Cloning Methods and steps on a large scale.... Whats yours?

Hi
So the title says it all…

Looking for some advice on how people take cuttings.
What they use for a rooting harmone if anything.

Any special techniques or steps etc.

Tell me your SOP

Thanks friends!

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Minions!

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What is large scale to you? Large scale to me is 3-4K plants per week and I wouldn’t use anything except tissue culture to fulfill that demand.

The biggest small scale grow I’ve done required 250 cuttings per week. I didn’t really understand tissue culture at that time, so everything was done from cuttings. I took cuttings from the two week vegged plants that were about to enter rotation in the flower rooms. Cuttings were dipped in powder rooting hormone and went into rockwool cubes. I can root 300 cuttings in a 2’x6’ footprint with leds. The entire process was done alone in 4 hours from start to finish with a 95% success rate. A heat mat is imperative if you have a timeline to follow.

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Tap h20
Ph to 6.0
Cycle timer for sprayers (3 on 3 off)
18/6
4k t8 bulbs
Air stone
Indolexxxx rooting powder

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I feel like most everybody does near the same thing. Heres a lil thing I do for cheaper clone trays and you can actually throw some big girls in there.

Totes > clone trays.

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That’s an awesome idea with the totes! I was wondering last night how often you guys change out the water in your cloner, and what do you add to the water (if anything) to help the clones root faster?

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I add a small amount of pool shock and 3 mil/g of agt-50 to my well water. In 2 weeks they are well rooted and ready for trans plant. If you want a rooting hormone get the cheep powder from home depot.

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I dont change cloner water any longer. I just top off as needed. An air stone is ideal to keep water from getting stinky. But I dont even use air stones any longer. I just put the air line in the water.

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We do 1600 every 10 days. Takes 6 hours with 3 people from soaking rockwool till done. It’s rockwool sheets soaked in veg water plus og biowar root and foliar. Custom clone gel I make in house, .4% IAA, .2%NAA. The shelf covers cut down on the man hours when hardening off, just unzip.

Some off the indoor guys down the road run a grow tent inside the veg room with humidifiers.

Edit: sorry for the crappy angle, the veg benches are only 40" away.

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I’ve done about 50,000 in the last two years. I think the secret is having two separate cloning zones. One with weaker lights for callus induction. Takes 3-6 days done right. Plugs have to dry for callus induction. Then wet the plugs and put them under strong lights at a lower humidity… push those roots out.

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clones

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Clones

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do you know about tissue culture?

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What size tent is that? Looks huge!

That’s a 10x20 tent
That thing on the ceiling is a fog manifold I made. That tent is kinda like a big dome.

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Large scale? We just mailed back 13k un-rooted cuttings from California to TN. My crew of 5 stuck them in 6 hrs. If you mean large scale like tens of thousands of plants per day then you have to consider production, you will not have time to manicure each cutting, or fill plug trays with pre formed plugs, or dip you cuttings in some kind of goop.
I recommend loose fill soil, run through a flat filler, then through a misting tunnel.
No rooting hormone, no domes, bottom heat and overhead mist.
Cuttings should be cut to the same length everytime, completely submerge cuttings in water for 2-5 minutes before sticking.
Do not waste your time triming off half the fan leaves of each cut. Take a perfect cut from your stock plant, this way no time is wasted and the cut is ready to stick pronto.
I agree with the importance of tissue culture but going from stage 3 to 4 is slow, the hardening off process is sometimes challenging. I always recommend procuring tissue culture starts for mother stock production, then utilize the clean mom’s for mass production. I have lots of varieties in TC now located in Ga and Ca.

TC2

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I think I hit the max of what I can reasonably do indoors. I was thinking. Loose fill, greenhouse, shade cloths, misters. If I could even semi automate a greenhouse to root clones it would be better than getting a bunch more of those tents.

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It’s not as complicated as you think, send me a message.

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Keep it simple. Unless you are taking more than 1000 cuttings per week, a simple procedure of soaking the rockwool cubes (or your preferred media) in a light nutrient solution pH’d to 5.8-6.0 range, plug your cuttings into the cubes arranged in a 50cell tray, place humidity dome over the cuttings.

A single technician should be capable of taking atleast 300 cuttings in an 8 hr shift without breaking their ass.

While you’re waiting for the clones to root, burp the domes for increasingly longer periods of time each day to help acclimate them to the outside environment. By day 10 you should be good to remove the dome entirely.

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