A mother plant is there for one thing and one thing only. Cuttings. Lots and lots of lovely cuttings – or “baby chimps,” as I call them. If you grow plants that are sensitive to photoperiod you’ll want to let her bask under at least 18 hours of light per day so that she remains permanently in vegetative mode. She just grows and grows and never flowers, providing you with all the cuttings you need. Pretty amazing stuff when you stop to think about it. So you see, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a mother plant is the central pillar of any productive indoor gardening operation.

So why is it that so many of my fellow gardeners neglect their mothers? (Heheheh … I’ll let you fill in the gaps on that one!) Time and time again I find them in a right old sorry state, sprawled out and legging up in a dull corner of a vegetative room, looking old and decrepit with lots of brown, dead foliage at the bottom and untrained gnarly growth everywhere. (What a terrible image!) These offenders (and you know who you are!) think that all keeping a mother plant entails is to whack her in a 15 litre pot and fill it up with their chosen growing medium – oh and occasionally feeding it when she starts to wilt. It’s a crying shame. Too often the attitude is “keep the mother going” rather than “keep the mother thriving.” I don’t know about you, but it’s plainly obvious through good old common sense, let alone science, that the health of the mother plant has a direct bearing on the health and future yields of the scores of cuttings she produces!

Dedicate Some Space

Experienced growers have a dedicated mother room or tent. They don’t mind giving up this space and using the extra power because of the many benefits and conveniences that having a mother plant to hand brings. For one thing, growing from cuttings is way faster than growing from seeds every time. You can also flip a cutting over into flowering at any point, whereas you have to wait for a seedling to mature before it will do the business. Seeds also cost money, sometimes quite a lot of money, and they are often fairly unpredictable. On the other hand, you can be sure that all cuttings taken from the same mother will perform in the same way, so you know exactly what you’re going to get every time. That said, make sure you choose a good’n! You’re after a vigorous plant that yields well, resist pests and rot, and is pleasing to all the senses! Furthermore it’s a real bonus to have a mother plant that produces cuttings which are easy to root. Even plants of the same genus can vary incredibly – some taking twice or three times longer to root than others. So you definitely want to take rooting time / ease of rooting into consideration.

Choosing a system

Right then, we’ve established that you really, really need to take care of your mother plant. And no doubt some of you will have seen them thriving at friends’ houses in big pots and them being fed passively with drippers or a watering can. But if you really want her to thrive, the best choice is to treat her to her very own active hydroponics system. A Waterfarm, Aquafarm or similar single top feed bucket system is an excellent choice and it certainly won’t break the bank. Also, it’s a far more hands-off method. After you’ve filled the top bucket with well-washed clay pebbles, all you’ll need to do is keep the reservoir topped up and change the nutrient solution every week or two, and that’s about it. I have the drippers on constantly – especially when the mother is well established – as they can be very thirsty buggers. The growth is incredibly fast in these systems, meaning you can take lots of cuttings and your old dear will replenish herself in no time. Using a hydroponics system also gives you more control over the nutrients available to your mother plant. For instance, some growers like to decrease the levels of nitrogen available to the mother plant (by about 10%) prior to taking cuttings, claiming it promotes faster rooting.

Taming the Beast

As I mentioned earlier, it’s all too easy to allow your mother to become out of control. As you take more cuttings from your mother plant it will become bushier and bushier. Where you remove one growth tip to take a cutting, two will take the lead in its place. And two become four, and four become eight, etc. Eventually you end up with the mother plant equivalent of an afro. You can either do some serious remedial pruning, or start afresh by turning a cutting into a new mother plant. When taking cuttings, think like a hairdresser and try to shape your plant so that most of it is under a good amount of light. There’s no point in letting a mother plant get too tall and pointy – take these tips out and try to develop a candelabra-shaped plant instead.

Candelabra

The perfect shape to aim for when pruning your mother is a candelabra. This allows the most growth tips access to positions with optimum light levels.

Lighting

Remember, even if you’re not using all the vegetation she produces, your mother plant needs to thrive. It’s this intrinsic ‘health’ and ‘vigor’ that your cuttings will take with them when they become plants in their own right. Remember, your mother plant “sets the pace” so she needs to bask under lots of light. The dull corner of a veg room is far from ideal. If you have a separate vegging chamber, don’t be tempted just to stick her in there. For starters, your mother plant is likely to be a vastly different size to plants that are in early veg – she needs her own dedicated light. Many growers use 125 – 250 watt compact florescent units or some go the whole hog with a 250 – 400 watt metal halide HID. It’s unlikely that you’ll need anything more than this unless you’re growing up a monster – and if this is the case perhaps it’s worth considering growing more than one mother? CFLs need to be placed closer to the plant. For this reason, I personally find that a metal halide with a large, wide dispersing reflector is more practical.

