Skullman420
Well-Known Member
part of your post described what's called "air-layering" which is a great way to get rooted clones without any fuzz whatsoever. The mother feed the branch and you just cut it when it has roots. Brilliant stuff. I have a blog-post about it if anyone is interested - link in my signature 
And indeed - The plants doesn't need to have the perfect conditions I give them. but it doesn't hurt either. At least they'll survive in there for months while I figure out what madness to do with them
And indeed - The plants doesn't need to have the perfect conditions I give them. but it doesn't hurt either. At least they'll survive in there for months while I figure out what madness to do with them
In regards to taking a cutting from a cannabis plant and rooting it... If one sits down and thinks about it, he/she will see that - under good environmental conditions - it's hard not to root a cutting.
If you've ever had a cannabis plant growing outdoors, or even in a really large pot, and seen a branch hang so far down that it is literally on the ground... Wait too long and you might end up with roots there, lol. Throw a little dirt over that branch and you almost certainly will. It's not an inanimate object such as a door or a thick plank - IT'S ALIVE, ha ha.
If the mother is properly hydrated (has been watered properly), has been given an adequate amount of nitrogen, and is otherwise healthy... If you're not doing this in desert-like conditions where the relative humidity is in single-digits, if you're not in the habit of smoking around your plants and, therefore, clogging up the stomata on the undersides of the leaves, if it is not sweltering hot or shivering cold, if you use a good sharp sterile razor blade to make your cuts instead of a pair of scissors (which tend to pinch the cuts)... If you don't buy into the advice for hacking most of the leaves off and cutting away parts of the remainder, or that you "need" to use a humidity dome (which sort of fights the plant's natural behavior and responses)... Then you ought to be able to root a cutting.
You can root a cutting that you cut and then forgot about until it looks like a wet green noodle. You can take a bunch of cuttings, hear the doorbell, panic, wrap the entire two dozen in paper towels and throw them into the refrigerator until your company leaves, several hours later... and root them anyway. For that matter, you can start to give a malnourished, WAY too tall clone that has been living months in a coffee cup away and think, "Wait, that's my last one - I better chop off a piece," and come back a couple hours later, see that you forgot all about it, scrape up the mixture of soil, perlite, and whatever else happens to be on the table, pour it into a water bottle, make a hole (because a green wet noodle is obviously incapable of being pushed into the soil, lol), recut the end of the stem at a good angle, maybe make a cut up - to split the bottom of the stem a little - and scrape along the bottom half inch or so of the stem (not really necessary, but...), carefully drop the stem in, gently press the soil/etc. down around the stem so that there are no large air spaces and you have good soil-to-plant contact, water it in well, check on it the next day...
...and it'll almost always be standing proud, as if it's shouting, "Hi, look at me! Gee, that's a pretty light up there, I think I'm going to head that way. BtW, you don't have a cat, do you? Because I'm sort of allergic and break out in a puddle of complete destruction and cat vomit. But if you don't have a cat, I'm golden. Next stop, the sky!"
My source for the above? Personal experience, lol. I'm somewhat lazy - and a whole lot forgetful. I once sat on the couch and discovered a cutting between the cushion and the arm of the couch. WHOOPS. Rooted it. It was wilted - but it wasn't dead.
Actually, these days, I prefer to let my cuttings wilt a little bit before planting them. Why? Because it becomes so obvious that a cutting is going to make it when it goes from a wilted mess to "standing up" and looking healthy in just a couple of hours. That is a sign that the stem is taking up moisture. Not much, of course - after all, a cut stem-end is NOT a root system. But it doesn't need an ocean, it just needs a little, along with the ability to get a little more when needed. This, combined with the energy and nutritional reserves contained in the leaves that I did NOT cut away, provides the resources needed to grow roots. Ensuring that the cutting has access to just enough moisture - and from the CORRECT end of the plant :rolleyes3 - actively encourages the thing to produce roots quicker. Keep pouring in the water, cover the container so that the humidity level builds and builds and builds, and... Well, stick a fat kid in a recliner and keep throwing candy & soda pop at him and see how often he gets off his fat arse and actually goes looking for food/drink, lol. Me, I don't want a well-watered but rootless cutting - I want a rooted clone.
It aint rocket science. People have been doing it for thousands of years, methinks. Back when "high-tech" was thinking about, you know, maybe we ought to haul that bloated sheep carcass out of the town well, do you suppose that might be why half the populace has died this week, lol? So common sense tells you that there can't be that much required to do this thing.
There are things that help - antifungal type agents one can apply to the stem end, for example. There are things that may speed rooting - the aeroponic cloner, or something like a DWC setup (with mad levels of dissolved oxygen in the solution, mad!) with a floating platform able to take dozens of cuttings. But it's not necessary. All that is necessary is the cutting, something to stick it in, a good clean interface (the stem-end), a little light, and a little water.
Cannabis isn't a difficult to clone species. Even the strains that seem to take a little longer just... take a little longer, lofl. If it was a species that was known to be difficult to root, I'd hunt up a thread where I discussed making a cut around a stem, making another cut the same way about an inch lower, making a vertical cut to join the two - all those cuts through only the first layer of plant, BtW - then peeling the one-inch section away, packing the resulting wound with moss or something similar, adding a hint of water, wrapping the mess with something, and continuing to care for the mother as per normal for a couple weeks, then carefully unwrapping the wound site - and seeing ROOTS, lol, at which point you can cut off your brand new, fully-rooted clone (which constantly received all the water/nutrients it needed, from its mother, just like a gestating baby does right up until you chop the umbilical cord off). That's how you clone "difficult to clone" plant species. Trees, even. And, yes, it works with cannabis. It's like using a howitzer to kill a fly, lmao, but it works fine.
I'm just jabbering, lol. It was either that or go poop, and I felt the need to run my (virtual) mouth more than I felt any other need. Now, however, I can feel my priorities... shifting. Gotta... run!
(A very quick) EDIT: I do not wish to give offense, but feel that this must be stated: I think that one reason why some people have trouble with this stuff is the same reason why newbies collectively manage to kill so many plants even though cannabis has been growing wild - often in deplorable conditions - for countless thousands of years. They "care" them to death, lol. How well do you think your wife would like giving birth if you were pestering her all the way through labor? Yeah, better wear your catcher's mask and cup for that :rolleyes3 . There's a reason why, if someone asks why their plants are drooping and I reply, "They're under-watered," I then add, "Wait, are you a NEW grower? In that case, they're probably over-watered." Because the new grower would never forget to water. He's in there every day, sometimes many times per day, just looking for something to do (here's a suggestion, bring your laptop and just sit there with your plants, reading here at the forum). He's thinking, IDK, "It's been TWO HOURS and I haven't bothered to tend to these plants once! I know, I bet they're thirsty. Why, I've had two glasses of iced tea and I could use another. I'll just give them a little drink, shall I?" So my vote is "take the cutting, stick the cutting, water the cutting, and leave the cutting alone!" (Water when it droops again - not before.)
