After you’ve taken your cuttings put them into your tub or sink of tap water [Fig 3]. Putting your cuttings into water will do a couple things to help them root. First the chlorine in tap water will help to kill any bacteria on the plant, secondly your plants will pull in water keeping them alive.

If you’re going to be putting your cuts into an aerocloner or cloning medium right away use room temperature water. If you’ll be putting your cuts into an aerocloner or cloning medium later (longer than 1 hour) use ice cold water. This will help keep the cuttings viable for cloning later. Keep them soaking in the water for at least a few minutes, we usually do about 10 – 15 minutes, this gives us enough time to select some more cuttings from another strain, or finish the cloning process for the last batch of clones.

Fig 3. Cuttings soaking in water

Once those pretty cuttings have been bathing in water for some time, take your shears or razor blade and cut the bottom of the stem at a 45 degree angle while under water. This ensures that no air bubbles make their way up the stem preventing the cutting from delivering water to the top.

Fig 4. Bottom nodes trimmed and base cut at 45 degrees

Next pull them out and trim the bottom nodes (if they have any), try to keep at least 3 – 4 nodes at the top [Fig 4]. Here’s a decent example, one more node up top would be more ideal though.

Cloning the cuttings

Fig 5. Cuttings dipped in cloning solution

After you’ve trimmed and made all of your 45 degree cuts, take your soon to be clones and dip them in your cloning solution, gel or powder [Fig 5]. Follow the instructions on the package for best results.

Pictured is Dip ‘N Grow cloning solution, use .25ml to 4ml of water

Fig 6. Cutting in neoprene and net

After you’ve dipped your cuttings in your cloning solution, insert them into your cloning medium. Here we’ve put them into our neoprene inserts and and net [Fig 6]. These will then be put into our aerocloner.

If you don’t have an aerocloner you can use either rockwool cubes, floral foam bricks or rooter plugs. We’ve personally used rockwool in the past successfully, some have reported issues with maintaining a safe Ph level (about 6.1). We haven’t been as successful with rooter plugs since the plug didn’t hug the stem snugly.

Fig 7. Clone inserted in neoprene

If  you look carefully  at figure 7 you’ll notice a couple of bulges, these are nodes that we cut off earlier. Once the cutting begins to root you’ll notice that these nodes will be rich with roots.

Fig 8. Clones in aerocloner

Last step is to put your clones into the aerocloner if using one and then put them under the light. If you’re not using an aerocloner, put them into your tray and then put them under the light. Remember these are clones, they have no roots which means they have no efficient way to absorb nutrients so don’t put them too close to the light. A fluorescent light for cloning would be perfect since they won’t heat the cuttings up too much while still providing needed light.

Cloning Tips

• Look at figure 8 carefully, you’ll notice the fan leaves have been cut in half, this is useful if your cutting is large or you have a lot of nodes. The bigger the clones or the more nodes a cutting has, the more nutrients the cutting will require. Since there are no roots the cutting cannot absorb nutrients effectively, by cutting the fan leaves in half this will lower the amount of nutrients required for a plant to survive giving your clones a better chance to survive.
• Take the left over cloning solution you have and throw it into your aerocloner’s reservoir. We usually add another 2ml’s to our aerocloner’s reservoir, our reservoir has about 1.5 gallons. Drain and replace your aerocloner’s reservoir with clean water after 12 – 24 hours. DO NOT go longer than 24 hours, bacteria will begin to grow and the cuttings will develop root rot.
• Spray them with some water 2 – 3 times a day, this helps to keep them from drying out and dying.
• Keep an eye out for root rot, if you notice root rot trim it off if there’s enough stem to spare. If you allow the bacteria to build and spread into your aerocloners reservoir, there’s a chance it may spread to the other cuttings. Alternatively you can also add some hydrogen peroxide into your reservoir to kill the bacteria. If you do use hydrogen peroxide don’t keep this in the system too long (no more than 15 minutes), your plants aren’t used to it and likely will react negatively. After 15 minutes drain and fill with new water.
• If using rockwool, rooter cubes or floral foam, remember to keep the plants and stems moist, don’t over spray though as root rot will develop. Misting your plants and medium about twice a day is good, spray when the medium begins to dry up.