Keep Things Fresh

After prolonged use a mother can become incredibly bushy, making it more difficult to take good sized cuttings. At this point it’s worth considering replacing your mother with a cutting from itself. This is a good time to give things a real deep clean – rinse out the hydroponics system that’s supporting the mother with a mild bleach solution. Remember that disease and pests on your mother will invariably be passed to any cuttings taken from her. So look after her! Depending on how well you take care of her, she will keep going and going for years before those characteristics you love her for start to wane. “How long?” you ask. Well, this is difficult to say. Some growers change their genetics every 6-9 months. I know of others who’ve been using the same chromosomes for as many years! But here’s a rule of thumb: as well as diminishing yields, a particularly telling sign is rooting time. If you are used to your mother producing cuttings that root in, say, ten days, and suddenly it’s taking two weeks or more, you may want to consider sourcing some fresh new genetics from seed and starting over.

18 or 24?

The jury is still split over whether mother plants prefer 18 hours of light a day or 24. Certainly it’s more natural to allow your plants to have some “dark time” – and your mother room lighting electricity costs will be reduced too. It’s less hassle to just plug a light in rather than faff with timers (and maybe electricians) so a lot of growers take the ‘lazy’ option of 24 hour light. Some Dutch growers I know even claim that it produces more vigorous plants!

Mothering Tips

• Dedicate a standard sized grow tent to your mother plant. Use a control unit, and a 5 or 6 inch extractor to maintain temperatures at 73 to 82°F (23 to 28°C) and relative humidity at around 60%.
• Don’t grow your mother plants in coco coir. After a few months it tends to lock out nitrogen – which is an essential primary nutrient for continued growth.
• Rotate your mother plant from time to time to ensure more even growth.
• Remove all dead leaves. Check right inside the mother plant as she gets bushier.
• If you insist on growing your mother in a pot, periodically check the roots to ensure the plant is not becoming too pot bound. If this is the case, use a sharp, sterile knife to remove around an inch of the root ball (messy business!) and re-pot in a larger container. It looks brutal, but your mother will thank you for it!
• If you are growing your plant in a hydroponics system (recommended) make sure you keep the reservoir topped up and check that the pH is always around 5.8. Completely refresh your nutrient solution every 7 – 10 days.
• Use a grow light rich in the blue spectrum like a metal halide HID or a CFL. The 250 watt Enviroglow is a great choice. It screws directly into the reflector – no need for a ballast or electrician if using with a timer. Remember to ask for the blue version for growth!
• If using CFLs, remember they do not give off much heat. They work best a lot closer to your plants than a standard HID light.

Everest’s Mother Plant Shopping List

Ok, so you’ve decided to grow up your very own mother plant? Here’s a list of things I think you’re going to need:

• A standard-sized grow tent. The Homebox is a great choice. Also, the Homebox Light (not designed to be lightproof ) is a good budget option as a mother plant does not require set amounts of complete darkness. Size assembled: 39 1/2 by 39 1/2 by 78 3/4 inches (100 by 100 by 200 centimeters).
• 1 x Top Feed Bucket System, e.g. Nurticulture Flo Gro FG500, or GHE’s Waterfarm / Aquafarm. All these systems use a ring dripper that ensures a wide dispersal of nutrients to all parts of the root zone.
• 1 x 400 watt HID lighting system with a Metal Halide lamp and a large reflector for a wide spread of light. The Sunpulse range also features a dedicated vegetative light (6.5K).
• A pair of Ezi-hangers to hang and adjust your lights.
• S hooks – to attach your Ezi-hangers to the top of your grow tent.
• Clay pebbles.
• Extraction kit: 6” carbon filter + fan + ducting

Inflow: Passive should be fine through the grow tent venting. If your mother plant becomes very large, you could supplement this with an RVK100 style fan. Blow fresh air in at the bottom of the tent.

• Control unit (automate inflow and extractor fan speeds to regulate temperature and humidity).
• High quality vegetative nutrient pack. Ask your local hydro store for advice on the water quality in your area and make sure you buy an appropriate nutrient.
• Hygrozyme is a personal favorite of mine for keeping mother plants (as well as vegetating cuttings) in tip top health. It helps to break down any old root mass and stimulate fresh new growth.
• Trichoderma or funganic powder – beneficial bacteria for a healthy root zone.
• I’m assuming you already have your humidity, pH and conductivity (nutrient strength) meters! If not – make the investment!
• Cheap and affordable “auto-top up” systems are available if you are planning to go away for an extended period.
• Don’t forget scalpels, rooting hormone, propagation media (e.g. rockwool cubes) and propagators for taking all those lovely, healthy cuttings!

So good luck everybody and remember: look after your mother and she will look after you!

{Cue needle scratch sound on record.}

”YOU DON’T NEED A MOTHER PLANT!” cries a dissenting voice.

Whaaat!!!? Who dares declare this heresy? Why, it is Mr. Billy Graham! (Not the preacher.) We begged him to step forth and elaborate … and he did!

