Good video on rooting
I made a new friend recently, and he told me he used to work an odd job at a plant nursery. He said the thing he remembers most vividly about that job was putting on gloves to work with the rockwool for seedlings and cloning. He said he never knew the stuff existed, and he was incredulous that it was basically spun-bound mineral fibers that somehow held in the proper moisture and aeration and nutrients that made plants root like crazy. But it would make you itch like crazy, like fiberglass, if it brushed against your skin.
I just ordered a sheet of rockwool for some cuttings, but i have absolutely no experience with it other than what he told me. Ive seen Craig(the kind old fellow in the video) and a few others use them and report positive results, with success >50%. I am fairly certain that Craig does not use rooting hormone — edit: see below he uses Azos. Regardless, in the video Craig says his success rate is somewhere in the 65-75%+ range. That’s really good and enough to convince me to buy a sheet of rockwool for experiments.
He mentioned “Azos and growblocks” for his rooting process. I think azos refers to “Azospirillum brasilense,” a symbiotic bacteria inoculant that fixes nitrogen and produces or helps produce indole-3-acetic acid, or IAA, a rooting hormone analogue to IBA. It appears there are a few products marketed, ill have ti do some more research on availability and price.
In the vid Craig said his soil mixture is worm castings and compost baked, then crushed? Then added “Soil Moist,” expanded coconut coir/husk, peat moss, and perlite. Soil Moist is the brand name for polyacrylamide gel granules marketed for use in soil as a water retaining component. I am originally familiar with the gel as “Cricket Water,” used in bug breeding to offer them water but prevent drowning losses. It holds on to an extraordinary amount of water compared to its own mass. I’ve updated “The Indoor Grower’s Supply Guide” thread with some products that represent Craig’s soil and rooting methods.
@SubstanceTheSqid curious! I've read various things about the bacteria. To know it actually produces an analog of a rooting hormone is extremely interesting, and is something I have to explore.
Where did you find the sheet of rockwool? I bought some in the past but it was precut cubes.
For Craig to have such a high success rate and not use rooting hormone is profound.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/azospirillum
This paper says it fixes N in low oxygen environments and also helps produce or catalyze plant hormones. From random google search i saw one claim it was IAA. It may have been the company Xtreme Gardening who markets an Azospirillum rooting/fertilizer product called “Azos.” Pretty sure thats what Craig uses, i think i saw a packet of it in one of his videos.
In other news, my cuttings have rooted, a few roots each 1cm+. They’ve only been in there a week or so. When i received the cuttings, i sterile trimmed off the ends, scraped the stem end, wet it and then applied 2cm of dense rooting powder 0.1% IBA. It was returned to the peat pod it came in with extra perlite.
Going to leave them in there one more week and then move to soil. I bought “2 sheets of 49 rockwool starter plugs” on Amazon, which appears like a sheet of cubes to be separated.