plant cloning – GKVKs – Gardening Tips and Store

8 Natural Rooting Stimulants for Cloning Plants in Gardening

admin — Fri, 10 May 2019 14:33:11 +0000

In today’s post, we will look into 10 different natural rooting hormones or root stimulating substances that can be easily used for plant cloning – that’s multiplying plants from cuttings with great success rate! We will also show you how you can make the most powerful formula by mixing one or more of these substances.

In horticulture, Cloning means making duplicate plants out of branch or stem cuttings from a mother plant. It is a great way to multiply a plant, specially if it’s a rare variety or very precious to you or if you wanna gift some plants to your friends and neighbours.

The simplest way of cloning a plant is just pinching a small branch or stem cutting and inserting it into the soil. But, the success rate of this cutting is generally low. If you want to increase the success rate, then you need to follow certain simple rules to accelerate the root formation and increase the success rate of cloning.

Most plant cuttings will naturally produce their own rooting hormones after a short period of time. Actually, many plants can be easily cloned by simply placing the cutting in some clean water and following some simple rules. You can check a detailed article on the 10 Golden rules of cloning.

Rooting hormones can be natural or synthetic chemicals and contain Indole butyric acid (IBA) and naphthalene acetic acid (IBA). IBA is the natural plant auxin or hormone responsible for the stimulation or the formation of roots. If you are purchasing these commercial rooting hormone powders, make sure you check composition on the label to contain atleast one of these compounds.

Now lets list out the best 8 natural rooting hormones or agents that can be used to accelerate rooting in cuttings and increase the success rate of cloning.

8. Your Own Saliva: Not joking! Nothing advanced about this. Human or animal saliva is definitely an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal for plants. The main idea is to prevent the cutting from rot and stimulate the root formation. This very first step to prevent rot can be achieved by just dipping your cutting insertion end into saliva and then insert into the potting soil. This is definitely like Something is better than Nothing!

7. Apple Cider Vinegar: This is another proven natural rooting hormone stimulant. Add 5 drops in half a cup of water and mix well. Do not use more than this quantity, because it can have an opposite effect and may prevent rooting and also vinegar is a natural weed killer in strong concentrations.
Just dip the cutting insertion end into this cup and then insert into soil.

6. Cinnamon Powder: Cinnamon is an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent that will definitely double your cloning success rate. Make sure the cinnamon bark is finely powdered and just dip the cutting into this powder for about an inch and then insert into soil.

5. Willow Bark: The bark of willow tree contains two important compounds – salicin and Indole butyric acid. Salicin is chemically similar to aspirin (which is acetylsalicylic acid). And Indolebutyric acid (IBA) is a plant hormone that stimulates root growth as already discussed.

If you are lucky and have a willow tree around you, you can make a willow tea.
IBA hormone is present in high concentrations in the growing tips of willow branches. So if you can take these cuttings and soak them in warm water, you can get enough quantities of IBA hormone into this water what we call Willow Tea.

4. Honey: Honey is another natural antiseptic and anti-fungal agent which helps these little cuttings to remain healthy and strong. Remember pure honey is said to have a more beneficial effect than the processed bottle honey. Do not directly dip your cuttings into honey because this can attract many insects and ants. So, the commonly used recipe for using honey as rooting agent is:

Add 1 teaspoon honey to 2 cups of boiling water or half teaspoon honey to 1 cup of boiling water. Do not boil after adding honey, just stir it well and allow it to cool down before dipping the cuttings.

3. Aloe Vera Gel: Fresh aloe vera gel contains salicylic acid along with other useful enzymes, amino acids and minerals. I have demonstrated this in one of my older posts. You can check that aloe vera experiment here.
Just take out the gel from a fresh aloe vera leaf and dip the cuttings into it and plant them in soil.

2. Aspirin: Though not natural, but an inexpensive way is to use aspirin 350 mg tablet, either as crushed powder or dropping a tablet in a glass of water and then dipping the cuttings into it.

Now! If you want to make a more powerful and potent rooting agent, you can mix one or more of these things and try experiment each formula on few cuttings and see which one works best for you.