Now then, now then, settle down you feisty Urban Gardeners. I know that a lot of you are very attached to your precious mother plants. After all, you’ve probably been hacking away at them for a good few seasons now, right? You love taking your cuttings! Of course you do! You’re badder than bad with that lil’ scalpel of yours!

Don‘t get me wrong – I’m not knocking it. Taking cuttings has every right to be so popular with urban gardeners because it’s such lo-fi technology. As long as you have a plant that’s reasonably easy to take cuttings from, it’s a technique that works well for most growers. Lop off a bit of branch, dunk, plonk, propagator lid on, wait a week or so, hey presto. One rooted cutting ready to go.

But what if there was a system that provided you with all the rooted cuttings you could ever need, and gave you back your mother room? That’s right, I’m talking about freeing up that space for other activities! Like … another flowering room for instance! And you no longer have to take care of a mother plant all the time, come rain or shine, and let’s not even begin to think about all the lighting and other energy consuming resources you would no longer need. You know, come to think of it, a mother room is a pretty demanding beast.

What is Plant Tissue Culture?

A plant tissue culture laboratory technician.

So what am I talking about? Plant tissue culture! Professional nurseries do not grow big rooms full of mother plants. If a crop is not grown from seeds, it’s more than likely to have been produced in tissue culture. You don’t always hear about it because only a few labs are necessary to grow the plants for all those greenhouses. You would be surprised how many of the plants you find all around you arose from tissue culture. Expensive equipment has prevented growers from setting up anything but the largest laboratories. So am I really serious about doing this sort of stuff at home? I most certainly am, thanks to new home tissue culture kits. These little gems have eliminated the need for expensive hoods and autoclaves. So yes, if you’re a plant enthusiast, you can now achieve lab quality tissue culture in your home.

How does it work in practice?

Let me start by saying this: tissue culture combines mother plants, cloning, and rooting in a single system that’s 10 to 100 times as efficient as ordinary cloning. Tissue culture growers produce hundreds or thousands of clones a month, or as few as they wish, from the multiplying and rooting of plants in jars. There are only a few basic steps that are easy to understand.

Small pieces of plant tissue are grown on gels made to multiply or root the plants. The first bunch of plants are grown with branching hormone to make them multiply like crazy. The secret is in the gel made from very special ingredients. I guess you could say it’s like “hydroponic jello” and is made from agar, nutrients, vitamins, sugar and hormones and a special preservative to eliminate the need to work under an expensive hood.

The sugar feeds the plant energy and the hormones make it grow the direction you want. Use the branching hormones to make a few plant pieces grow into full jars of new plants every month or five weeks. Plants are taken from the multiplying jars and divided to give a few hundred new plants. Most of them will be your new plants.

Dip them in rooting gel and plant away or root them in tissue culture and continue feeding them in sugar in larger jars. The tissue culture cuttings will grow tall and burst with roots in only a few weeks, and they will do it faster. Rooted tissue culture clones are ready to plant just like clones from a professional cloning machine. The remaining small plants are replanted into new multiplying jars to grow and fill all over again. The system takes on a “two shelf” operation. The jars on the top shelf multiply a few plants into many plants. The lower shelf gets them taller and puts roots on them.

Shelf Life

Dragon Tree plant tissue culture.

And another great thing:  the clones are ready when you are. The plants in the jars have everything they need for months of growth and the containers they are grown in are easy to ship and transport. Tissue culture plants have been left on the counters of stores for months with no care, watering, or special lighting – that’s right … nothing. The sugar and nutrients provide the energy. Kit plants are given light for faster growth and speeded up by cutting and transplanting them more often.

It only takes a few plant pieces to get it all started. It begins with plant nodes and tips just about ¾” long with the branch bud ready to grow out. An ordinary cutting of 4 to 6 inches provides 3 to 6 node cuttings for tissue culture meristem culture. The node is trimmed with about ¼” above and below the node and the same for the petiole, or leaf stem. The pieces are washed in alcohol, bleach water, then rinsed, trimmed, and planted in a jar.

What equipment is needed?

So what does it take to be able to do all of this? Mix jars of gel just like gelatin, heat and cool, trim plants using scalpels and forceps, and grow the plants in a small clean location. Remember when taking clones seemed like a lot of scientific techie stuff? Now it’s second-nature, right? Well I think it’s the same with tissue culture. The skills will become second nature after only a few uses. It’s easy when you give it a go and practice a few times. Imagine what indoor hydroponics sounded like to a dirt and sun farmer when they heard about it for the first time! “Cover the walls, put up sodium lights, and use this nutrient solution in these rockwool cubes, pH adjust …. Etc.” This is no different and there’s already a breed of pioneering urban gardeners out there who have mastered tissue culture propagation and have a whole bank of genetics on a single shelf, rather than a room for a mother plants.  If you’re serious about preserving a whole array of interesting plant varieties, then plant tissue culture is definitely worth investigating!

