Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Has anyone tried to use their flood and drain systems to propagate plants from cuttings?

The reason I ask is this:

Aside from fish... I'm obsessed with roses. I breed roses and have registerd and released a few of my own. In fact I am beginning to be 'head-hunted' by plant agents who want to represent me and commercially produce my seedlings. I own and run a board like this one called Rosetalk Australia (http://www.rosetalkaustralia.com ). I'm the admin (Simon). Ideally I'd like to cut out the middle-man.

I've experimented with many ways to produce cutting grown roses and one of my main breeding goals is to breed roses that are healthy and don't need to be grafted onto a stronger rootstock that will grow happily on their own roots. Nearly all roses sold today are grafted. Cutting grown roses would drastically reduce production costs. Roses are generally sold as bare-root dormant plants during the winter making them ideal as mail order items. The problem is that if you grow them in the ground you are limited to where you can actually sell them due to each state having their own quarantine restrictions and requirements and the risk of transmitting soil-borne pathogens. This is fair enough too I reckon and my thinking is that AP might provide a way of producing plants that are easy to lift without much damage to their roots, that are free of soil borne pathogens and because they are gross feeders might also be useful in AP systems. Roses are also successfully grown hydroponically already so I see this as a logical extension.

One way I've grown rose cuttings successfully is to place them in orchid pots (perforated sides and bases) with straight perlite that has been thoroughly drenched then the pots are placed into plastic bags to maintain humidity until callousing begins and roots start to form. Then they are transplanted into pots to allow their roots to keep growing. The problem with this method is that fungus is a real problem inside the plastic bag and it takes up a lot of room. The success of this method lies in the humid air spaces between the perlite particles providing just the right climate for root development.

Another way I've had success is with a method called aeroponics. Basically what you do is cut a series of holes in the lid of a plastic tub full of water + rooting hormones and run a series of airstones into it so that the bubbles rise and burst at the surface creating a spray. The cuttings are placed in small perforated pots in rockwool with the ends stickig through the bottom and placed into the holes just above the water surface so that the spray from the bursting bubbles keeps them uniformly moist but not dripping wet. The sections above the lid are in the open air which reduces fungal issues. The combintion of air, water and hormones causes roots to grow really quickly though I've had just as much success without adding the rooting hormones into the water.

This is where an AP flood and drain system comes in. The system I currently have is a F&D system with autosiphons with gravel and clay media. I reckon that if I was to take rose cuttings and stick them straight into one of the four grow beds I could strike several hundred cuttings without too much trouble because it seems to have all the key ingredients for successful propagation; light, air, water, nutrients (but not too many as too many nutrients actually inhibits root formation), and during the spring and summer... warmth. The other three growbeds can grow my veggies as usual and then come winter I can lift the roses and pack them for sale.

Another question is... has anyone tried transplanting plants grown in AP systems into the garden? Are the roots that develop on AP grown plants more delicate than those of ground-grown plants reducing the transplant success?

Cheers,

Simon

I've found AP to be a great medium to strike cuttings.... and I have two clients that have small barrel systems, with goldfish.... just to strike their orchard cuttings...

A friend of mine gave me a cutting from a climbing type rose bush they were digging up to build a porch. It has flurished in the AP system, full of beautiful large flowers. I have taken clippings from the original and rooted them in AP growbeds no problem.

every cutting i've ever chucked in has pretty much grown. as long as it was the right sort of wood.

we've done a few different hibicus, and pretty much any veggie you can think of.

I have noticed that they struggle a little when you put them into soil, so you would have to run some tests to see if you roses work as well as soil grown ones when they are replanted.

This is excellent to know... thanks for all your replies

I have used the "aeroponic" type method with a DIY EZcloner but its really more of a sprayed NFT with aeroponics around here being technically such a small particle size its a fog mist and not spray. I made something like what is in this video and used very clean AP water in it only once but it worked but most of the time used clean PH'd water only with nothing else and never had a problem except when it got way to hot when my AC failed one time. I did not use net pots and just used the neoprene pucks stuffed into holes. I would not even buy the pucks next time and use bits of pool float next time if I made another. Pool float foam in 3/4 inch holes instead of 1 7/8 holes with pucks. I also used black irrigation tubing to make my manifold and just poked holes and pushed my nozzles into it. Worked fine, as well as PVC just easier to do as I have rolls of black irrigation lines on hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfJDOfbBIZI

I really like AP's natural ability to out grow root rot as I have battled that crap in hydro but never ever saw it in my little AP set up even though I know it was in the temp range root rot loved several times and the root rot spores where in the house at the time. I would love to do more experiments with clean filtered AP water going into an EZcloner at temps that would normally have troubles with plain water or regular hormones.

This is what I used as a guide for the aeroponics setup I tried: http://www.jasons-indoor-guide-to-organ ... onics.html

These are some tomato cutting I planted, at the stage of the photo I think they were about a month old.

decent guide for that kind of set up but its outdated compared to EZcloner types. The spray from nozzles on and off work far better and strike roots faster. With ghetto tek ezcloner methods there is no need for netpots or clay balls just foam to hole the cutting in the hole. Another fantastic way I have done venus fly traps is tissue culture. Its like doing orchids they call "flasking" on most orchid sites. You can take little tiny cuttings then they are placed into sterile media like agar on a petri dish with hormones to either make them grow roots or vegetative growth. It takes more equipment to do it but its super easy to transport little cups of plants in goo to replant. They are then sterile and should pass any government quarantine inspections. I heard it can also be used to clone from meristem areas of diseased plants to procure a non diseased clone. I have never done it but heard rumors of it saving strains of tobacco from the mosaic virus.

This is only partially effective. Mosaic virus also affects roses (RMV) and tissue culture of infected meristem doesn't eliminate the probelm on its own. It needs to be combined with other treatments such as thermal therapy. This dramatically improves the results to near 100% effective at killing off the temperature sensitive mosaic virus.

Charlie, are these the photos you put in your system threads? If so, this is what prompted me to ask the question about propagation in AP systems for other plants. I've never tried growing tomato from cuttings though had the idea a while back to try it to see if I could keep certain plants growing over winter so I could keep particular clones going. I grew a half dozen beef eater tomatos a few years back and one plant made fruit that was bigger and juicier than all the others and I wish I had tried to keep it going as I had planned to. Next I hope to fiddle with crossing different tomato strains too... this will be fun! You can buy all these old varieties of tomato from http://www.thelostseed.com.au so I hope to try and get a few of these and them let them 'play' together to see what can be made to turn up.