Cloning in plain water under fluoros

This is a follow up to the piece I wrote for the FLower Pix News #6

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=10530

I will go into more detail and include lots of pictures of each process I have found that water cloning facilitates.

I hope you find that sticking a cutting in a cup of water has a place in your room as well.

===============================

Unlike every other cloning method, water cloning requires no rooting hormone, humidity dome, ph check or specific kind of water to make it work. The cuttings snipped end is inserted in water and simply continues on as if nothing had happened, transpiring moisture through its leaves, keeping water pressure up the proper way, from stem to leaves, as oposed to artificial room humidity. Ph and water quality are similarly non issues because there is no root system to be affected by either factor.

Most cloning methods demand low light levels to keep your cutting in stasis. Water cloning is especially susceptible to light degradation. Excessive light will force any cutting to photosynthesize. Since the plant has no roots to support the growth this light tries to force, it will do what plants always do and begin draining the sugars stored in the leaves for food. The leaves will yellow and shrivel and eventually fall off the plant. When the leaves are all gone its unlikely your clone will survive. This response can also be seen in nutrient deficiencies and other problems with the plants medium and explains most yellowing seen in grow rooms today. Keeping light levels low and the plant in actual stasis will allow it to grow roots and keep almost all it's leaves green and healthy all the way to transplant. The very health of a fully green plant will somewhat mitigate the speed advantage other cloning methods have that end up with yellowed and withered leaves upon rooting. They still have to grow back those leaves that water cloning keeps.

this clone I kept in the water for a full two months. You can see it's huge and kept most of its green leaves and I can tell you it matured into a full sized plant just fine



These are of some 12"+ cuttings I took, just to prove it could be done. The drawback is this clone took thre weeks to show roots. It's still not worth the time it takes to grow roots. If I could ever figure out a way to speed root development, the possibilities would be big.

When a cutting begins developing roots in water, small white nubs will begin growing off the bare stem.


These will elongate into recognizable roots and continue developing in the water for nearly as long as you leave them exposed. The cutting is able to be transplanted at any time these get more than ½” long or so. The root system can also be left alone to get huge, much bigger than the cutting itself, so big I feared the wet weight of it would rip it loose from the stem.


It’s a good idea to change the water every few days or so and to keep temps above 70, but the cuts will almost always root if this maintenance is observed or not.

Transitioning the plants to soil is as simple as digging a hole big enough to hold what you’re planting and gently reburying the roots until the stem is firmly set.


Feed them a ½ strength balanced fertilizer making sure to saturate the soil. The wetter it is the easier it will be on roots only used to being in water. Move the clones back under the light they were rooted under for a couple of days and then you can gradually introduce them to vegetative lighting.

Some of the uses and benefits I have found for water cloning include:

-Propagation

-Keeping a certain line of genetics in stasis, be it for room cleaning, infestation, breeding or going on vacation. Since the water does not have not have be changed, figure out a way to keep the stems exposed to water for the duration of your trip and go.

-Collecting male pollen. Remove a branch from a male with un-dropped flowers and water cloning it will keep it healthy until it does drop its pollen onto a collection surface

-Sexing plants from seed. A cutting from an unsexed plant will show flower in a week or so if put in a room with 12/12 lighting. No maintenance required, so they can just sit in your flower room using ambient light

-Taking cuttings that are extremely large. You have seen rooted clones 12” tall and 8”broad. No other cloning method can do this that I am aware of.

-Cloning hard to propagate strains. The length of time you can leave a cut in water outwaits even the most stubborn strains.

Some of the drawbacks and negatives of water cloning are:

-Inconsistent rooting speed. Few cuttings show roots on the same day unless you have a lot of them. I usually take twice as many as I need to ensure I get all the individual plants for my goals at around the same time.

-Excessive time for roots to develop compared to methods using accelerants. 14 days for roots to show is not unusual.

-A transition period other methods don’t require.

Water cloning is tried and true, 100% effective if you give the cutting enough time to root. I’ve thrown some out, but they were, in general, still green and healthy looking when they hit the recycle pile. Better yet, it’s a pure method, with one less foreign substance being used to grow your plants. In four years of cloning this way, I have tried nearly everything you can think of related to cannabis to speed rooting, and nothing has any effect except the time it takes to grow. I don’t try anymore because the water and the method are pure as they are.

At one point last year, I went on vacation for 15 days. Water cloning helped keep my room alive for my return.

In the first pic, we have a round piece of polypropylene, basically styrofoam the same stuff found in most packing material, cut to fit inside a pot with straight sides for several verticle inches.


The pot is filled with water, and the cuttings are inserted through the foam.



The foam is settled on the waters surface and that's basically it. As evap and the cuttings suck out the water, the foam will drop evenly down, keeping all it's stems submerged.