Everest adds …

Plant tissue culture is used in commercial plant production because it’s possible to turn one plant into thousands, relatively easily. Imagine how great it would feel to take a single rare orchid and turn it into 10,000 plants? Woohoo! Orchids R Us babyo! Plant tissue culture is also useful for plant species that don’t root well and for germinating some types of seeds e.g. agave which have very specific moisture content requirements.

The tiny plantlets grown in tissue culture are extremely delicate when they emerge and it takes time and patience to harden them off sufficiently for the ‘real world’ of the growroom. I reckon that tissue culture will be of more interest to the very serious hobbyist / semi-professional rather than small-scale hobbyist growers. (I think they will be hard pressed to replace their mother plants, $20 propagators, rockwool cubes and scalpels with a Petri dish and agar but hey, you never know!) It’s great to see that these kits are out there for those growers who are serious about plant propagation.

And, plant tissue culture makes it very easy to transport your precious plant genetics. Anyway, as always, don’t forget to let us know your thoughts and/or experiences by posting a comment below.

Many thanks to Billy Graham for introducing us to this interesting propagation technique.  For more information please visit: www.planttc.com.

But are all cuttings really equal? And can you take a cutting from a cutting from a cutting forever?

Jeff Winterborne, our resident propagation expert, reveals all!

Why take cuttings?

To the experienced gardener this might seem like a daft question, but it’s definitely worth a closer look. We take cuttings to generate more plants. It’s possible to make hundreds of new plants from one large “mother plant.” Many advantages are apparent when choosing to take cuttings to generate new plant stock in this way. The main benefits are that the clones taken from the plant are almost exactly that– clones, i.e. the cutting that you take from the mother plant will have almost identical characteristics, so quality, size, yield, taste, sex, and vigor (to name a few traits) are passed down to the clones. Therefore, all the important factors are already known as they follow the attributes that the mother carries. As the characteristics are already known, the cuttings will also have these same traits and grow to a similar shape, size, so on and so forth. So in effect, the space in your greenhouse or grow room can be more efficiently utilized. The other very big benefit is that no further cost apart from sundry equipment is needed, meaning that you do not need to make another outlay on purchasing the seeds, as new plants can be generated from the existing stock of plants. Many new plants can be grown from your original stock for an absolute minimal cost.

Which parts of the mother plant can I use to make a cutting?

Any part of the plant can be used as a cutting, as long as it encompasses a growing tip. However, some parts of the mother plant produce easier rooting clones than others. It is widely believed that the main centre head of the plants and the very top arm tips make for easier rooting cuttings and therefore better cuttings. This is rightly believed due to the fact that these parts of the plants have a higher concentration of auxins (which are growth hormones) compared to the lower canopy of the plants, and therefore make for better clones that are more likely to root. Now, although the science here is correct, the science of nature is a completely different ball game. Through personal experience, although the tops of the plant are very easily rooted, the lower canopy side branches have more vigor once rooted than their counterparts from the top.

The reasons for this may be many, but an obvious one is that the lower canopy (compared to the upper canopy) has had it hard. The lower canopy is struggling for existence, therefore is working hard to survive compared to the tops, which have got it very easy – “completely pampered” is somewhat of an understatement. So, when you take cuttings from the lower canopy, these cuttings have within them the “motivation” gained via struggle and, when given an opportunity to become fully fledged plants themselves, they literally fly out of the starting blocks and continue to exhibit this inherent motivation throughout their whole existence.

Clones taken from the tops of the plant, which at first make a better cutting, have however inherited a type of “laziness” and lack of motivation that the lower canopy cuttings do not possess. So with all the above in mind, if you could extrapolate this over the course of a few generations, you would obviously only be taking the cuttings from the best of the stock plants. Then in turn, the very best of those cuttings would become the new stock plants, and through taking cuttings from the cream of those stock plants, you would, before you know it, two to three generations later, have the best of the best of the best, all with turbocharged motivation and momentum for their survival. The end result would be supercharged stock plants – truly professional specimens that any grower would sell their mother-in-law for!

Can the cutting from a cutting cycle go on forever?

This is a controversial area. If you’ve studied plant biology you may have been taught that a clone is a 100% genetic copy. So surely it follows that a copy of a copy of a copy is going to be the same as the original – right?

Wrong. If you speak to many growers who take cuttings to reproduce annual plants (rather than pollination and seeding), they will tell you, from their experience, that plant genetics actually degrade over time. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that the genetics diversify, or even malfunction. As a rule of thumb you should take the best cutting from the plant you’ve grown from seed, grow that cutting up, take the best cutting from that cutting, and take the best cutting from that. Make this your mother plant. If you look after it, it should give you two years’ worth of happy cuttings. After three to four years, however, your genetics will probably become “tired.” Vigor, yield and harvest quality will decrease significantly. Cuttings taken from a tired mother are also more prone to pests and disease. Typically the same applies to clones taken from clones once you get past four generations. However, it must be stated that, depending on the genetics of your seeds in the first place, which will dictate the longevity of your mothers or clones, some genomes can withstand more than others. For example, some species will allow possibly six to eight generations of clones from clones before genetic diversification sets in, while others can break down after one or two generations. In fact, some genomes or breeds or even types of breed do not make for good mothers or clones … period.

