What is Plant Cloning and How Do I Do It in a Hydroponic System Cloner?

Well imagine one of these scenarios- you have a plant you really enjoy that you’d love to have more of like a rose, you have grown some really brilliant variety of tomato in your hydroponic garden and you want more of it, you have a herb you cook with frequently and need more of it or you simply just want to grow plants you as gifts for friends and family.  What do you do? You clone it in a hydroponic system.  In biological terms- participate in the process of developing similar producing populations of genetically identical individuals. Quite the mouthful?  Simply put – cloning is the process where you propagate or make copies of a whole plant from a piece of an existing plant.  This works really well in a hydroponic system.  You do this every time you take a cutting and place it in water – and as a fact plants propagate this way in nature rather easily- take strawberries and their runners as an example.

People with hydroponic systems use this method of increasing the number of plants they grow for a variety of reasons and use cloning systems to make this process easy and stress free.

Now for some details.  How do you do this to get ready for the hydroponic system?  Well let’s start off by looking at plant you are propagating.   What are you going to do to start the cloning process?

The “parent” plant should be at least 2 months and healthy.  To start a clone cut a short piece of a growing stem with a few branch points on it or what is called a terminal growing point. A terminal growing point is where a leaf is attached to a stem. Some people advocate taking the cutting first, then making a 45 degree cut under water ending at the terminal point.  Remove the lower leaves.Prepare you cloning chamber.

Now at this step there are a couple of avenues you can take based on the type of plant you are propagating. You will need different cloning powder/gel/liquid depending on what type of plant you are cloning and what methods you use. From what I have seen, the major differences are the concentration of hormone which promotes root growth and the method of cloning. Do not use an absorbent type of foam to hold the cuttings as this can and will promote disease and should be placed about 1/2″ deep in your growing medium in your hydroponic system.

For a hydroponic system, the best idea is to place the hormone directly into the cloner water as gels can and will wash off in most hydroponic system cloner with constant exposure.  Just be aware of the volume of hormone to water – don’t over do it.

You need adequate light for proper and quick growth rate and a well-ventilated, cool location. This is to be found in a hydroponic system cloner. The temperature should be around 21- 23OC (70 -75 OF). The base should be a little warmer, about 26-27 OC (about 80 OF), since bottom heat encourages root growth.  The humidity should be around 90% in the hydroponic system cloner.

When you are finished your current round of hydroponic system cloning, be sure to soak everything in a bleach solution and let sit for about 12 hours.  This is to allow any residual chlorine dissipate.

Hydroponic System Cloning is an easy process and a great way to get the most from your hydroponic system- just remember – if you can grow it – you can clone it.

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