Cloning in Worm Casting and River Sand Mix = 100% success

[Swamp Thang]

Like any dedicated practitioner of the weed-growing sciences, I devoted copious amounts of time to online research delving into the best and most effective way of propagating clones. I constructed an elaborate water tank setup with twin air pumps running in relay on timers, and saw 20% success at best, with most of the clones succumbing to the dreaded grey stem rot syndrome. It made no difference whether I used Clonex rooting hormone, honey, or no hormone because the cuttings just drooped and died in droves.

Next, in a bid to "simplify" the cloning process, I tried a method also gleaned from this forum, in which I try to root the clones in plain tap water, after poking the stems through an inverted dixie cup with a hole in the floor to keep light out of the smaller cup of water. Again my success rate ranged between 5% and 10%, with the result that I tossed out large numbers of stem rotted clones daily until sometimes there were no survivors to plant out.

Finally, I tried a method that seemed way too crude and basic even to merit consideration, which was simply placing cuttings in a mixture of the worm castings I harvest free from the forest by the bagful, to which I added about a 20% by volume amount of white river sand I obtained from a dredging outfit operating on the river nearby. Right away, I realized I'd finally hit the motherlode, as not one single cutting is wilted or dead a full week after starting this latest attempt. In contrast, when rooting in water, I would be tossing out soggy-stemmed failed clones as early as day three.

My findings are therefore, that by using the free worm castings mixed with sand, I have FINALLY, and at long last, stumbled on the PERFECT medium for cannabis clone making, which produces 100% rooting success every freaking time without exception. No air pumps, no humidity dones, no rooting hormone, no laborious water changes, and absolutely ZERO clone losses mean that I will be using this simple technique until the cows come home.

I refined the process slightly to prevent the worm casting/sand mix from drying out under the grow lights, by adding a top layer of pure white sand which remains moist to the touch and also helps reflect the grow light energy into the clone's leaves. I will post a picture of these thriving clones later today, but I simply couldn't wait to share this astounding research finding that I stumbled across purely by chance. One final detail is that I water from beneath the dixie cups, by having them stand in a tray containing an inch-thick layer of pure worm castings that I keep moist with additions of water every third or fourth day. This ensures that the top layer of white sand never gets disturbed and watered into the castings and sand mix that is my super-thrive clone medium.

 

[Swamp Thang]

Some photos of the crime scene

Keen observers will note that just one of the clones has droopy foliage and that one dying clone turns out to be the only one to whose dixie cup I neglected to add the layer of white riverbed sand. So that layer of sand that I added mostly because I thought it looked cool, actually wound up being a key component of this quick easy, and hugely successful cloning technique that I really ought to patent so I can rake in royalties from other IC Mag readers who decide to try this method.

 

[William76]

Ull get the same results using stones in the bottom and soil/coco on top,or even just perlite in a tray,coz the clones can drink from the water that's held in the bottom,thing is if ur getting 100 percent(or near enuff)strike rate then no need for u to change if it works for u..76

 

[Swamp Thang]

Ull get the same results using stones in the bottom and soil/coco on top,or even just perlite in a tray,coz the clones can drink from the water that's held in the bottom,thing is if ur getting 100 percent(or near enuff)strike rate then no need for u to change if it works for u..76

Now you mention it I can see the reason why perlite is such a hit with weed growers. Can't get perlite out here in the Third World boonies, BUT being able to harvest free worm casings in the nearby woods means I have unlimited supplies of purely organic root growth steroids that I am now discovering to be phenomenal clone medium.

As a typical stoner, I tend to seek out the most elaborate and innovative solutions to really simple problems, and that is why I went the route of trying bubble cloners and the use of Clonex, before eventually just sticking cut clones into fresh worm castings that I need not even water but once a week by adding just enough to moisten the layer of worm castings covering the floor of the tray holding the dixie cups.

Turns out this dead simple method leaves all those other multi-step clone methods in the dust, in terms of overall success rate. Less is more, as the old saying goes, and boy I wish I'd tried this idea years ago.

 

[greyfader]

congratulations on finding a way to clone under adverse circumstances.

i've been using worm castings mixed into perlite as a general-purpose media. i clone in it also with a near 100% success rate using wick-fed solo cups.

the worm castings stimulate plant growth for sure.

using a wick i never have to touch the clones or the nutrients during rooting.

 

[Swamp Thang]

Out of over a hundred new clones I've started out using this worm-casting medium, I wound up removing five dead ones, which reduced my survival rate down to about 95%.

Not one to leave well enough alone, I tweaked the system a bit by lightly misting the clones with a spray bottle, with the result that a couple of plants that were about to wilt perked back up and are looking robust like all the rest.

