Root Riot vs Jiffy pellets (test)

W'sup IC,

I needed to cut some clones, which I haven't attempted in over 2 years.... I used to get about 90%+ strike rate with 14 days back then using rockwool cubes which wasn't too hard...

Was on a lil hiatus from growing and when I returned I grew seeds and cuttings from friends for a lil bit, but the time has come where I need to get myself re-acquainted with clonex, a scalpel and humidity dome again

As I'm a sucker for testing stuff, so I decided to cut 24 clones.
12 clones are in peat pellets (6 Exodus cheese and 6 NL x Exodus Cheese aka Nelly) and 12 in Root riot cubes (again 6 nelly and 6 Exo cheese). I Also have an extra 4 nelly clones in root riot cubes as I need at least 20.

They are sitting ontop of about an inch of pearlite soaked in maxicrop seaweed extract (1ml per 500ml) as my cloning tray has lil holes in the bottom so this will keep the humidity from escaping.

The temperature just outside of the dome at about the same level as the bottom of the cubes is 21.5C (71F) I wanna try to get the rootzone temp inside dome to be 75-80C as this is best temp for rooting from what I read.

Will update on the winner as soon as I get some roots through....

Few observations, root riot cubes needed a little soak as they were a bit dry and pack said they should show moisture at tops if squeezed and they didn't out of pack.... They are not that stable unless on pearlite or in their tray so will fall over when opening dome etc. The holes are perfect for any sized clone no rotating or movement when clone is stuck in... The medium seems to retain a very good structure after a little soak and squeeze unlike rockwool which would loose some of its shape and I assume air to water properties when squeezed. has nutes for clone. Inoculated with beneficial bacteria to accelerate root growth.

Peat pellets, holes are a lil bigger so need to 'tuck in' skinny stemmed clones... Easy to re-hydrate and stand up on their own without tray or need for pearlite underneath to stabilize. Cheap as chips!!! Easily available @ garden stores/ B&Q or Walmart type stores. Has some nutes for clone to establish itself.

BTW, any tips on using the root riots or jiffy pellets are more than welcome being a noob to both

A few pics.....

Riots and Jiffy pellets




Ravaged NL X Exodus Cheese mini mom




Clones in place

https://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=32972&pictureid=766505

Under the lights.....

https://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=32972&pictureid=766506

Nice test that i thought of doing at some point...nah just lying now
From my experience Root Riot are a bit faster than the Jiffy pellets but not sure about the difference of price.
I am using now those open cells tray for my cuts with great results. I was trying to remember the name of the damn things but i guess i got a whitey
All the best for your girls and thanks for sharing your tests with us.

Hey paulo73, cheers for stopping by and your thoughts.... lol @ thinking about it yourself

Any pointers on getting the best out of these mediums? From what I've read root riot cubes have the edge as you say, over the peat pellets but I seen some guys getting equal results from the peat pellets and they need watering less frequently.

I'm all about K.I.S.S, but don't mind a lil fiddling for speed.

I've used both, a lot, and I have faster results with RR's.
The fact that they dry out faster, which causes roots to stretch, looking for water, might have something to do with it. I really don't know tho'.
They are more porous also, which must help.
Jiffy's can get and stay water logged.
Both have worked well for me.

W'sup Hold Your Fire

Seems you also agree RR's root quicker due to the more frequent wet/dry spells. Makes sense to me.... Thanks for your input.

Can I ask you guys what your usual cloning procedure is after cutting and taking clones... more the set up you use; heat mat, floros? Plus what kind of times you get clones rooting in.

Cheers

~S

I ran out of RR's on my last set of clones (SSH x Hindu kush and Chemdawg)... Needed another 4, so I just dumped some seedling/ clone compost into the RR tray cells we'll see how that does too

I use just a simple seedling tray with a 6 in tall clone dome.
If temps are below 70 i use a heating mat. I always put something between the tray and mat.
Usually I'll have some with roots poking out of the RR's as soon as 6- 7 days, most are showing roots after 10-14 days.

W'sup Kcoc

@Hold Your Fire, cheers for the pointers. I set my min/max meter probe into the dome and temps are 75 so I guess no mat needed this time, good as I don't have one lol.

I've cracked the domes vent in the clones I took 4 days ago, (cheese and nelly). This will be opened fully tomorrow or by thursday then, I'll start to prop up the dome around the edges to get them to harden up some more....