Urban Garden Magazine would like to issue its heartfelt thanks to Jeff Winterborne for kindly permitting us to adapt and print this excerpt from his book:  “Hydroponics: Indoor Horticulture.”  When Everest first read this book he wanted to hug the author.  Finally somebody had organized all the facts for the indoor hydro grower into plain English!

ISBN: 0-9550112-0-5
For more information visit www.hydroponicist.com

Do you agree or disagree with Jeff?  Have you experienced ‘lazy cuttings’?  Tell us about it below!

Plants are totally amazing things.  Imagine if you could chop one of your fingers off, dip it in some hormones, and grow another whole “you”?  The mind boggles.

Let’s get started with some practicalities…

Starting from scratch

If you’re starting from scratch then you’re starting from seed.  Once you’ve germinated your seeds the first thing you need to do is to label each seedling.  I usually combine an acronym representing the plant variety with a number.  So for instance, if I germinate ten White Wonder tomato seeds, I would label each seedling WW1, WW2, … WW10, etc using plastic plant labels and a permanent marker pen.  (This saves you writing on the pot which might cause confusion should you re-use the pot for future crops).

Now each of your plants has its own name!  Charming!  But this isn’t just a sentimentality – it’s important because even seeds from the same packet can express themselves in vastly different ways so keeping individual track of them all is crucial.

I grow my seedlings under 18 hours of light a day.  After three or four weeks, or when they have four or five internodes (the space on the stem between branches), I lop off the top of the plant and take it as a cutting – making sure to give it the same label so I know where it’s come from!  Sometimes I’ll take two or three cuttings from a seedling if it is big enough.  Cuttings taken from side shoots have exactly the same genetic qualities as cuttings taken from the main stem.

Growers are divided over the next stage.  You can either flower off the original seedling (by increasing the length of the night period to twelve hours or more) to determine its sex, or you can wait for the respective clone to root, keep the seedling in a vegetative state (in a separate growing area), and flower off its clone instead – this is called ‘cloning for sex’.  The aim of both games is to determine the sex of the seedling whilst retaining its genetics for possible future use.  With all these seedlings and cuttings flying about, you’ll be pleased you established a rigorously scientific labelling scheme!  For instance, many growers like to retain only female plants – so as soon as they discover that a particular seedling is male, they remove it from their grow-room, and remove any cuttings taken from it too!

Hopefully you reach your final goal – you’ve established the sex of all your seedlings, flowered off the ones you wish to keep, spotted the clear winner (i.e. the plant which produces the highest quantity and quality yield) and then referred back to your vegetative room to find a 100% genetic copy of that winner.  Now you can establish that as your mother plant and fill your grow-room with winner after winner after winner!  Oh glorious clones!

You don’t have to take cuttings from a plant in a vegetative state – you can take a cutting from a plant well into flowering and revert it back to vegetative growth by placing it in an 18/6 or 24 hour light environment.  However, cuttings taken from plants in flower will take longer to root and have a lower success rate than those taken from plants in vegetative growth so I wouldn’t recommend it outside of emergencies!

When I take a cutting I have found that it behaves as if it were a new plant (but it is still technically as ‘old’ as the mother plant) – as far as I know there is no degradation of the genetic material and no change in the plant’s qualities.  So a clone taken from a clone taken from a clone, etc, is still exactly the same as the original.  Some friends of mine have reported that strains become ‘tired’ through repeated cloning but I’ve had no first hand experience of this.  If any readers beg to differ then please get in touch.

If you are not careful a mother can become affected by viruses from dirty scalpels or pests such as whitefly and spider mites, which might explain the “tired“ strains. To get a clean mother take a small cutting from the end of a branch while the mother is growing vigorously. Then grow the cutting as fast as possible into a large plant and take cuttings as quickly as possible. Use this new cutting for your new mother. The growing points grow away from the viruses. Leaving a mother to stagnate allows these viruses to affect every part.

Remember, when taking cuttings, it’s really important that you sterilise all your tools before you start.  Fresh cuttings are easy targets for viruses, fungus, and diseases during their pre-rooting incubation period. Wash your hands in alcohol, and also use it to clean out any receptacles you are using (eg. For rooting hormone) – also use it to clean your scalpel or razor blade.

