Azi's Cloning Adventures

[Gee64]

Less deeply this round than last. Just deep enough to see the color change to a lighter shade of green. Not to the innermost layer, just a light scrape with the side of the blade. Probably would work great by stripping/peeling the lower node leaves down and off for those that trim the clone after cutting from the mother.

Last round I went right to the white-ish core and when they rooted they did so in the strip between the core and the top outside layer which is why I went shallower this round.

Today I had roots on the third pre-trimmed cut, and the third non-pre-trimmed went back in the perlite to keep my perfect record intact. The shorter cuts had slightly better roots than either of the longer ones, but not significantly.

I'm  really liking this approach.

How much light are you giving them? I wanna try this. I may as well start with your findings.

 

[Azimuth]

No direct light, just off to the side of the box and actually I have a cardboard partition to block any direct light from the side.

I put 4-5 in a standard size Solo cup (16 oz maybe?). Cuts themselves are 4-6" long with as many nodes, and I trim off all but the top most cluster close to the stem like in your pictures.

So, super small footprint, no pumps, no direct lights, no noise, no hormones, no water reservoirs that can go funky, no..... This is an approach that anyone can use. Hell, you could do it off to the side on your desk if you had your desk lamp on a timer.

 

[Gee64]

Awesome! Did I ever mention that I'm lazy?

 

[Azimuth]

Awesome! Did I ever mention that I'm lazy?

Then this approach will be right up your alley!

I do mist them twice a day so you will have to put in  some effort.

 

[Azimuth]

I'm going to start a new round destined straight for the worm bin since I need to trim a plant anyway to keep it proportional to available space (well, height actually). Don't need the clones so it's for practice only.

This round I'm replacing the Hempy style cups with cups with bottom drainage as I don't think I need the extra moisture down below and lower holes will allow me to better dry out the perlite media to see how that might affect rooting.

Sounds like a bad B-Grade movie, "straight to DVD!" LOL.

I had roots on the one remaining cut from last round so the streak is intact at 100% since landing on this approach, and I binned the other clone I had as a reserve to replace the old mother but, since I'm switching strains, we don't need that one hanging around any longer.

 

[Azimuth]

I took the 2nd node clone stems (as @Gee64 calls them) as cuts from the new Blueberry CBD plant.

Standard practice is to take them from a healthy mother, which this plant is, but the cuttings themselves are a bit faded out from being below the canopy, so I'll have to see how it goes.

I just uppotted the mother into its final 2G SIP to prep for flower in a couple of weeks so I'll probably leave it go mostly uncropped for a bit to see if I can get a few more cuttings before flip to be sure the plant continues on as i expect it will be my main workhorse going forward.

Also, I checked on the cuttings from the Hibiscus plant by floating them out of the perlite. No roots yet after 14 days, but all continue to look quite healthy.

One thing I don't like about the perlite is how messy it can be, but this process is similar to how the commercial propagation nurseries do it, except many of them use overhead misters on a more frequent timer and use beds of sand rather than perlite.

So, I'm going to try changing from perlite to sand on a future round and see how it goes. One thing about the perlite is its easier, and less intrusive, to check for roots than it would be in sand, but if I can get a high strike rate it probably won't be that much of an issue.

 

[Gee64]

I took the 2nd node clone stems (as @Gee64 calls them) as cuts from the new Blueberry CBD plant.

Standard practice is to take them from a healthy mother, which this plant is, but the cuttings themselves are a bit faded out from being below the canopy, so I'll have to see how it goes.

I just uppotted the mother into its final 2G SIP to prep for flower in a couple of weeks so I'll probably leave it go mostly uncropped for a bit to see if I can get a few more cuttings before flip to be sure the plant continues on as i expect it will be my main workhorse going forward.

Also, I checked on the cuttings from the Hibiscus plant by floating them out of the perlite. No roots yet after 14 days, but all continue to look quite healthy.

One thing I don't like about the perlite is how messy it can be, but this process is similar to how the commercial propagation nurseries do it, except many of them use overhead misters on a more frequent timer and use beds of sand rather than perlite.

So, I'm going to try changing from perlite to sand on a future round and see how it goes. One thing about the perlite is its easier, and less intrusive, to check for roots than it would be in sand, but if I can get a high strike rate it probably won't be that much of an issue.

Clone branches only apply to the 2nd nodes of plants started from seeds.

 

[Azimuth]

Clone branches only apply to the 2nd nodes of plants started from seeds.

Which these are.

 

[Gee64]

Which these are.

Ok perfect Sorry, I misread the post. Carry on (as Gee stares st his shoes and slinks away)

 

[scottreid1966]

Which these are.

I thought it was the third... Does ot depend on the strain?

