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airavata

airavata

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My last grow, my first attempt in years, was wrought with trouble from the get-go. I ended up turning out some good nugs but quantity was on the low side and it took WAY too much effort just to keep them alive. The lesson I learned: Take EVERY precaution against pests. The one precaution I didn't take was sterilizing my soil and it bit me in the ass. HARD.

Anyway, it's a new year and I'm on to bigger and better things. I took cuttings from my High Planes and NYC Diesel mothers yesterday. I addressed all the variables. They should root well. The only potential issue is I didn't like rockwool. It became too saturated, too easily, and it seemed really tough to get the medium to contact the cutting as much as I would have liked. I also had a problem with water from the saturated cubes running down the cuttings' stems when I would squeeze. Hopefully I had enough cloning gel on them that it didn't get washed away. Next time I will use peat.

So, as you can see below, I've got a nice little seedling/cutting tray with humidity dome. Cuttings are in rockwool cubes. Water was PHd down to 6. I am now using reverse osmisis (RO) water. The rooting hormone I used is Power Clone Gel by Botanicare. It came highly recommended by the guy at my local hydro shop. I've got a seedling heat pad under my tray. The humidity is up in the 80s and so is the temp.

This picture was taken yesterday right when I put the tray in my tent. They're all really wilted now.

DSCF3223.JPG
 
siscokid said:
Darn, that's not good... Hope you will post this little problem in the FAQ thread. Maybe just a little high in Humidity? Do you have them in dim lighting?
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Well the humidity can't be too high when you're rooting clones, at least according to Cervantes, but I looked it up and my temp is about 10 degrees too high. My grow medium is also soggier than I'd like....but I did wring it out the best I could before putting my cuttings in. I also submerged each cutting in neem before placing in the tray.....but I don't think that would cause what I'm seeing. I've got a 125w cfl in my veg/clone tent. Should be perfect for clones. I actually just pulled the heat pad out from under my tray and raised my light to 2' above the canopy. I'm going to try to get the air under the humidity dome down to 78 degrees.

I think the only other thing it could be is embolism, and I don't think they would all be suffering from that, I did take precautions against that. Maybe also overly saturated grow medium....I don't like the drainage of the rockwool cubes.....but tons of people clone in rockwool without any difficulty....Time will tell, I suppose.
 
The problem with the cuttings was that I was worried the rockwool was too soggy and didn't remoisten early enough. The heat pad is also getting my temp too high and drying out the medium too fast. I pulled the heat mat and I'm misting the rockwool periodically. This morning I sprayed everything except the inside tray that the rockwool sits in with bleach. Then I cut off all the foliage that had turned black (well most of it). I also pulled out 2 clones that I decided looked too crappy to leave in. None of them look great but hopefully they'll be resillient enough to not become diseased before there are roots and new growth. After that I can cut the rest of the dead foliage off. I would just start over but my mothers are bare now. I already took all the cuttings I could from them.
 
Air...here's a couple things that will help.

1. Take those extra RW cubes out. RW cubes will just get nasty if you leave them wet.

2. Put a couple of pencils or sticks between the mat and the tray.

3. You've got WAY to much light. None of my clones have a light directly over them. They only get ambient light from other parts of the room.

Also, did you pH your RW cubes before using?
 
HashAssassin said:
Air...here's a couple things that will help.

1. Take those extra RW cubes out. RW cubes will just get nasty if you leave them wet.

2. Put a couple of pencils or sticks between the mat and the tray.

3. You've got WAY to much light. None of my clones have a light directly over them. They only get ambient light from other parts of the room.

Also, did you pH your RW cubes before using?
Click to expand...

Thanks, Hash. If I were to just get a cheap lamp for the clones, how many cfl watts would you guess I would need? I see what you're saying about the extra RW but I actually never let that get wet. I thought it would be good to have in for insulation b/c of the heat pad. I'm not sure what you mean about the ph. I adjusted the ph of the water in the tray under the cubes to abt 6, but I didn't really get why Cervantes was suggesting that, to be honest. I thought rockwool was already about 5.5 ph and that was a good ph for cuttings. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm obviously having issues. Thanks for taking the time to help out.
 
RW is actually very acidic. That's why your clones turned black. You need to soak them in pH'ed (5.8) water overnight then wring them out before using. There shouldn't be any water in the tray as the rock wool will wick it up. Don't mist your clones just the inside of the dome. For the lamp I would use the smallest wattage available. Make sure to keep it a couple feet away.
 
The mothers had gnats so I cleaned my room thoroughly with bleach solution when I got them out of there and submerged the clones in neem to make sure they didn't bring anything back in. Cervantes recommends it as a precaution every time you bring new plants into your room. I didn't listen to his recommendation on sterilizing my soil and I ended up with the gnat infestation from hell for two cycles. So now I do exactly what he says when it comes to prevention.
 
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