Alright! This is John Kohler at GrowingYourGreens.com, today I have another exciting episode for
you and today we’re going to do something real cool we’re going to use this thing
right here that’s actually called the Oxy Clone. So, some people might think that cloners
are only for use of cloning medicinal herbs but it’s really useful for a lot of other
things. I’m happy to day with the new Oxy Clone
the price has come down substantially, normally cloners cost 200 to 250 bucks, this is the
lowest priced cloner I could find, it’s about 50 bucks definitely really cool. What
we’re going to do today is we’re going to clone this guy right here or a more properly
a start to root out cuttings of this plant, this is actually called Roselle, it’s a
type of Hibiscus that has the edible leaves, the edible leaves kind of taste like sorrel
and besides the edible leaves they have the calyxes, which is this little fruit pods.
They’re not really fruit pods, it’s like the area that surrounds the seed and actually
they are high in anthocyanidins which are anti-oxidants and they’re used for making
jams and jellies and things like lemonade and things like that. So, it’s definitely
really cool; now, this is a tropical plant and some people say in the tropics that it
can even be invasive and take over which I thing is a good problem to have because it’s
all edible, you can eat the leaves like a salad green, you can actually use this little
calyxes as a fruit. So this will only grow in the tropics, it does not like to get cold,
it does not frost; I saw these at the heirloom expo the seller was saying “Oh yeah they’re
hearty here” and I’m like “No! They’re not”. I’ve seen in South Florida when
they have one single cold day they died back to the ground but then they came back later.
In northern California where I have grown these in the past, outside it doesn’t make
it once it gets too cold. Even in an unheated greenhouse, protected, it won’t make it
so it does not like to get below freezing. The freezing temperatures are coming soon
so I’m going to clone these guys, keep them indoors, grow them through the winter and
then as soon as it warms up outside I’m going to plant them outside so I’ll get
a good jump on the season for next year; I’m going to try to get this guy super tall like
6 plus feet, it shouldn’t be an issue. So, in any case, to do this we need to save
the plants genetics so besides starting from seed which I could do cloning is another technique
that you can use or rooting cuttings that you can use to save the plant. So, certain
plants can be rooted with a cloner like this I think basil comes to mind, stevia comes
to mind, mint comes to mind, those are easy ones to clone but other plants can also be
clones but not all plants can be cloned. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going
to show you guys what the Oxy Clone is, how it works and we’re going to clone this Roselle
for you. So, here’s the Oxy Clone and here’s a
Rapid Root rooting hormone, I got this from MonsterGardens.com, we’re going to go ahead
and open this up and show you guys what’s in the box, how it works and you’re going
to get to go through the process with me. Alright, so in the box what we got here it
looks like we got some instructions, real men don’t ready instructions, they’ll
watch my videos though… and it tell you how to set it up and then it looks like you’ve
got a little box here, it looks like a standard dish tub, you know you can wash your dishes
in, it’s a bit more square-ish and it has the specialized top with all these holes and
these are recessed holes that will hold some inserts, so we also have the inserts in here,
you get a set of black inserts which are kind of like foam with a little hole in the middle
to shove your cutting down into so that it can take root and if you’re gay or you like
bright multicolor you also get a whole bunch of different pretty colors. Otherwise, in
here looks like the only thing in here is some kind of pump setup right here and that’s
all this system is. It’s a little tub with a pump and some foam things; I think you can
even make one of these at home. So, now we’re going to set this thing up,
there’s only a few parts that you get with this guy to set it up, basically you get the
Oxy head right here, you get a little air tube vent thing and then you get a little
adapter piece. So the first thing is you’re going to take this adapter piece and you guys
