I messed around and cloned - I think

[PopeyeSpinach]

This is my first anything grow, about 10 days ago i topped my plants and had no intention of cloning the tops. Well i tossed em in the trash and after about 20 minutes i felt wasteful so i figured i would give em a chance.

I set em in water bottle caps w water for a couple days, then for some reason decided to put em in soil in some sections of egg carton i cut out. Ive been keeping them moist every few hours w just a few drops of water. Then give about 4 small bottle caps full of water each morning. They seem to be still going, and one started perking its leaves up today.

So now my question is what do i do with em? Thats a small container and i dont know what kind of time frame i have until i need to pot them in something bigger? They seem too fragile now.

My other Q is how long can i keep them alive under a 13w cfl? My grow cabinet is switching to 12 12 in a week.

Would they stay alive and just have slow growth under this light? Or do i need to make a spot to keep clones for a longer period of time?

Any other suggestions appreciated, or are they gonna die?....oh the soil is FF HF, i really expect these to be dead by now and was gonna try water bottle clones later after sexing.

 

[PopeyeSpinach]

So 6 more days, the one closest to the camera may be dead or almost dead.

The one furthest is the only one i care about, but i dont think its dead. But its not doing anything, and it doesnt lok dead to me. Im not watering dead tops am I ?! Lol

Maybe its weak light? Were at 16 days now and it may have grown a micro amount. Just dont know if im cloning them, or just keeping them alive somehow.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Doesn't take much to clone a cannabis plant. Might try giving your cuttings a good drink when they start to wilt instead of trying to prevent the condition by giving just a little water every little bit - being that the objective is to encourage the things to send out roots, lol, not to see how long they can stay alive before rotting.

Doesn't take much to keep a cloned cannabis plant alive, either. Yes, one little CFL will work, with the plant in a little cup of soil. I kept three different strains alive for a while - just over a year - in similar conditions. Parked them on top of the medicine cabinet, directly below an old light fixture that had two low-wattage CFLs in it. I watered them once in a while and fed them... well... surely a few times, at least.

They grew little, and slowly. Almost no real branching. Hardly any smell. Not quite in stasis - but nearly so. I did take the occasional cutting from them, but that wasn't my objective. Adding more of... pretty much everything would have made a difference. But then I couldn't have kept three different strains alive for a year in a space that was a few inches deep and less than two feet wide.

I eventually decided they had been tortured enough. I placed them outside, in a natural environment. They were eaten almost immediately .

 

[PopeyeSpinach]

Ok, i wasnt sure....ill water em less, i expected more aftet 16 days, but i dunno what im doing. I didnt even cut the stem at a 45°

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm not necessarily saying that you should water them less - your plants and medium will decide how much water is needed. But try watering them less often. IOW, give things a good soaking and then let them dry out somewhat before watering again. Don't let them go too dry, too long. As you are aware, they'll have very little root structure at this point (and have basically no energy reserves)... so you don't want to wait very long after seeing them start to droop to do something about it. But it's okay to wait until they appear to be thirsty before giving them that drink.

You could, I suppose, experiment by watering at different rates. The few you might lose or discard in the future for being less than optimum will still give you knowledge that will be of benefit in the future.

I used to bounce back and forth between putting a lot of effort into cloning (Olivia's Cloning Gel, Olivia's Cloning Solution to feed/water, aeration devices, et cetera) and simply sticking cuttings into a glass of water and setting it on a windowsill like people have been doing (mostly with other types of plants, lol) for generations. Most recently I've just been cutting them, letting the cuttings wilt, and then sticking them into a pre-made hole in a cup of soil (+perlite). I can get lazy that way, but occasionally end up with skinny plants growing in 6-ounce foam coffee cups... that are three to four+ feet tall :rolleyes3 before I get a wild hair and stick it somewhere (if you live in my town, you may have found one waiting patiently to be adopted, beside your car door, when you finished your shopping, lofl) . But if you don't get too lazy, you can move them to bigger pots way before then. I was just screwing around trying to see how many plants I could anonymously give away before seeing a report about it on the local news. <SCRATCHES HEAD> But people don't seem to be calling their local news about it. It could turn out to be an interesting year around here, methinks....

 

[PopeyeSpinach]

Im pickin up what your puttin down (no pun intended lol), i think ill reduce the watering to morning and maybe evening. What ive been doing is watching the sides of the egg crate when i water, and when it shows signs of being wet i stop. I would say about 1 tablespoon is what it takes, I use small water bottle caps full of water x4 morning and night. BUT i have been putting 1-2 caps full every 3-4 hours throughout the day. So that part i will cut out and see how they do. Thanks you!! Wish you lived in my town id tell you a great dead end road you could leave them on :-D

 

[TorturedSoul]

Well... You don't really have any medium there, lol. So you're going to have to water more often than you would if you had used - for example - a ½-liter water bottle for your container. But still, the idea remains. Water your medium thoroughly, then allow it to dry before watering again. And not completely dry, but dry. IOW, if you allow soil to dry out more or less completely, when you next attempt to water it, even a small amount of water will run right out the drainage hole(s) in the bottom of the container. But if the soil is, instead, err... mostly dry (enough that, with a reasonable sized container (lol), you could pick it up and think, "Yep, this is light; it needs to be watered."), when you water the container the soil is capable of actually absorbing the water you are pouring in. Rinse, lather, repeat.

That's my suggestion when growing in soil and (in general) when attempting to root cuttings. If growing in coco, I'd probably not allow my medium to get quite that dry. Something like DWC hydroponics is a different critter, where the grower adds as much DO (dissolved oxygen) to the reservoir that the roots thrive in a submerged environment.

Weigh (with your hand) one of those little egg cutouts when it is full of your soil mix that is pretty wet. Do the same with one that is full of fairly dry soil mix. That'll help you tell when one of your little cuttings' containers is getting dry. Again, "dry" in this case does not mean "powdery dust."