Guess this is when I'll have to watch those RR cubes as so far they still have moisture in when squeezed. The peat pellets should b cool until day 8 I'd guess before needing a lil water maybe even later.

The other clones I took (chemdawg and ssh x hindu kush) have had 2 days in the dome, 5-10 mins each day lid came off and excess water drained from the dome.

Hoping something comes through by day 7 as conditions seem to be spot on.

At the moment i am falling in love with the Root Riots.
Just fill them with your favorite seedling mixture put the cuts/seeds in and less then a week big white roots are all over. Best thing being you can reuse the damn things.
I like them!
Looking forward to your views on the subjects tested

Hey paulo73 how are u... did u mean to say cell trays lol!!

I probably do...

I probably do...

~Shhh~ said:

Hey paulo73 how are u... did u mean to say cell trays lol!!

Click to expand...

...but most of the time i can´t really make sense of what i am saying
To solve it all give us a pic, of the cell trays, because mum told me they worth a thousand words

Lol! The cell tray is pretty much the same thing that rockwool/root riot cubes come in. The white thing in my first pic that the root riot cubes are sat in.... Just deeper as they are made to be filled with medium as apposed to putting a cube in.

I thought that what you were using to root cuts...

nice little test , i've only ever used jiffy pellets myself but interested to see how it goes

edgey

Hey, what's up edgey good of u to join the fun.

Never used any of them myself was strictly rockwool and had a stab with perlite which went quite well too.

Lil update from today.... have now opened the vent fully and propped up the side of the dome to start to acclimatise the clones and harden them up.

I checked all the RR cubes and only 1 had dried a bit (no moisture present when corner squeezed) so I gave a lil water and that was it. I'm expecting all the RR's to need water over the next 24/36 hours as the humidity lowers due to the dome being off.

Pretty sure when I used to take clones regularly a couple years back that the periods when cubes dry a bit and then are rehydrated was when I would first see roots about 7-8 days on faster clones. So fingers crossed I start to see some action in the next few days

Another small update.....

I thought I'd have a look at one of the ssh x hindu kush clones in compost to see if it was showing signs of rooting as I was bored

To my surprise the wee lil things has got roots poking out of everywhere near the bottom of the stem... I can't remember if this was one that I scored the stem a bit on or not, stoners aye! But never the less roots are visible!! That's 5 days after taking the clone.... they are not just the swelling beginning of a root, they are 'white roots' the type you'd expect from an aerocloner in 5-6 days...

I got really curious after that and pulled the other 2 ssh x hindu clones in compost and sure enough they were looking like the one that has roots today did yesterday all Frankenstein bumpy and shit...

Curiosity got the better of me so I pulled the Root riot ssh x hindu clones out for a peak, and they are only just getting bumpy.... Interesting..... So it looks like the RR cube ssh x hindu clones are a day behind the compost ssh x hindu clones, and to think compost was a last minute thing because I'd run out of peat pucks, lol.

I'm surprised as I didn't think compost would have a chance in the race of first to root, but there you go never right off a bit of soil.... Unless the jiffy's and RR cubes that have the cheese and nelly in, which are 2 days older than the ssh x hindu in compost, put roots out in the next 2 days I reckon that compost clones might snatch the win.

It's getting interesting for sure.....


Pic sorry for teh shitty quality but you get the message right?

We have a winner!!!

We have a winner!!!



Jiffy pellets!!!

8 days in and 3 of the clones have rooted all of which are in Jiffy pellets.... That's pretty conclusive to me. Nothing out of the RR cubes yet. Hopefully they all get to rooting over the next few days.

So I will be using Jiffy's for my cloning needs from here on out... They're readily available and very set it and forget it, I haven't watered any of them yet. Next I need to run the Peat Jiffy's vs the Coco Jiffy's as the Coco might have the edge due to better aeration.

Watch this space

Hope those of you who caught this test found it useful.

Nice one!
I better drop my expensive RR

seems that way paulo, in my limited experience with them anyway. Other thing is Jiffy pellets are available literally everywhere, anywhere that has a garden section will more than likely have a pack of Jiffy's that's always a bonus.

Still haven't watered one btw totally K.I.S.S, have watered the RR cubes twice since placing em in 8 days ago.

paulo73 said:

Nice one!
I better drop my expensive RR

Click to expand...

haha i thought i was going to have to start using the expensive RR's

nice result shhh

edgey