Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Planting the cuttings: Basil Cloning -- Part 2

Two weeks ago I took some cuttings from my only basil plant I had. Now the cuttings have sprouted roots and are ready to plant. I filled up the reservoir and added some new nutrients to one of my hydroponic growing containers.
Basil leaves from cuttings

So far I only have 4 of the cuttings planted, but I'll be expanding more as the new plants grow and give new cuttings. I plan to fill the entire system up with basil by the end of summer.
Roots take anywhere from 11 to 14 days to emerge. As long as the medium stays moist, the roots will continue to grow. I think mine took a bit longer because the cutting were small and I was keeping them away from most sunlight.
Basil cuttings for transplanting
The cuttings were beginning to lean and looked healthier
Basil roots from cutting
Roots emerging from the basil cutting
Transplanting the cuttings is pretty simple. Since none of my roots were stuck in the rockwool, I just moved the cutting straight into the pea gravel in the net pots.
Basil cutting in netpot
Looks happy in there already!
Basil cuttings in hydroponic garden
Hydroponic garden: Online
All but one of the original cuttings were ready for transplanting; the last one wasn't quite big enough yet. Since I only have 4 of 20 spots occupied at the moment, I took some new cuttings from my original basil plant (they grow back fast).
New basil cuttings
Already have more cuttings ready.
This cycle will repeat until the bins are full. Once the basil is going strong, I'll be able to pick leaves any time I want, as long as I keep any flower stalks under control.
Basil leaves
Some leaves harvested from cuttings

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hi folks, please only leave comments relative to the blog post. All spam will be removed and spammers will be blocked.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.