In summary therefore a 90% worm casting percentage mixed with a 10% by volume of coarse-grained river sand is proving itself to be the holy grail of clone production media. The finishing touch required to maintain clone survivability rates up above 99%, is to apply a light mist to the clones a couple of times a day.

Man, I wish I'd known of this method years ago. With my mother plants looking good, it is unlikely I'll ever buy seeds or the foreseeable future now that my clone factory is up and running at full capacity.

 

[hamstring]

Great thread.

Swamp Thang "worm castings I harvest free from the forest by the bagful"

Do you mean forest floor soil? So this is not pure worm castings it may have a lot of other beneficials in it correct?

Can store bought worm castings, maybe mixed with perlite, work as well? If so this is worth a try.

I am assuming moisture content in the worm casting has to be correct. How wet do you mix it?

You seem to have the clones in solo cups in with your mother plants. Since you have no dome can you maintain a constant RH and if so what is it set at in your room?

 

[Swamp Thang]

These worm castings do contain a fair bit of soil, but they are pure worm turds as it were, and they dot the ground to eventually form a rich dark soil layer under the canopy of shade trees out here in the tropical forest not far from the Equator. I feel blessed that these castings can be harvested in any quantity for free out here in the boonies, especially when I see how pricey store-bought worm castings are stateside.

With the seasonal rains still lingering on as the cloud belt works its way southward, the castings are moist enough to crumble in my hand when I crush them, without being of a muddy consistency. Because the castings can become somewhat caked over time from watering them in a dixie cup, I found that adding about a 10 to 20% mix of coarse-grained river sand keeps the cup contents loose enough to where they never compact. I imagine that adding perlite to store-bought worm castings will have a similar anti-coagulant effect.

The humidity in my grow room is generally very high, and up in the region of 90%, but I've still found that in the absence of a humidity dome, a light misting helps to prevent wilting in some of the more fragile cuttings that I take off the mother plants. Just checked the 100-plus cuttings I set out over the past week, and just ONE is showing early signs of wilting. I only wish I'd stumbled on this method years ago, given how easy the process turned out to be.

 

[exoticrobotic]

These worm castings do contain a fair bit of soil, but they are pure worm turds as it were, and they dot the ground

I used to have a worm bin but found the castings etc to be quite problematic for plants in general, maybe due to me feeding them not a balanced diet wrt C:N ratios.

The castings i see on the lawn I shall be picking up as these worm turds look different, better mixed, and a nicer richer black colour.

I'll mix in a bit of washed sharp sand/river sand.

Thanks for the tip

 

[greyfader]

Great thread.

Swamp Thang "worm castings I harvest free from the forest by the bagful"

Do you mean forest floor soil? So this is not pure worm castings it may have a lot of other beneficials in it correct?

Can store bought worm castings, maybe mixed with perlite, work as well? If so this is worth a try.

I am assuming moisture content in the worm casting has to be correct. How wet do you mix it?

You seem to have the clones in solo cups in with your mother plants. Since you have no dome can you maintain a constant RH and if so what is it set at in your room?

i use bagged worm castings about 30% with perlite in wick-fed solo cups. i use a 300 ppm nutrient solution in the wick reservoir. and keep the cloning area at 80f and 80 rh so i can operate without domes.

i will lose a clone occasionally but not very often.

 

[Swamp Thang]

Great minds think alike GrayFader. I kind of stumbled on the idea of having a nutrient source in the reservoir of wick-fed dixie cups, and in my case I use pure worm castings that I saok once a week, thus ensuring a continuous supply of worm casting tea to the rooting clones. This is a simple, almost hands-off method that I now intend to use until the cows come home

 

[need4weed]

congratulations on finding a way to clone under adverse circumstances.

i've been using worm castings mixed into perlite as a general-purpose media. i clone in it also with a near 100% success rate using wick-fed solo cups.

the worm castings stimulate plant growth for sure.

using a wick i never have to touch the clones or the nutrients during rooting.

Got any pictures bro ?

 

[Swamp Thang]

Got any pictures bro ?