I returned 15 days later and found all cuttings with either well developed roots or at least nubs.

Cap, that was an awesome read... I use this method when i take clones, and it works for me every time. I enjoyed reading this though, it had a few good ideas that i will be using here shortly... :wink: thanks bro

Also last year, I grew out some Sweet Cindy (a SweetTooth x Cindy99) X Ortega. It auto flowered on me big time. That was my first and I've never seen anything like it (from what I later learned, this trait is common in the ST). Male and female showed at 14 days from seed. Males were dropping pollen at roughly 21 days. I kid you not. Females showed alternate branching at the same time the boys pollen was dropping. I had intended to breed them, and the males would pollenate both it's own females and a Rosetta Stone I had been growing for years, but this was looking less likely as pollen filled my veg area.

The easiest solution was to collect the damn stuff, and since I had been continuing plants for so long with water cloning, I decided to try and stick several entire male branches in water, just before they released most of they're load.


It worked better than I could have possibly expected. The males were long enough that they hung over a glass on an angle enough to keep the droppings on the (freshly cleaned) glass and out of the water. Over the couse of five days, they left at least a full gram on the glass, along with the remains of male flower petals(?)








Finally, I collected the pollen up and mixed it 10:1 with plain white kitchen flour for fridge storage

Hey, thanks PNW, glad you liked it.

Got a little bit more to go......

Here are a wide variety of cuttings I took last week



Many small, medium and one very large one, 8" tall and over 12" broad





This is the small clone in the second post when put in water. It took nine days for this plant and three others to show roots.


By day 12, yesterday, I could plant all these except 2nd from the right (if I wanted too).

Hey Cap,

How big are those jars, and where did you get 'em?

Those are salt shakers I got from a restraunt going out of business. The place advertised it's own going OOB sale in the classifieds and when I got there I pretty much cleaned up. Got some nice pots and pans, a three tub commercail sink that I drain my plants into. No more carrying drain water, YAY!

A restraunt supply place will carry em cheap as well. .50, four for a dollar, something like that. Maybe free if you tell them you dont need tops

GENIUS, If only I had thought of that pollen collecting method last month. Wow it would have saved me some work. Also like the idea with the styrofoam floating idea.

Cap, you make it sound so easy. I only hope, when it comes time for me to take cuttings, that it is as easy as you make it out to be :smile: thanks alot and great post..


g'day everyone..

GMT said:

GENIUS, If only I had thought of that pollen collecting method last month. Wow it would have saved me some work. Also like the idea with the styrofoam floating idea.

Click to expand...

If you think that was cool, just wait till you see what I have coming up with water cloning and breeding.

big mike said:

Cap, you make it sound so easy. I only hope, when it comes time for me to take cuttings, that it is as easy as you make it out to be :smile: thanks alot and great post..
g'day everyone..

Click to expand...

Oh, it's that easy. Sometimes I think that's why people don't use the method, they cant believe it's so simple.

Cap,
Nicely done!

Now I now what to do when I run accross an errant male. My friend places the male in a closet and lets it seed by itself. I rarely see males; maybe three in a year; and moved to water clonig about six months ago. I use an aero viersion. RO water in a HD white 2 gal paint bucket with 1/2" holes drilled in the lid. I use a small pump and aero the stems. I can make em go slow or fast. Cut leaves or leave em fiull. Helps to keep a species on the table when there is no room on the table. Great Thread!

Avid

You have just showed me the way mate.

I am gonna try and get some pollen like this....Hopefully ill have a good well hung boy in the Sour Bubble BX3 seeds...., Just out of curiosity, and excuses my thickness, but whats the flour 4 mate?? does it absorb moisture or something...or does it make the pollen go a bit further???

Good job cap!!!!I´ve always asked myself if it could work and now you´ve done it, thanks.

This is awesome Cap...

I've put your cloning method into service... so far i'm 6 for 6 on roots. I love it!

Very simple... and no rockwool or other medium to mess with.

Great thread Caprichoso! Thanks for the info, I had no idea cloning could be so easy. I'm going to take some cuts this week to try it out. I especially like the styrofoam idea, so simple yet so effective...

You mention low light levels, can you elaborate on that a little please? I was planning on vegging my clones under 40 watts fluorescent, is that too much?

Very nice Cap.

I've been water cloning for the past couple years along with rockwool, rockwool is faster but water is just alot simpler.

I usually put 3 or 4 cuttings into one water jar.






They work out great, but usually take about 18 days to root on average.

I just recently went back to rockwool cloning and also a bubbler cloner because for this grow I just don't have the time to wait 3 weeks, but I will be going back to water cloning as soon as the grow is back in it's groove.

welp, i dropped 2 cuttings of BOGBubble into jars of water.. we'll see what happens :smile: