Propagate Your Plants Like a Pro With These Tips and Tricks

Propagate Your Plants Like a Pro With These Tips and Tricks

One of the easiest ways to grow new plants in hydroponics is through propagation, or cloning a plant with cuttings. Seeds are notoriously slow to grow, but a plant cutting will take root much faster and become a perfect clone of a plant that you’ve already grown. Cuttings also don’t require you to start them in soil and transfer them to your hydroponic growing medium, which reduces the chance of transferring pests or diseases to your system. Before you begin your cloning project, consider these tips and tricks to propagate your plants like a pro!

Plant More Cuttings Than You Want

As with any garden, it’s common for a few cuttings to fail to grow or take root. Many times, you can’t control whether a cutting fails or succeeds—especially if the others seem to do well in the environment you provided them. Make up for the propagation failures by planting more cuttings than you need in your garden. It’s easier to slim down on plants when you have too many than to troubleshoot a troublesome shoot.

Keep Humidity High

Cuttings love high humidity. Without high humidity, water will escape through the leaves, and the cuttings won’t spend energy on growing their roots. In a humid climate, the leaves retain water, and the plants focus on extending their root system.

Focus on keeping the humidity between 70 and 75 percent. You can achieve this by closing vents in your grow room or by using a seed and cutting incubator for a simple solution.

Healthy roots lead to a successful adult plant. Remember: only plant the cuttings in a full hydroponic system once you see a developed root system poking out from the cutting plug.

Don’t Plant Cuttings Too Deep

When you plant cuttings too deep in an incubation plug, you’re limiting the space that the plants have to stretch their roots out. This may lead you to plant them in their final home too early or can cause the plant to have underdeveloped roots. If you’re using starter plugs, gently push the cuttings into the existing hole far enough for a secure fit, but not far enough to reach the bottom—or worse, stick out of the bottom.

With the right care and hydroponic plant propagation supplies, you’ll propagate your plants like a pro with these tips and tricks. If you want to simplify your plant cloning process, try out FloraFlex’s incubator system and starter plugs to give your cuttings a happy home to begin their new lives.