How to Clone Plants in Hydroponics

Plant cloning may sound like a terribly daunting task, but it’s actually a very simple technique that has been around for centuries. You may know it by its less scientifically impressive sounding name of taking cuttings. Cloning is easy to do, producing several plants with the exact same genetic makeup as the mother plant.

When cloning, or taking cuttings from a plant, it should go without saying that you should first make sure the mother plant is healthy, as any diseases or infestations on the source plant will likely be passed to the cuttings and thus the new plants. To start with, you will want to leach as much nitrogen from the mother plant as you can, by watering it with highly pH adjusted water (and no fertilizer). This helps the new plants to put out roots in search of that nitrogen.

Next, you will need to choose a growing medium. Many people use Rapid Rooters, Oasis foam or Rockwool. You can also fill a growing cup with standard loose growing medium, a perlite, and vermiculite mix or coconut fiber. Make sure your growing cups have holes cut in the bottom for drainage. Don’t use peat or normal soil as these hold too much moisture and can rot stems before they start to put out roots. Use pH balanced water to soak the growing medium before you get started. Distilled water works best but any quality source will do. Make holes in your growing medium roughly the same size as the stems of your cuttings. You do not want to have to shove your cuttings into the soil or medium.

You’re not quite ready to start yet, you still need to do some prep work. First, you’re going to need to sterilize everything with rubbing alcohol, from your hands to your cutting implements to your cutting block. This is critical, as cuttings are extremely susceptible to diseases and fungus until they put out roots. Also, sterilize a cup and fill it with rooting solution. You will need this in a bit.

When choosing your cuttings be sure to cut stems with healthy leaves and no sign of disease or fungus. Stems should be about 5 inches long and make sure none of them show any sign of flowering. Flowers pull too much from the plant and will strangle the rooting process.

Ok, now you can get started. Use a razorblade to cut your clones from the main plant at roughly a 45-degree angle, leaving about 5 inches of stem. Remove any low hanging leaves that would be under the growing medium. The key here is to work quickly and get the cutting into the cup of rooting solution as soon as possible before the newly cut stem has a chance to interact with the air and close up. You have about ten seconds at most before this happens.

Let your cuttings soak in your hormone solution for about a minute. If you are using gel, just dip the cutting in the gel to seal the end. Then stick the cutting into the hole in your growing medium, gently packing the medium up around the cutting.

Place the cuttings under a grow light and mist with distilled water. Water them about twice a day, either from above or by soaking the growing trays with holes in the bottom in another set of trays without holes, filled with water for about 30 seconds. When your clones have established a root system, you are ready to transfer them to a hydroponic system.

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