Clone Your Fuchsias
By
Donald Helsel, President Crescent City Branch
American Fuchsia Society Bulletin July/August 2003
I must admit that even though I have been growing fuchsias off and on for several years, I have often suffered fits of frustration when it comes to starting cuttings. I have tried heated beds with perlite and various potting mixtures. Bottom heating pads, covered starting domes, misting, sterilization: all have been used and all had some level of success. But, more to the point, I also experienced a high level of failure, usually with valuable or treasured cuttings rotting away to nothing. Often cuttings that did root were plagued by weak root systems and produced plants that just never seemed to grow as expected. Despite my best efforts I just could not seem to master properly starting cuttings: until now!
More by accident than design, I had an opportunity to visit a hydroponics store in a neighboring city. (Humboldt Hydroponics, http://www.humboldthydroponics.com) Initially I was window shopping, however the salesman soon had my full attention when he started talking about rooting cuttings and 100% success rates. To make a long story short, I decided to give it a try, reasoning that I couldn’t do worse than I was already doing. I purchased a model made by American Agritech (http://www.americanagritech.com), out of the Jet Gro Series, specifically a “Clone Machine 20”. I chose this unit as it was compact (about 12 inches square), reasonably priced and could handle twenty cuttings at a time.
The unit is basically a plastic container with a small water pump inside, which has a revolving spray head and a rack to hold the cutting containers. The container is filled with three gallons of clean water. Three ounces each of cloning solution and a Bio-Fungicide water treatment are added to the water. Cuttings are prepared and dipped in a cloning mix and inserted in the individual cutting containers. The unit is then plugged into an electrical outlet and allowed to run. The spray head lightly bathes the root end of the cutting continuously.
The manufacturer recommends 24-hour artificial light. That might improve results even further, however I set my unit in the greenhouse and had 100% success. The directions say you will have roots in three to ten days. With fuchsias I found that it takes ten days to grow a solid ball of roots about one inch long. A few varieties took as long as twelve days. I then potted the cuttings in two-inch pots and put them on bottom heat (70°) for two days while they became established. They are then moved to a regular growing rack where I keep them until they are ready to pot up to a four-inch pot and move to the patio.
Thus far I have completed four cycles of cuttings, all with 100% rooting success. In fairness I must admit that after potting I have lost four of the original eighty cuttings. For an unknown reason, after appearing to grow vigorously, they went limp and died. Never the less, you just cannot beat those kinds of results. For comparison, at the same time,I also started cuttings in the conventional way, using ‘Lottie Hobby’ as the test plant. At the end of three weeks those plants started in the Clone Machine were noticeably more vigorous and larger than those started in perlite.
I am now so excited by my cuttings success that I just had to share this tale of success with all my fuchsia friends.