So let’s take a look at some different cloning techniques.  Last  time I mentioned that my favoured technique was using rockwool cubes. This is because they are pre-formed, hold the cuttings sturdily, and are fairly easy to work with.  But you can just as easily take a plastic cup and fill it with soil, perlite, or coconut fibre and use that instead.  The trick is not to let the medium dry out and to maintain high humidity levels.  There are lots of different ways of achieving this ‘incubation environment’ – here are just a few:

Cloning in water

Easiest of them all!  Fill a glass with some water (preferably distilled or high quality water) and drop three or four cuttings in!  Just like your missus does when you buy her some flowers!  (I sense some of you have blank looks on your faces)  No humidity dome or covers required!  Just make sure there are no drafts.  Place in diffused sunlight or under fluorescents.  For the highest success rate, remove any larger leaves, and change the water daily or aerate it.  Try adding a high P dilute nutrient solution over the coming days.  Finally, if you are using water from the tap, let it sit for a day or so to let the chlorine evaporate.

Cloning in bubbles!

Bubble propagators work by pumping air into water or a dilute nutrient solution and placing cuttings in small net pots (with a little substrate to keep them stable) so that the cutting is sitting just in the water below. The net pot should sit a little above the water.

It’s a simple and efficient system. If performed correctly its possible to achieve 100% rooting success without any stop to growth. In effect, the bubbles surround the cuttings, creating air that is close to 100% humidity just above them. A lid is totally unnecessary if there are no strong draughts. Because humid fresh air is coming up around the cutting constantly the leaves lose very little water. Without a lid the CO2 and oxygen stay at ideal levels and light is not reflected or absorbed and lost.

One commercially-available version of this propagator is called The Cutting Board, made by GHE. If you want to make your own it is quite easy … in a Blue Peter way.

Equipment:

• 1 deep plastic tray. At least 8 cm deep to allow enough room under the net pots to allow the roots to develop.
• 4cm net pots
• Clay pebbles or Diahydro to fill the pots.
• Corriboard to cover the tray.
• Air pump, 320 litres per hour is enough for a small tray.
• Air line
• Air curtain

Carefully cut circular holes in the corriboard to fit the net pots. Fill the tray with a dilute nutrient solution such as Formulex or Bio Heaven and adjust to a pH of 6.5 if necessary. Arrange an air curtain along the bottom of the tray so that as much of the water is moved by the bubbles as possible. Cuttings along the edge of the tray may be slower as they are in a more stagnant area, as much air curtain as possible should be fitted in the tray. Poke the cut end of the stem through the net pot then fill the net pot with clay pebbles or Diahydro.

Some cheapskates just poke the cuttings through holes in the corriboard and keep them in place with a plug of rockwool. The only problem with this method is that it is difficult to remove the cutting without breaking the roots.

Lift the corriboard every day to inspect the roots and check that the air curtain is still bubbling well. The water level may go down quickly in dry conditions and plain water should be added. Change the entire nutrient solution every five days. If the bubbles slow down take the air curtain out and massage it vigorously under water until it froths again. Long healthy roots should have developed within ten days, if you leave them too long they can tangle up with other roots and may get damaged when removing the cuttings to transplant them. They will also often get damaged when transplanted to their new medium. It is best to transplant the cuttings when the roots are an inch or so long to avoid snapping them. Do not remove the cuttings from the net pots they have been raised in, plant the whole thing in their new home. Cuttings raised by this method can be used in any system.

The equipment must be cleaned and sterilised between each crop of cuttings. Simply scrub out the tray and net pots and wash with Liquid Oxygen. It is best to use new clay pebbles or Diahydro with each new set of cuttings.

If you see any sick roots or rotting cuttings take them out immediately before other cuttings are infected. In organic systems add some fungi such as Advanced Nutrients’ Piranha or Trichoderma from Canna or GHE. With non-organic feeds you can add five millilitres per litre of Liquid Oxygen. To prevent the large quantities of air passing through the propagator carrying disease spores onto the cuttings it is best to purify the air in the propagation area with an ioniser or HEPA filter.

Cloning in air

Amazingly, you don’t need a solid rooting medium to propagate your cuttings.  An aeroponic propagator simply supports your cuttings leaving the lower portion to root in a fine mist of nutrients!  This gives the roots access to nutrients and water whilst maintaining very high oxygen levels – this is great for root health!

Now, I only want to touch on aeroponic propagation because I’ll be introducing the whole science of aeroponics in more detail in our next issue with the help of the aeroexperts at Aeroculture.  These guys have forgotten more about aeroponics than I know.

Until then, goodbye my friends, and happy cloning!

CLONEX from Growth Technology is a popular rooting hormone product.

She was finally ready.  Over the last few weeks before harvest one specimen in particular had caught my eye in the growroom.   She was clearly the star of the show and, each time I popped my head around the door, she appeared to stand out more and more.  The girth of her stem had been noticeably thicker than her neighbour’s since she was little more than a seedling.  Sometimes those early leaders turned out to be poor finishers – but not this time.  The flower heads that this sturdy frame was now tasked with supporting were respectively endowed.

