How do you keep clones fromm yellowing?

My clones keep yellowing and experience necrosis. Any thoughts or ideas to prevent this? I use 2 inch rockwool with cloning solution under 24 hrs t5.

I seem to do better with Jiffy's. Not the ones you buy in a bag at the hydro shop. Home depot has Jiffy discs. They enlarge when you soak them. They are exactly the diameter of a Rockwool hole. Here is a pic of my buddies veg/cloning set up. Look at how much nicer his Jiffy's look than his RW clones. He's very talented too. But his RW clones are not nearly as nice as is Jiffy's.

But he does fine in RW too. Check out the stalks.

i used to have this issue of yellowing clones, it often was a race, between the roots developing and the leaves falling off. i have 40ppm tap water, all i do is add 150-200ppm of cal-mag and thats it, or thrivealive b-1. many people often say nutrients are not needed for clone stage, but just to give the plant a mild nitrogen supplement here will do wonders, they cutting takes up water why wouldnt it take up a bit of N? i never lose clones but now my cuts stay green for weeks and when fully rooted are ready to hit the ground running

thats how you know dubs is a pro, is that perlite under those RW cubes? this is very good and when your cuts root and say your room isnt ready to take them yet you can keep them there for a while and not have to worry about brown/dead roots, plus its so much easier to water. that perlite will allow nice roots to grow in a well aerated substrate, if kept too long you will have to cut the roots out, but i kept cuts in a tray like that for over a month!

Cool I also adjusted my ph to 5.5 on the tap water I am using so do you just add thrivealive or cal mag to the water you soak the rockwool in?

Grownganic said:

My clones keep yellowing and experience necrosis. Any thoughts or ideas to prevent this? I use 2 inch rockwool with cloning solution under 24 hrs t5.

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Sounds like you are probably over-watering. Rockwool has very poor air porosity. 10% of the rw is air when saturated. Thats not enough for the roots. The root hairs start to die, uptake of water and nutrients is stalled out. Once they develop a large enough root system, they can absorb the water quick enough not to suffocate.

DubsFan said:

I seem to do better with Jiffy's. Not the ones you buy in a bag at the hydro shop. Home depot has Jiffy discs. They enlarge when you soak them. They are exactly the diameter of a Rockwool hole. Here is a pic of my buddies veg/cloning set up. Look at how much nicer his Jiffy's look than his RW clones. He's very talented too. But his RW clones are not nearly as nice as is Jiffy's.

But he does fine in RW too. Check out the stalks.

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Jiffy plugs have more air porosity than rockwool, which explains the marked difference. I suspect your friend is over-watering them just like OP. This seems to be pretty common with rockwool. Rockwool=water less. It will hold just as much water as peat, but half as much air, so you really have to be careful with the watering when they have small root systems.

Will you do me a favor and ask your friend if he has roots growing from above the medium in the Jiffy plugs like he does the RW?

i agree totally with Mr coulier, RW holds onto water big time, i usually soak with 3ml/qt of thrive alive its a 1-1-1 formula so theres some minor nutrition, as i pull the cubes out of the water i squeeze them so i get that extra water out and it sucks oxygen into the cube, you can tell when you have overwatered the cube by picking it up and seeing how heavy it is, you can compare a fully soaked cube to a squeezed cube, it takes very little watering if you keep the dome on

I mix up 1qt with some advanced nute solution. Per qt it says to only add .25 tablespoon. That's almost nothing. RO ppm went from 8 to 18. So I doubled it and ppm only went up to 25 or so. THere is no N in this solution just vitamins. I added literally 3 drops of liquid veg nutes and ppm went to 35. I'm going to see how much better my clones look after this. I am also using the Jiffy's my buddy uses.

Yes, he was using perlite to suck away some moisture from the RW. He's back 100% to just Jiffy's. Plus those round ones fit perfectly in a RW block.

How he gets those fat stalks I will never know. He won't give me the good. I think I just need to mix up a strong solution. My stalks are getting fatter, just not that fat.

ya know, it looks like his cuts are cut perfectly that the last node is just at the top , so that outer skin on the stem is immersed into the puck, this allows him another route on the stem for uptake of water and another spot on the stem for roots. on clones that are notoriously known for hard to root i scrape one side of the stem

I tend to rough up the bottom of the stem anyway. I always put a few slits up the stem after I cut the 45 as well.

DubsFan said:

I tend to rough up the bottom of the stem anyway. I always put a few slits up the stem after I cut the 45 as well.

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another great technique from Dubs the pro. sometimes you ever ntice a cutting that goes limp from it not getting water? sometimes we get air pockets at the point of the cut thus blocking water, i split tips when using aero cloners.

I think it could be overwatering but so far so good since adjusting my ph to 5.5 my tap water was over 7! However I do want to keep cloning in rockwool because it can be used in either soil or hydro applications...wonder how much should I let the rockwool dry before watering again...

let it dry to the point that it is very light but the clones themselves arent droopy, its a fine line but you will get the feel of it. for sufficiently watering RW like a teaspoon should be good, i used to give a few pumps from a spray bottle each, but i believe Al b fuct said something like a few ML

DubsFan said:

I mix up 1qt with some advanced nute solution. Per qt it says to only add .25 tablespoon. That's almost nothing. RO ppm went from 8 to 18. So I doubled it and ppm only went up to 25 or so. THere is no N in this solution just vitamins. I added literally 3 drops of liquid veg nutes and ppm went to 35. I'm going to see how much better my clones look after this. I am also using the Jiffy's my buddy uses.

Yes, he was using perlite to suck away some moisture from the RW. He's back 100% to just Jiffy's. Plus those round ones fit perfectly in a RW block.

How he gets those fat stalks I will never know. He won't give me the good. I think I just need to mix up a strong solution. My stalks are getting fatter, just not that fat.

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I wasn't asking about fat stems. I was wondering if its possible the rockwool clones are growing adventitious roots in an attempt to get more air since they were suffocating under excess water. If the Jiffy clones didn't develop the same roots above the puck, then that would help explain those extra roots above the soil.