can see like one side of this adapter piece is a little bit longer than the other and
the side that’s longer here goes into the Oxy head like that and then you’re going
to put the vent tube attached to this little outlet port right here. So the Oxy Clone is
super simple, super easy to set up you’re just going to go ahead and take the Oxy head
here which looks like a standard pump and then you’re going to take this piece right
here and on this piece it might look fairly the same, just looks like a little connector,
but actually one side is a little bit larger than the other so if you put the one side
on the Oxy head it’s a little bit lose… it’s like a losey goosey thing, not good,
that’s not the way it goes so you can just flip it around so when you fit it in it’s
fairly tight I like nice tight fits in these parts here and then we’re just going to
go ahead and put hose on there, once again a nice tight fit, and then we’re going to
go ahead and put this guy in the corner and how we want to orient this is just pretty
much like this, we’re going to basically use the suction cup feet and put it on the
bottom and just suction cup it to the edge there. Then what we’re going to do is we’re
going to take off the little twist tie on the power cord; you get all the cords to fit
through then you put the top on. Now the last thing we need to do is fill this
guy up with water, you need to fill it up with 1.75 gallons of water, it’s recommended
to use filtered water I have a water filter installed here so whether you have a Boogie
Blue water filter to take out the chlorine or whether you have to go buy some spring
water to use… the use of distilled water is not recommended. So, we’re going to get
some water and fill this puppy up! Alright, so we got about 1.25 gallons of water, filtered
water in here, we’re going to add the last half a gallon to get it to 1.75 gallons of
water and that fills it pretty doggone close to the top. A good thing they might want to
have done is actually put a fill line embossed into the side of the container that said “fill
here” to make it a lot simpler. I guess once we got that done what we’re going to
do is put this top on. So, we’re almost ready to get cloning…
I like that “get cloning”... and what we’re going to do is get our soft wood cuttings
ready so what we’re going to do is we’re going to take out one cutting at a time, and
make sure we don’t tip the glass over because it’s balanced here, and what we’re going
to do is basically we’re going to strip off these leaves very important. Right now
you can kind of see that the leaves are wilting out, it’s probably been like 12 hours since
I harvested these guys, made them just sit in water all day, so it’s been waiting for
me to do this so I’m just going to go ahead and snip these guys off and I’m cutting
all the leaf, the mayor leaf growage on there, I’m leaving some little buds that are shooting
out because once we’re cloning it these buds may shoot out more, these little growth
nodes. Then, what we’re going to do is we’re also going to cut off the fruit here we’re
going to actually save the fruit and use these guys.
We’re going to make a brand new cut right here and we’re probably going to go, I don’t
know… one… maybe like two nodes up and do a cut and then once again a couple of nodes
up do a cut and go one node up and do a cut. So, once we’ve got all our pieces cut, what
we’re going to do is we’re going to take our rooting hormone here and today we’re
just using the Rapid Root we’re going to take and dip our cutting in and make sure
you get the cuttings in the right direction, like it was originally pointed this way, you
don’t want to put them upside down, not a good idea. So we’re going to go ahead
and dip it in water and just put a little bit on there, shake it off, nest we’re just
going to get one of these guys here, these foam inserts and we’re just going to stick
our cutting through there, just like that. Now there is two ways to use the cloner here,
you can actually have this… the root, actually sticking in the water or you can have the
root sticking above the water. The whole premise is that this will agitate the water so that
if it’s sticking above the water it will still get wet to allow it to grow. I’m going
to do just kind of trial by error and have some in the water, some above the water to
see which one works better because I just don’t know.
