My one day old clones.....air layering....

[Budley Doright]

I have a very successful cloning thread......

But I dont think that your typical cloning method is the best way to go...


I believe a very useful technique has simply been overlooked within the community......


I hope I can help to change that.....

Correct me please if Im wrong...... the research I have done...and well as comments from other folks say.....

A new plant does not occur until two things have happened.....


One it has roots.....

Two.... its been cut from the mother plant......


Because of this law..... clones....made on the plant can have roots and not count as another plant....until its cut from the mom....

 

[Budley Doright]

I have done some airlaying with trees and such......

and have done airlayering with cannabis more than once...... very good success.....

So I decided to grow a mother plant...... but turn the branches into air layers.....

In my case I made a disposable mom......I made 7 air layers using rooting plugs....

Covered with plastic cling wrap....twist ties top and bottom......



Its been a couple weeks...... I dont know exactly when I did it.... certainly between 2 and 3 weeks.....

My intent was to actually cut them after some had roots....but others had no apparent roots.........

Part of the experiment......

4 of the 7 had obvious roots....


3 did not .....all however were severed from mom(no reason to do this normally)

The four that rooted were transplanted into promix.....until they root out some......

The other 3..... were put into a large wick cloner vermiculite....(16 oz cups and a 2 gallon pail)


I want to see if cutting which have lots of callus would root not being on mom......


Mom is now in the compost heap...... again not necessary its just what I did.....

I could have just as easily done say two air layers per plant.....and then flowered the mom..... or continue vegging........lots of options....


Pictures will follow...... unfortunately I didnt realize how dark they were.....and I had already packed up the plants.....

 

[Budley Doright]

Follows are the pics.....bad as they are....

the mother plant.....

the air layers......

The clones......

 

[Budley Doright]

I dont believe there is any particular max size......

If I were keeping a mom...... I may airlayer the best two branches....then keep the mom pruned up for the next round.....

eventually replace mom with an air layer......


My feeling is this technique can slice weeks off veg time....or allow you to have much larger plants in the same amount of time.....

In my case..... in just over 2 weeks..... I got 4 branches to root...... and others appeared ready to root soon.....

My assumption is..... done well this will yield a success rate over 75%..... more than good enough for most......

In 3 or 4 days when the rooted clones come out.... I will take some pics.....And check the lighting....

I had taken normal clones a couple days before this mom was worked......

I can put up some pics to compare.....


More experiments are planned......


To me ....this was simply ....BIG FUN

 

[Budley Doright]

The next experiment....are the 3 unrooted airlayers......

One I removed the rooter plug.....so I know for sure..... no roots....

no roots but plenty of callus tissue........

I would expect roots by sunday on some of these 3 ........

My intent for this round....was not to see what percent I got....

but to get some to root....and see what happens to unrooted air layers when removed from mom....

 

[Granger2]

Burnt Rope,
When you say calloused tissue are you talking about root nubs? IME, root nubs planted in medium will root most every time. Keep us apprised. Good luck. -granger

 

[Budley Doright]

is callus material root nubs??? Good question....

NO..... as far as I know....callus material is undifferentiated...

During tissue culture, adventitious roots or shoots can be induced by transferring the callus to medium containing different ratios of auxin and cytokinin.

Therefore normally callus forms then the roots.... depending on the environment.... the callus growth can be stimulated into making either roots or shoots.....

So technically the answer is no...... but when we clone there is certainly an association between callus fomation and root nubs....then roots.....

 

[Budley Doright]

Update..... I did 7 air layers and had 3 of the 7 that rooted well.....they are normal plants now..... enough root system to handle the 1000 gavita.....

3 of the layers that had no roots....have now developed a couple roots and will need a protected environment for another week or so....


There was a reason why I cut those unrooted air layers.... thats because I wanted to see if you could pre-treat larger cuttings.... while they are on mom....then transplant....

So I took 7 air layers.....and expect 6 of them to survive.....not bad.....


Next group the branches will be larger....and left on the mom until they are fully rooted.....

Im going to plan a minimum of 21 days for rooting.....but could go as long as a month....

The advantage..... they dont count until you cut them from mom.......




I suspect I will turn to this method for the most part....... 6 out of 7 rooted...... and thats with me fing with them......

Every time I have done air layering..... I got a high percent......probably a little higher than normal cloning....


I see some distinct advantages in air layering vs normal cloning......


I did figure out what went wrong with the camers...... just the wrong mode....wasnt in flash mode...... got it..... photography isnt one of my thangs.....

 

[Budley Doright]

Let say how I plan to use this fabulous new tool......

I grow in groups of 6 In a sort of perpetual fashion......

I plan to have 8 plants...... in each group...... 2 of which are dedicated moms.....

They are air layer moms..... I plan to take at least 6 airlayers each...... 2 moms....

12 airlayers.....

6 plants go on to flowering.... the 2 moms are harvested of their air layers......

the best 8 are chosen then to go into veg.....


I assume my plant count will be lower....and also to cut 2 weeks or so off my cycle.....but it could be more...... depending how large the airlayers can be.......

Thats what I aim to find out....

 

[sourpuss]

Very nice! Can you go into more detail how you prepare the branch before attaching the root plug thingy... what kind of root medium is it? Just wanna get up to speed. Plan on doing the same thing...

 

[Big CLones]

Very nice! Can you go into more detail how you prepare the branch before attaching the root plug thingy... what kind of root medium is it? Just wanna get up to speed. Plan on doing the same thing...

This should help

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=309503

 

[Popice]

hey this is cool, i love seeing air layering. just and odd experiment that popped up in my head. so by that definition of clones, if you tied a branch down to dip in a new pot and come back up, clipping when the branch rooted in the new pot, would that be 100% clone rate because otherwise the main plant would just take its branch back? i assume some stem rubbing and possibly rooting compound would help.

 

[pashio]

Looks like it works well... The thing is if its faster and easier than classical rockwool cut and insert method...