Getting cuttings ready for NFT

Hi there,

I have a setup with a 2.2m x 1.3m flowering room with 4 x 1.2m x 0.5m NFT trays, a 1.2m x 0.8m mother plant room with 4 autopots, and a small clone box. In the flowering room I have 2 x 600W HPS air-cooled lights on 12-12. The mother plant room has 1 x 250W MH on 24/7 (I think I may need to upgrade to 400w), and the clone box has a 98W T5 flouro. All rooms have thermostatically controlled extractor fans.

Cuttings go into 100mm rockwool cubes, then into the clone box for a week or so before transferring to the flowering room. Before transferring the cuttings to the NFT tanks, the root system needs to be well developed or they will struggle to get oxygen when the NFT tray is saturated with nutrient solution.

I've been struggling to get them to develop a good enough root system beyond the rockwool cube. The roots pop out and look really healthy, but after that they just begin to die back through lack of water / moisture. If I keep putting water in the tray the rockwool cubes become completely saturated and would starve the plant of oxygen.

So my question is, what system do you use to get cuttings to develop a strong enough root system before transferring to an NFT tray?

Any help would be much appreciated!

P.S. I want to give a BIG thanks to all the people who share their knowledge on this site

I should note that the clone box is the only place where watering is not automated, so it has been kind of hit and miss with keeping the moisture levels correct in there

It's my understanding aeroponics is the way to go for cloning. And this is coming from a DWC guy..

Hey Maya, What I do immediately after transplanting small root riot cubes into 4" rockwool cubes is to stand them side by side in a heated propagator base (not too warm!) on top of some clay pebbles or perlite soaked in very very weak nutrient solution, roots will appear in abundance if done right and then you can load em onto the NFT table.

Hi NFTfan,

That sounds like an excellent idea! I was thinking of putting them on a cage in the heated propagator tray, but pebbles sounds like a much better idea.

P.S. Do you run your pump on constant, or at intervals (i.e. 15 on 45 off)?

Thanks again!

Yeh m8 the pebbles will keep the roots moist and they will easily seperate from them when they have enough root mass to transplant to the NFT table. I tried using perlite once and wont again as its very alkaline and also its a bugger getting the stuff off the bottom of the cubes without damaging the roots.