Alright, I’ve been diligently working on getting some of these cuttings into the Oxy
Clone; I have got three more to do so I’m probably going to pick the smallest piece
here. I’ve been varying he different sizes of wood I’ve been using so some of these
have been really thin, like this, like younger and some of it has been older and thicker
wood; I don’t know which one is going to root more readily the younger or the older
and I guess we’ll find out. In addition I’ve been varying depth, some I’ve put
actually sitting in the water and some are going to be just above the water to get kind
of misted. And I would encourage you guys, if you don’t know the answer experiment,
do half and half, because that’s what I’m doing just to simply find out what’ll work
and then next time I do this I will know “Wow man, the younger wood worked better than the
older stuff” or whatever and that’s how I’ll do it next time. Alright, so here’s
the last one, just got to put in this guy, I’ll probably let this guy be submerged
a little bit and we’re going to fit this in this last hole here, where all the wires
are coming out. Looks like this little valve here that sucks
air in and the other thing is you could actually hook up a pump to this, I’m not going to
actually do that and see if it works just like this. The next step is plug this guy
in and see what happens. Alright, so once I plugged it in the motor came on and it’s
fairly quiet actually. Let’s lift this guy up… It doesn’t look like it’s doing
much it just looks like it’s pumping water through here, it’s not like making bubbles
or nothing crazy like that. I’m sure just because of the humidity in here will keep
the roots that are not touching the water wet and it will be interesting to see how
this works. So we’ll go ahead and let this run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and give
you guys updates along the way. So, as for the rest of cuttings here what
we’re going to do tomorrow is actually we’re just going to use the good old fashioned method,
we’re just going to dip into the rooting hormone, put it in some soil, water the soil
and see if they grow. Maybe the ones actually in the soil will grow better than the ones
in the cloner, maybe they won’t, I don’t know what’s going to happen. So, nonetheless
one of this ways that I’m using will work so that I have some Roselle for the next year.
Alright, check it out, we’re back it’s probably been about two weeks or so I’ve
had this Roselle cuttings in the Oxy Cloner and you know what? Pretty much I forgot about
them, I didn’t add water, didn’t do nothing to this stuff, I just… as you guys saw set
it up, put the water in there to the level put the rooting hormone, put it in there,
plugged it in. Left it plugged in in an area that kind of had a little light but not too
much and I’m going to show you guys actually what happens so let’s lift this bottom off
of here and check it out: we got some root heads! Looks like to me some of these guys
actually didn’t strike so this guys that were like… maybe not quite as far down,
so maybe hanging out a little bit above the water, they didn’t strike actually so that’s
not too cool. We have a few like these guys right here that just dried out, I don’t
know if it was because these were actually the tip cuttings and it looks like all the
other cuttings were not actually tip cuttings or maybe some of them were but, I think mainly
what happened was just we didn’t stick these far down.
So, it definitely looks like you want to stick these guys far down or down far enough to
where it would work optimally and some of these guys had more root than others. This
guy is a particularly good specimen had lots of roots. So I can definitely say this Oxy
Clone thing works. Now, is the Oxy Clone better than other cloners in the market? I don’t
know, I haven’t tested other cloners but they all work on a very similar principle
and the thing to me is that this is the cheapest cloner that’s currently available on the
market that I found and it lets you have like 20 sites to clone a lot of stuff. So, whether
you’re cloning herbs or edibles this thing definitely work, it has my seal of approval,
next I need to actually pot this guys up, empty this guys out and then I’m actually
putting some sweet potato spinach vines in here to propagate as well as some other things.
So anyways, if you’re interested in getting an Oxy Cloner I set up a special discount
through MonsterGardens.com for you guys, so what you’re going to do is click on the
link below to get a special package of the Oxy Cloner plus the same exact rooting hormone
that I used in this video for a darn good price. Now, I like to root things like herbs,
herbs are some of the easiest things to root like your basils. If your basil is still living
outside pretty soon it’s going to get too cold, you could actually top your basil, put
it in this cloner, grow some roots on it and keep it growing in the winter time indoors.
Things like the stevia also works really well with a system like this as do the mints and
of course you know my tree collards I’m going to have to check those out one of these
days in the cloner and see how they strike, see how it works. But cloners are definitely
useful, you guys all know how much plants cost to buy in a store, literally if you guys
have one plant going you could actually take cuttings off that plant to make many more
and it’s going to save you a lot of money in the long run, especially when you’re
growing in large quantities and you want to have enough food for you and your family.
So, cloners… definitely my seal of approval. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode, once again
my name is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com we’ll see you next time and remember: Keep
on growing!