It just occurred to me that while I have pictures of the grow, I forgot to post any closeup pictures of the worm castings I get for free from the forest floor. They get pretty huge as worm castings go, and they can be as thick around and long as a human thumb. I'll select some nice specimens of the worm castings and post them here tomorrow

 

[Swamp Thang]

In most of the Third World, the rich and middle class don't bother with any gardening as a hobby. Farming is considered a subsistence pursuit for the poor who live hand to mouth. Hence, there is no market demand for worm castings, whose nutritional value to plants remains largely unknown even to farmers, who rely on microbe-killing chemical fertilizers that offer quick results at the cost of laying waste prime land to chemically induced barrenness, which in turn leads to further slash-and-burn deforestation in a never-ending unsustainable cycle of wildlife habitat destruction

The upshot is that secret weed gardeners like me can simply take a gunny sack out to the woods and come back with 100 pounds of absolutely free woodland worm castings as shown in my photograph here. But for the total ignorance about the horticultural value of worm castings in my neck of the woods, I could be literally raking in cash by harvesting bulk quantities and bagging them for sale.

The current market price of worm castings stateside ranges between $1.30 and $1.66 per pound, as I calculated from the adverts I randomly picked online via this link

Urban Worm Company Worm Castings - Approved for Organic Use

**Free shipping to the lower 48** Now approved for organic use! Add life back to your soil with Urban Worm Castings! These castings have a balanced fungal:bacterial ratio and if you can keep them out of UV light, their quality will persist for 6 months or more. Recent analysis shows high humic...

shop.urbanwormcompany.com

All told the fact that worm castings have been assigned zero monetary value out here in the sticks is good in the sense that I get all I want for free, but also regrettable because I could be raking in a tidy profit selling fresh or aged worm castings by the 50-pound bag, IF ONLY people here were aware that worm castings rank among nature's most effective yet mild organic fertilizers and soil amendment additives.

Greetings from where the dirt road peters out to thicket.

 

[greyfader]

Got any pictures bro ?

here are a few. this is a grow i have going on right now. the first pics are of 6 weeks into flower. these are 7-gallon containers with about 6 gals of #2 perlite, 3 lbs of worm castings, and an 18-ounce solo cup of diatomaceous earth in each.

then a pic of the cloners but with seedlings in them. you can't see the worm castings because i put a layer of clean perlite over the top.

i was able to find an older pic showing how the solo cups are used to clone. there is a 1"x 8" piece of polyester batting known as thermolam plus threaded through 2 of the corners of the cup. i say corners because solo brand cups have square bottoms.

these then go into the tubs and the wicks hang in the solution. i start them with the water level 1/2" below the bottom of the cup.

typically i use a 300 ppm jack's solution.

i never have to touch them after loading. you can take huge cuttings and leave them in these for up to a month but they are good and ready at 14 days like you see here.

Blue Star OG pheno hunt winner in a PPK system

i recently conducted a pheno hunt of BlueStarSeedco's cross of Blue Star x Triangle Kush. This consisted of 50 seeds of which 48 popped within 2 days. 36 were selected and of these 12 were flowered. they all had good potency but this one has great potency and the strongest flavor profile...

www.icmag.com

 

[greyfader]

View attachment 18920372


In most of the Third World, the rich and middle class don't bother with any gardening as a hobby. Farming is considered a subsistence pursuit for the poor who live hand to mouth. Hence, there is no market demand for worm castings, whose nutritional value to plants remains largely unknown even to farmers, who rely on microbe-killing chemical fertilizers that offer quick results at the cost of laying waste prime land to chemically induced barrenness, which in turn leads to further slash-and-burn deforestation in a never-ending unsustainable cycle of wildlife habitat destruction

The upshot is that secret weed gardeners like me can simply take a gunny sack out to the woods and come back with 100 pounds of absolutely free woodland worm castings as shown in my photograph here. But for the total ignorance about the horticultural value of worm castings in my neck of the woods, I could be literally raking in cash by harvesting bulk quantities and bagging them for sale.

The current market price of worm castings stateside ranges between $1.30 and $1.66 per pound, as I calculated from the adverts I randomly picked online via this link

Urban Worm Company Worm Castings - Approved for Organic Use

**Free shipping to the lower 48** Now approved for organic use! Add life back to your soil with Urban Worm Castings! These castings have a balanced fungal:bacterial ratio and if you can keep them out of UV light, their quality will persist for 6 months or more. Recent analysis shows high humic...

shop.urbanwormcompany.com

All told the fact that worm castings have been assigned zero monetary value out here in the sticks is good in the sense that I get all I want for free, but also regrettable because I could be raking in a tidy profit selling fresh or aged worm castings by the 50-pound bag, IF ONLY people here were aware that worm castings rank among nature's most effective yet mild organic fertilizers and soil amendment additives.

Greetings from where the dirt road peters out to thicket.

those are way too large to be worm castings. it looks to me that they are from a herbivore like a deer.

worm castings are about the same size as coffee grounds.

 

[hamstring]

They do look way too large but I disagree on it being deer, not that it matters.

