Hydroponic Supplies Required for Cloning Plants

Cloning plants is one of the most important and most delicate procedures in the field of hydroponics. If you don't have the right tools, you can almost guarantee that you will find that your clones fail over and over again. But if you are armed with the correct hydroponics supplies, you will find it much easier to make your clones successful.

If you have a tough time cloning, make certain you have the right hydroponic supplies, available. Detailed below are some essential supplies for cloning plants.

Razor Blade - You can't ignore the humble razor blade for making cuttings. When you make your cutting, you want to make sure that the cut heals very quickly and does as little damage as possible. If you try cutting with a dull blade, you will risk having to use a bit more muscle to make the cut, which might damage the stem, which will of course decrease the odds of it successfully rooting. So you should always have on hand a set of new, sharp razor blades. The few dollars that you can save by using the same dull blades over and over again will have profoundly negative impact on your cloning success rate.

Rooting Gel - One of the most important items you should have for cloning is a good rooting gel. This is a substance that uses a bunch of hormones and vitamins to help speed up the rooting process, and therefore increase the odds of a successful cloning. When combined with rockwool cloning cubes, rooting gel can be an incredibly powerful way to ensure faster, stronger roots on your cut stems.
The best way to use cloning gel is by coating a thin film of the substance around the bottom section of the stem. If you coat it too heavily, it might cut off the stems' supply of oxygen and actually hurt the stems chances of rooting successfully.

B Vitamin Supplement - Being cut off from your primary source of nourishment and moisture and transplanted into a new medium is very traumatic for stems. This stress can actually hinder normal plant function and prevent it from being able to soak up the nutrients from the new medium. As you can imagine, this cuts down on the odds of a successful cloning significantly. A good B vitamin supplement can counteract this by giving your plants the B vitamins that it needs in order to grow healthy and strong.

Heating Pad - The success of your cloning all depends upon how fast you can get your cuttings to root. The faster they root, the sooner that they can start soaking up nutrients and the greater the odds of their survival. But this can be challenging if your cuttings are a little too cold. This is why one of the most important hydroponic supplies that you can purchase is the simple heating pad. By just placing a small heating pad under your cloning tray, you can speed up the rooting process, which in turn can increase the odds of your clones surviving and thriving.

Plants commonly clone themselves in nature through a variety of methods. But this fact does not make cloning any easier for the average hydroponic grower. If you do not pay very special attention to all the factors that go into cloning, the best cloning gel in the world is not going to prevent your cuttings from turning into useless dead twigs sticking out of your medium.clones