Please excuse the thread being in the wrong forum. I speak only english and have a hard time telling if I am in the right place. Thanks

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Unlike every other cloning method, water cloning requires no rooting hormone, humidity dome, ph check or specific kind of water to make it work. The cuttings snipped end is inserted in water and simply continues on as if nothing had happened, transpiring moisture through its leaves, keeping water pressure up the proper way, from stem to leaves, as oposed to artificial room humidity. Ph and water quality are similarly non issues because there is no root system to be affected by either factor.

Most cloning methods demand low light levels to keep your cutting in stasis. Water cloning is especially susceptible to light degradation. Excessive light will force any cutting to photosynthesize. Since the plant has no roots to support the growth this light tries to force, it will do what plants always do and begin draining the sugars stored in the leaves for food. The leaves will yellow and shrivel and eventually fall off the plant. When the leaves are all gone its unlikely your clone will survive. This response can also be seen in nutrient deficiencies and other problems with the plants medium and explains most yellowing seen in grow rooms today. Keeping light levels low and the plant in actual stasis will allow it to grow roots and keep almost all it's leaves green and healthy all the way to transplant. The very health of a fully green plant will somewhat mitigate the speed advantage other cloning methods have that end up with yellowed and withered leaves upon rooting. They still have to grow back those leaves that water cloning keeps.

The first picture is a clone I kept in the water for eight weeks. It continued to grow roots until I removed and planted it

The last picture is my mother room and two generations of clones rooting

When a cutting begins developing roots in water, small white nubs will begin growing off the bare stem. These will elongate into recognizable roots and continue developing in the water for nearly as long as you leave them exposed. The cutting is able to be transplanted at any time these get more than ½” long or so. The root system can also be left alone to get huge, much bigger than the cutting itself, so big I feared the wet weight of it would rip it loose from the stem. It’s a good idea to change the water every few days or so and to keep temps above 70, but the cuts will almost always root if this maintenance is observed or not.

Transitioning the plants to soil is as simple as digging a hole big enough to hold what you’re planting and gently reburying the roots until the stem is firmly set. Feed them a ½ strength balanced fertilizer making sure to saturate the soil. The wetter it is the easier it will be on roots only used to being in water. Move the clones back under the light they were rooted under for a couple of days and then you can gradually introduce them to vegetative lighting.

Superthrive will help the transition from water to soil as well. Water cloning is ideal for hydroponic setups

Some of the uses and benefits I have found for water cloning include:

-Propagation

-Keeping a certain line of genetics in stasis, be it for room cleaning, infestation, breeding or going on vacation. Since the water does not have not have be changed, figure out a way to keep the stems exposed to water for the duration of your trip and go.

-Collecting male pollen. Remove a branch from a male with un-dropped flowers and water cloning it will keep it healthy until it does drop its pollen onto a collection surface

-Sexing plants from seed. A cutting from an unsexed plant will show flower in a week or so if put in a room with 12/12 lighting. No maintenance required, so they can just sit in your flower room using ambient light

-Taking cuttings that are extremely large. You have seen rooted clones 12” tall and 8”broad. No other cloning method can do this.

-Cloning hard to propagate strains

Some of the drawbacks and negatives of water cloning are:

-Inconsistent rooting speed. Few cuttings show roots on the same day unless you have a lot of them. I usually take twice as many as I need to ensure I get all the individual plants for my goals at around the same time.

-Excessive time for roots to develop compared to methods using accelerants. 14 days for roots to show is not unusual.

-A transition period other methods don’t require.

Water cloning is tried and true, 100% effective if you give the cutting enough time to root. I’ve thrown some out, but they were, in general, still green and healthy looking when they hit the recycle pile. Better yet, it’s a pure method, with one less foreign substance being used to grow your plants. In four years of cloning this way, I have tried nearly everything you can think of related to cannabis to speed rooting, and nothing has any effect except the time it takes to grow. I don’t try anymore because the water and the method are pure as they are.

At one point last year, I went on vacation for 15 days. Water cloning helped keep my room alive for my return.

In the second pic, we have a round piece of polypropylene, basically styrofoam the same stuff found in most packing material, cut to fit inside a pot with straight sides for several verticle inches. The pot is filled with water, and the cuttings are inserted through the foam. The foam is settled on the waters surface and that's basically it. As the water evaporates and the cuttings suck out the water, the foam will drop evenly down, keeping all it's stems submerged.

I returned 15 days later and found all cuttings with either well developed roots or at least nubs.

Some examples in the last two pics.

Don't pull the clones out of the foam, break it apart to remove them. Roots could rip off when going back through the small hole.

Naposledy upravil smokinrav 17-04-2005 v 11:42 AM

At one point, I grew out some Sweet Cindy, a SweetTooth x Cinderella99. It auto flowered on me. That was my first I had ever seen and I've never seen anything like it (from what I later learned, this trait is common in the ST). Male and female showed at 14 days from seed. Males were dropping pollen at roughly 21 days. Females showed alternate branching at the same time the male pollen was dropping. I had intended to breed them, and the males would pollenate both it's own females and a Rosetta Stone I had been growing for years, but this was looking less likely as pollen filled my veg area.








The easiest solution was to collect the stuff, and since I had been continuing plants for so long with water cloning, I decided to try and stick several entire male branches in water, just before they released most of they're load.








It worked better than I could have possibly expected. The males were long enough that they hung over a glass on an angle enough to keep the droppings on the (freshly cleaned) glass and out of the water. Over the couse of five days, they left at least a full gram on the glass, along with the remains of male flower petals(?)






















Eventually, I removed the petals and had a lot of pure pollen. I mixed it up at a 1:10 pollen to flour ratio and have stored it in the fridge ever since.











Pollen is mixed with plain kitchen flour to dilute the grains and make it last longer. Flour is also a natural dessicant and will keep excess moisture away from the grains during storage.

Naposledy upravil smokinrav 17-04-2005 v 10:59 AM