This glorious freak of nature was twice as impressive as her nearest competitor.  I spent the following few weeks congratulating myself over and over again on having grown, in my eyes at least, the best plant in the world …. ever.

The rest of the crop paled in comparison.  Perhaps I’m guilty of a little over-personification but it was as if the other plants had given up the ghost when they saw the competition.  Or perhaps it was just the presence of this uber-specimen that highlighted my otherwise mediocre results more than usual.

All that happened many years ago now.  But before you dismiss this as another ethno-botanical urban myth, please let me say that I haven’t grown anything to match it since!  I was more or less a complete novice grower in those days.  It was a case of me being the lucky recipient of freak genetics, a holy matrimony of chromosomes, rather than the seed being the benefactor of anywhere nearly approaching an ideal growing environment.  I’ve since come to realise just how precious good genetics are!

In the years that followed my growrooms grew in size perhaps a little disproportionate to my proficiency, but if one axiom has remained true throughout it’s that the best growroom in the world can only realise the potential of the plant genetics to hand.  I’ve not come across a plant quite as monstrously resinous as the aforementioned specimen since and, alas, the genetics of that alpha-female, are lost.  Forever.

Back then I’d heard about taking cuttings (aka clones) but, apart from a lack of space, I dismissed the technique as a bit too advanced or hit and miss for me.  Had I known how easy it was to take cuttings from my favourite plants my growroom could have been filled with super-plants for years to come. (And, let’s not forget, had I been altruistic as well as prudent, my green-fingered friends could have benefited too.)

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve daydreamed about harvesting row after row of those identical super-plants.  Alas, the daydreams always leave me with a deep regret that I did not take any cuttings.

There are probably as many different ways of taking cuttings as there are people who take them.  Rather than try to exhaustively list each and every one I just want to start by describing my own simple, inexpensive method that has worked consistently well for me over the years.  There can be a lot of growers’ ‘hocus pocus’ when it comes to taking cuttings so let’s start with a little common sense.  If I accidentally snap off part of a plant and leave it discarded on my growroom floor then that severed portion will, of course, die!  It’s been separated from its root system and therefore has no way of feeding itself or replenishing lost moisture.  In less than an hour it will be shrivelled up and limp.  So in order for cuttings to survive with no root system of their own they need to be placed quickly into a sort of “incubation chamber”.  There’s no need to pilfer the local maternity ward as all these ‘newly born cuttings’ need is a warm, humid environment – and this is very simple to create.

Essentials

- A healthy, vigorous plant with lots of vegetative growth
- A clean scalpel (or a small, very sharp kitchen knife)
- Propagator (aka humidity dome)
- Plastic seedling tray (usually comes with propagator)
- Some rooting medium (unless you are using an aeroponic cloning system)
- Some 25% strength nutrient solution
- Light.  Not too bright!  A single 50cm fluorescent tube will do – as will the ambient light in the corner of your grow room.

Good preparation is going to be key to your success.  The quicker you can rush your fresh cuttings into their “incubators” the better.

Firstly, prepare your rooting medium:  I prefer rockwool cubes as they provide a sturdy base for my cuttings and they are fairly easy to work with.  I use medium-sized cubes (about 1.5 inches square) as I find that smaller cubes have a tendency to dry out quicker and require almost daily maintenance.  I make up a 25% strength vegetative nutrient solution at pH 5.6 – 5.8 and soak the cubes for a few hours (if I have time, overnight).  It’s important to reduce the pH of rockwool because otherwise it’s too high for optimum nutrient uptake.

In a full size propagator (that generally has room for about 77 cuttings) I arrange about 35 rockwool cubes in a chessboard formation.  An overly crowded propagator can all too easily become a mould farm.  Of course you don’t have to take 35 cuttings at a time!  Smaller propagators are available which can comfortably hold up to 6 cuttings.  A friend who used to only take a handful of cuttings at a time used to place them in small pots beneath individual ‘humidity domes’ he’d fashioned out of plastic lemonade bottles cut in half.  Whether you buy a propagator from your local garden centre or create something a little more “Heath Robinson” the heuristic remains the same:  Keep that precious moisture in!

Your rooting medium should be moist but not saturated in nutrient solution.  I tend to give my rockwool cubes a gentle squeeze to release any excess moisture before placing them into the propagator.  Once you have your rooting medium prepared it’s time to take some cuttings!

Using a scalpel or sharp knife, slice off a cutting from your donor plant, making a clean cut through the stem at roughly a 45 degree angle.  It’s important to have as sharp an edge as possible because your aim is to take the cutting with the minimum amount of tissue damage.   The 45 degree angle opens up an increased surface area of inner-stem to rooting potential.  When taking cuttings from particularly woody stems (usually from older mother plants) I sometimes carefully remove some of the outer layers of ‘bark’ to expose more of this “inner stem” – especially if using rooting hormone products.
The size of your cuttings is important.  I usually take cuttings that are between two and four inches long with one or two young growth tips and three or four small leaves.  Cuttings smaller than these are fiddly and overly-delicate and they take longer overall to grow to the desired size.  Ideally cuttings should fit comfortably into the propagator allowing for a little growth.  I remove any large fan leaves as these tend to die anyway.  Remove any growth tips or leaves close to the bottom of the cutting as you need a nice inch or so of clean stem to insert into your rooting medium.