 

[Swamp Thang]

those are way too large to be worm castings. it looks to me that they are from a herbivore like a deer.

worm castings are about the same size as coffee grounds.

With absolute 100% certainty I can affirm that the worm castings I photographed above are NOT deer droppings. The fact that the bagged and labelled worm castings in the USA are the consistency of coffee grounds cannot on its own preclude the existence of jumbo worm castings several time zones away at the Equator where a completely different array of life exists in the soil and forest.

Those castings are created by slow increment as the the worms travel up tiny holes in the center of the upright castings to deposit fresh moist layers at the very top, which is why the castings have that towering layered look. To use them for my plants, I add a little water to soften them up, then crush them to make the smaller granules that I mix with river sand for my indoor clone factory.

It is actually possible to catch a worm "in the act" of creating one of these high rise structures, simply by selecting a fresh one with new moist mud at the very top, then lifting casting off the ground at which point the worm can be spotted slithering into its hole upon which the structure was built. These were the sort of experiments I conducted as a kid, so I speak with a lifetime of experience on this and other obscure facts of nature in the tropical rainforest.

 

[Swamp Thang]

here are a few. this is a grow i have going on right now. the first pics are of 6 weeks into flower. these are 7-gallon containers with about 6 gals of #2 perlite, 3 lbs of worm castings, and an 18-ounce solo cup of diatomaceous earth in each.

then a pic of the cloners but with seedlings in them. you can't see the worm castings because i put a layer of clean perlite over the top.

i was able to find an older pic showing how the solo cups are used to clone. there is a 1"x 8" piece of polyester batting known as thermolam plus threaded through 2 of the corners of the cup. i say corners because solo brand cups have square bottoms.

these then go into the tubs and the wicks hang in the solution. i start them with the water level 1/2" below the bottom of the cup.

typically i use a 300 ppm jack's solution.

i never have to touch them after loading. you can take huge cuttings and leave them in these for up to a month but they are good and ready at 14 days like you see here.

Blue Star OG pheno hunt winner in a PPK system

i recently conducted a pheno hunt of BlueStarSeedco's cross of Blue Star x Triangle Kush. This consisted of 50 seeds of which 48 popped within 2 days. 36 were selected and of these 12 were flowered. they all had good potency but this one has great potency and the strongest flavor profile...

www.icmag.com

I really like this setup Greyfader. It looks to be automated to an extent in terms of watering and man, the results are spectacular, going by the look of those fat colas. For security reasons I never allow my plants to flower at home, and generally take the clones out to the swamp as soon as they start to get root-bound in the Dixie cups. The size of that one plant still growing in a cup is testimony to your well planned feeding regime, which is an area I have yet a lot to learn.

 

[greyfader]

With absolute 100% certainty I can affirm that the worm castings I photographed above are NOT deer droppings. The fact that the bagged and labelled worm castings in the USA are the consistency of coffee grounds cannot on its own preclude the existence of jumbo worm castings several time zones away at the Equator where a completely different array of life exists in the soil and forest.

Those castings are created by slow increment as the the worms travel up tiny holes in the center of the upright castings to deposit fresh moist layers at the very top, which is why the castings have that towering layered look. To use them for my plants, I add a little water to soften them up, then crush them to make the smaller granules that I mix with river sand for my indoor clone factory.

It is actually possible to catch a worm "in the act" of creating one of these high rise structures, simply by selecting a fresh one with new moist mud at the very top, then lifting casting off the ground at which point the worm can be spotted slithering into its hole upon which the structure was built. These were the sort of experiments I conducted as a kid, so I speak with a lifetime of experience on this and other obscure facts of nature in the tropical rainforest.

i lived in Puerto Rico for 15 years and they do have completely different types of earthworms. that's about 330 miles north of the equator.

in the US they typically only use 2-3 types of worms to farm for castings. non of them have that clumped-up look.

I really like this setup Greyfader. It looks to be automated to an extent in terms of watering and man, the results are spectacular, going by the look of those fat colas. For security reasons I never allow my plants to flower at home, and generally take the clones out to the swamp as soon as they start to get root-bound in the Dixie cups. The size of that one plant still growing in a cup is testimony to your well planned feeding regime, which is an area I have yet a lot to learn.

it is a recirculating closed loop soilless hydro system known as the PPK. i am also known as Delta9nxs and i'm the inventor of the system. it's not a specific build but rather a flow pattern that can be built to any scale.

the first 2 pics are from a 10k sq ft cbd facility i designed, built, and supervised the operation of in Nashville, Tn.

the second two are from my personal thc facility of about 3500 sq ft in Oregon.

both are PPK systems.