Propagating Cannabis: Round Two, The DIY Cloning Rig

Two weeks ago I shared the process of taking cuttings from my (currently) growing crop of cannabis.

When you are successful at getting these cuttings to grow roots of their own, you’ll have an exact duplicate of the plants that the cuttings were taken from.

In cannabis propagation, the plants that you take your cuttings from are often referred to as Mothers and the cuttings (once rooted) are called Clones.

I attempted to root 36 cuttings (2 weeks ago) in a rock wool and soil combination.

In the photo (below) you can see what the cuttings looked like in their nursery as I tried to create the perfect conditions for them to grow roots.

After 2 weeks, I had successfully killed 2 thirds of them and was left with 12 stragglers.

Those 12 do have roots so, if any of them survive, they’ll be tough plants.

(That’s me being an optimistic gardener, in case you failed to notice.)

All Is Not Lost

Those of you who know me, will know that I usually have a contingency or back up plan wedged up my sleeve. Plan B involved @knarly327’s engineering skills.

(Plan B is usually @knarly327 and when I say “we” that really translates to him, thinking and doing while I extract the information out of his head, take photos and put words to the design of a prototype that we are more than happy to open source on Steemit’s blockchain.)

Let me show you, so you can see what I see.

We started with a 10 gallon rectangular plastic tote.

The dimensions of which are 25.05 in x 17.5 in x 7.73 in. (Or, for those in metric 63.62 cm x 44.45 cm x 19.63 cm)

We marked it at 20 litres (or 5.28 gallons) and filled it with water.

Then we added 4 (12 inch) bubblers that we purchased at a pet store. They are commonly used to aerate the water in fish aquariums.

You’ll also notice in the photo (above and below) that we’ve latched the lid (that came with the tote, by using the existing tote latching mechanisms) to the top of the tote.

We also cut the tote lid to produce a rectangular opening that fits a 50 count sprouting tray.

In the photo (above) you can see the bubblers in action. They are being supplied with air from a 7 watt aquarium air pump which is constantly running.

In the photo (above) you can see the black plastic sprouting tray. This one will hold 50 cuttings. We bought the tote, (sized) to accommodate this specific sprouting tray.

In effect you can make your own cloning rig to accommodate the number of cuttings that your garden will accommodate. ( You can use whatever size of sprouting tray you need. Smaller or larger.)

You’ll also notice (in the photo above) that holes were drilled into the lid. The size of the drill-bit used was just a little bit bigger than the vinyl tubing that is supplying air from the pump to each of the bubblers. The tubing was also purchased in the aquarium department of a pet store.

In the photo (above) you can see the underside of the plastic sprouting tray.

With the bubblers running there will be a constant supply of aerated water to the roots.

The last thing that we did was mark the lid with letters and numbers so that we could catalog each of cuttings. This let us record what strain of cannabis, each of the cuttings are.

Right now, we have manually recorded this information but I know that large scale growers could be successfully using the capabilities of a blockchain to keep track of their plant inventory.

All in all, this rig prototype cost just over $100 CAD to manufacture.

I welcome your comments and I invite you to follow me on my journey... I think failure is just another opportunity to change what you are doing. ;)

In my next post, I’ll demonstrate how we loaded this new Cloning Rig with its cuttings. (We made a few changes there, too.)

~ Rebecca
PS: Check out the Smoke Network
https://smoke.network
https://smoke.io