For example: Willow tea + Honey or Cinnamon + Honey or Aloe vera Gel + Honey and so on..

Happy Gardening!

Mycorrhizae Booster Tablets Improve Plant Growth Rate

admin — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:34:47 +0000

We all know that Fungus destroys and kills most our plants, what we commonly call as Rot. I am sure Every gardener must have experienced plant death due to fungus attack or the rot. Now what if I tell you there are some fungi which help boost the growth of plants. Yes that’s todays topic of discussion. What are these plant tablets and plant powder that can actually accelerate plant growth. We will quickly learn some scientific concepts of this and will also demonstrate on how to use these for your plants for a variety of purposes including rooting your plants cuttings successfully, using this stuff.

We will start with the term – MYCORRHIZA (that’s a Greek word mycos, “fungus”, and rhiza, “root”). It is a Symbiotic association (mutually beneficial – symbiosis is a process of mutual benefit) between a fungus and the roots of a plant.

We will look into a simple explanation to this: The plant prepares food and energy coming from the sun that’s by way of photosysnthesis and supplies these carbohydrates and other nutrients to the fungi through the roots, and the fungus in turn supplies water and mineral nutrients taken from the soil to the plants. So, Mycorrhizae are located in the roots of the plant. In general, most of the plant species can form these mycorrhizal associations. We will not go into details or types or classifications of these associations. The most common is the Arbuscular type which is also called Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) and this is present in 70% to 80 % of plant species. And Mycorrhizae are especially beneficial for the plants growing in nutrient-poor soils. Because the fungal mycelia or hyphae – that’s fine hair like structure can uptake the nutrients from the soil, These are better than the thinnest fibrous roots of the plants. This in scientific terms is called increasing the vascularity, similar to certain drugs in medical field which increase vascularity and increase blood supply to an organ.

There is a lot of research done on this and it is proved to be very much beneficial to plants. You can check out links to some of the website articles on these topic from the description of this video.

Well, Now at home gardening level, How to utilize this benefits of mycorrhiza to boost the growth of our plants.

There are two options am showing you here. You can checkout links to these items from a card linked to this video or visit our website at gkvk.net.

Plant Tablets or Root Tablets
VAM powder containing these mycorrhizae.

This one is in Tablet form. Its called Root booster tablets. This comes with a leaflet and instructions with dosage for various plants. For home plants, use 1 or 2 tablets depending on the size of the container and size of the plant.

Now how to use this: Make a deep hole like about 4 to 6 inches, till u approximately feel you are reaching the roots of the plant. Then insert this tablet into the hole and cover it with soil. Then water slowly to make the soil wet. This should contain spores of the beneficial fungi which should reproduce and start their actions. You should see the effect within 3 months. You can test this on your anaemic plants and see the improvement in about 3 months. If your anaemic plant is showing significant interval change, then this mycorrhizae are into action and providing the plant with the necessary micronutrients like iron, magnesium and others.

Now the second Product is called VAM – Vescicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizae. This comes in powder form and each gram contains 100 to 200 propogules. So, approximately add one teaspoon of this powder near the plant roots by digging a hole or while repotting sprinkle the powder and repot your plant.

Now another interesting Use of this Mycorrhizae. That is Using Mycorrhiza for a Rooting Hormone effect to grow stem cuttings, that is rooting your cuttings. You can dip the lower end of a cutting into this powder and insert them into the soil. You can apply all the other rules of cuttings like the 45 degree cutting angle and others. You can watch one of my old videos on this topic from a card linked at top right corner of this video or search in my channel.

So before going to our important and interesting quiz question.

Will summarise the benefits, Mycorrhizal fungi make plants stronger and healthy, increasing the yields, increasing flowering and fruiting, make them drought tolerant, reduce fertilizer and water usage, protect plant against harmful pathogens in soil, improve soil quality and drainage system, Increase tolerance to soil PH changes and many other benefits.

Now lastly one quiz question. Actually even I do not know a proper answer to this. Can we use broad spectrum antifungals like SAAF powder (carbendazim and mancozeb) to mix with water and water the plants. Will this not kill these mycorrhizae? Please answer in the comment box below the video.

Ref:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4717633/

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-3176-6_8