Other Useful Items

- Rooting hormone (e.g. Clonex or Roota)
- Small sterile container (e.g. a shot glass)
- Rhizotonic
- Digital min/max thermometer with probe

Next I dip the cutting into rooting hormone.  It’s worth pointing out that I’ve had success without using any hormone products but it does speed the process up which lessens the chance of mould and disease.  I prefer to use rooting gel (such as Clonex or Roota) as these are very easy to use (no mixing or diluting required).  Rooting hormone gels tend to have a short shelf life so don’t buy more than you need and always check the best before date.  Avoid dipping your cuttings directly into the rooting hormone product container.  It’s wise to keep any surplus hormone clean and untainted otherwise you could inadvertently be spreading disease from one set of clones to another.  Pour a little into a small receptacle (not the lid of the rooting hormone!)

Take care when placing the cutting into the rooting medium.  Most rockwool cubes come complete with a small hole and I find that this is more than sufficient to hold the cutting.  It’s important not to bruise or bend the cutting stem.

Place the cutting into your propagator.  Be sure to turn any fans off, and replace the lid in-between taking each cutting or give them a light spray with a mister – it’s amazing how quickly they dry out.  Once you have taken all your cuttings you should place the propagator into a warm environment (about 25 degrees Celsius is perfect).  Ensure the lid is on firmly, any vents are closed, and any excess moisture at the bottom of the propagator tray is removed.  A single fluorescent tube placed directly on top of the lid provides ample light for the cuttings to root.  Do not place your cuttings directly under a high intensity bulb.  If you have a separate vegetative growroom you can provide adequate light for your cuttings by placing the propagator in the corner of your growroom.  (If you use this method try placing some bubble-wrap over the propagator to keep the light well dispersed.)

The propagator should mist up.  This is perfectly normal and shows that everything’s working: i.e. the moisture is being retained inside the propagator!  Check the propagator daily.  Be sure to remove any dead leaves, growth tips or cuttings as their presence can cause mould (stem rot).  I tend not to spray my cuttings initially as there tends to be more than enough humidity generated from the moist rooting medium.

Now it’s just a case of waiting through the “incubation period”.  Some plant varieties can root in 5 days, and some can take over 14 days!  When checking your cuttings be careful not to disturb them too much and never pull on a cutting to see if it has rooted (instead check for small white roots emerging from the bottom of the cube).  Wipe any excess moisture from the propagator lid with a kitchen towel.  Most importantly, check the rooting medium of each cutting regularly to ensure that it has not dried out.   If I find a cube is a little dry give it a quick dip in some freshly made 25% nutrient solution, followed by a little squeeze to get rid of any excess.  Rockwool cubes tend to be fine for the first 3 or 4 days in an optimum environment.  Be especially vigilant towards the end of the incubation period or as soon as you see the first sign of root development – suddenly cuttings that seemed like they were doing nothing for days on end turn into thirsty little blighters and can dry up in hours!  During the latter stages of the incubation period I tend to open my propagator vents a little.

Some cuttings will root faster than others.  You can keep dipping the leaders in more nutrient solution whilst the others catch up so that you can plant out your rooted cuttings all together.  It’s important to realise that your rooted cuttings are still very delicate little creatures.  After all, they’ve just stepped out of their incubator – placing a newly rooted cutting directly in the full on glare of a 400 watt or higher HID light is a little like expecting a baby to ride a bicycle.  Either stage their development with a fluorescent unit or 250 watt metal halide or ensure any higher wattage lights are raised at least 3 feet above the tops of your plants.

This introduction to taking cuttings should be all you need to enable you to start growing your favourite plants again and again.  However cuttings bring more horticultural benefits than consistently high quality crops.  If you already know exactly what you are growing then its predictable nature allows you to concentrate on optimising other growroom variables such as feed strengths and vegetation times.  When you come to know a particular instance of a plant (also known as a “phenotype”) in this personal way you can focus on whether she performs best with two days in vegetation, a week, or ten days, matrixed with other factors such as the spacing of plants and the resulting availability of medium.  Clones are the quintessential constant in the growroom that allow the grower to explore other factors in a more scientific way.

In order to enjoy continual access to cuttings from your favourite plant it needs to be maintained in a separate growing environment to the area in which you flower off your developed cuttings.  This plant is often referred to as a ‘mother’ or ‘mother-plant’.

Read the second part to our beginner’s guide to taking cuttings…