 

[Azimuth]

I thought it was the third... Does ot depend on the strain?

I think the clone branches are always the second node. The first node can be weaker or one side much more dominant than the other. Second nodes seem to be the beginning of the more consistent growth and many growers train using nodes 3 and 4.

Don't know if that's the reason but maybe @Gee64 can give us his thoughts.

 

[Azimuth]

Tossed out more clones today after about a month in the perlite. Another 5/5 and a couple of them were just starting to look a bit yellow. Had four good clones and one that just started rooting maybe a day or two ago.

It feels kind of strange to be culling perfectly good clones but now that I have confidence in my approach I suspect there will be a lot more of that.

 

[Gee64]

I think the clone branches are always the second node. The first node can be weaker or one side much more dominant than the other. Second nodes seem to be the beginning of the more consistent growth and many growers train using nodes 3 and 4.

Don't know if that's the reason but maybe @Gee64 can give us his thoughts.

I had always heard of the 2nd node referred to as the clone branches. They are my favorite cuts.

 

[Azimuth]

I had always heard of the 2nd node referred to as the clone branches. They are my favorite cuts.

Think they're much better than say the 3rd or 4th nodes? Or just that they are more typical of what the plant will produce starting at that node?

 

[Gee64]

I find they are the best rooters and have more parallel nodes than the ones above. Every layer up is one less parallel node left in it.

 

[Azimuth]

One thing I don't like about the perlite is how messy it can be, but this process is similar to how the commercial propagation nurseries do it, except many of them use overhead misters on a more frequent timer and use beds of sand rather than perlite.

So, I'm going to try changing from perlite to sand on a future round and see how it goes. One thing about the perlite is its easier, and less intrusive, to check for roots than it would be in sand, but if I can get a high strike rate it probably won't be that much of an issue.

Took more cuttings I don't need so thought I'd try sand as a base this round.

I filtered out all of the sand dust to get to a larger particle size to be more consistent with the perlite pieces I've been using, but assuming this goes well I'll probably try a future round without screening the material which would make it simpler.

These will go directly to compost once they root.

 

[Azimuth]

Clone branches only apply to the 2nd nodes of plants started from seeds.

Ok @Gee64 , extol the virtues of the 2nd node, aka the clone nodes. So far I'm not all that impressed.

I took them as cuts 21 days ago and they have rooted though I had to go digging to see. Rule number one in cloning is to take cuts from a healthy mother plant, which this was, but the 2nd nodes were shaded out by the upper nodes and were a bit pale when I took them so that likely has had an impact.

My usual tactic is to take the best of a group of clones to pot up and I can already see that neither of these will make that cut so, unless there's some other reasons to favor these over others, I'll plan to cull them when I have roots on the group I took a week or so after.

 

[Azimuth]

'Clones from Flowering Cuts' Experiment

Since I'm having quite good success with this cloning process I'm going to try using it to clone using cuts from a flowering plant.

I have a plant at day 21 of flower, so not quite halfway, and buds are forming and aromas are rising so this seems far enough into flower that one should be able to get an idea of that plant's characteristics if on a pheno hunt, for example.

I tried to do my usual 'trim on the plant the day before' but that turned out to be a bit challenging so I did as best I could and finished up after I cut the limb from the plant 24 hours later. I trimmed all lower limbs leaving only the top most cluster and then trimmed away the flower trying to leave as much leaf surface as possible. Then scraped the stem and stuck them in perlite and misted well to settle the perlite around the stems.

I suspect it will take longer than typical to root these but I don't really care how long it takes since they're destined for the worm bin. I'd just like to know if this process will work this far into flower.

Let's find out!

Edit: I should also add that I found some open male flowers down low that I only discovered after removing the cuts from the plant so I'll probably end up with seeds. Doesn't matter all that much if I get a few since this strain will be being retired . Having some seeds would be good if I ever wanted to run it again but I'm not sure I want to use seeds produced in this way.

 

[Gee64]

Ok @Gee64 , extol the virtues of the 2nd node, aka the clone nodes. So far I'm not all that impressed.

I took them as cuts 21 days ago and they have rooted though I had to go digging to see. Rule number one in cloning is to take cuts from a healthy mother plant, which this was, but the 2nd nodes were shaded out by the upper nodes and were a bit pale when I took them so that likely has had an impact.

My usual tactic is to take the best of a group of clones to pot up and I can already see that neither of these will make that cut so, unless there's some other reasons to favor these over others, I'll plan to cull them when I have roots on the group I took a week or so after.

The 2nd node branches or "clone branches" only apply on the 2nd node of a plant started from seed. Was this mother from seed or a clone?

 

[Azimuth]

They were the second node branches of a seedling.