I am sure! You will be surprised to  see the results of this experiment!  

In Today’s episode, we will build a simple  

cheap DIY 2-in-1 soil-less plant cloner device  cum a simple yet effective hydroponic system  

to grow your plants or propagate  your plant branch cuttings  

with a high success rate and the scientific  reason behind this technique. Coming up!  

This Hydroponic two in one plant cloner  can be a very nice school project for kids  

and instil an interest in them in gardening. Well, First of all, you need at least a 20 litre  

or a 5 gallon plastic bucket with a lid. The  cheapest solution to this is to use a 5 gallon  

empty paint bucket which is easily available from  any junk store or perhaps from your store room.  

Take out the lid and carefully drill some holes  on it. Firstly you need to mark the diameter of  

these holes on the lid. First decide, what you  want to insert, 1 inch hydroponic collars or your  

own diy foam inserts or 1 inch net pots or 2 inch  net pots, depending on what you want to grow.  

Here I want to insert 1 inch foam inserts or  1 inch net pots, so that I get more number  

of slots to insert. So, mark the slots on the  lid properly spaced and as many as you want.  

Make sure, the diameter of each hole should  not be more than the diameter of the pot.  

The top diameter of this pot is  max 3 cm, and the bottom is 2 cm.  

So 2.5 cm or 1 inch is the ideal  cut out for inserting these pots.  

Now using a 1 inch hole saw bit or door  knob drill bit or whatever you call it,  

carefully make as many holes you want.  5 or 10 or whatever number you want.  

Do not make them too close to each other, the  first reason is because, this can make the lid  

weaker and secondly there can be root entanglement  underneath the lid once the plants start to grow.  

Now if you want to use it as a plant  cutting cloner or plant propagator,  

you need to make few 1 inch foam collars to insert  your branch cuttings. These are readily available  

to purchase – like these Neoprene hydroponic  collars or you can easily cut out any thick  

foam - that’s recycling some packaging foam  from your junk. Try to carefully cut the sizes,  

and the top diameter should be little more  than 2.5 cm. If you have a thinner foam sheet,  

you can cut and paste multiple pieces with glue  and make these foam collars to insert cuttings.  

Making a cut from one side towards the  centre is better to easily insert your  

cuttings without damaging the nodes, rather  than making central holes into the foam, because  

the thickness of the cuttings also can vary. So you can insert these foams to make it  

a plant cloner device or install net  pots to use it for hydroponic growing.  

Well, Now let’s look into setting up pipes inside  this bucket. You just need a 16 mm drip irrigation  

pipe like this and a T-connector. I got this  again from my store room from my left over  

stuff I used for my drip irrigation done for my  terrace garden. You can watch that episode from  

a link in description if you are interested. Now measure the inner circumference of the bucket,  

1 or 2 inches below the rim. Cut a 16mm pipe of  this same length and make a circle using 16 mm  

pipe into the inner side of the bucket. Connect  this T-connector to complete the cirlce.  

Now fix or place a small pump like this  at the bottom. This is again very cheap  

submersible pump. You can use a 12 watt or 18  watt pump depending on the size of your bucket.  

If you want to make a larger hydroponic  system, you can use 18 watt or more.  

Now measure the vertical dimension  left between the pump and the t-piece  

and cut out 16mm pipe piece and connect one end to  T-piece bottom and the other end to the pump.  

Now Punch some holes into this 16mm pipe circle  using the drip hole-maker and insert these little  

sprinklers or sprayers uniformly – like each  around 2 inches apart or some 8 to 10 of them.  

Optionally, fix this loop to the bucket  with some cable ties or twist ties.  

Then take out the wire of the pump from  the top of the bucket to avoid leakages.  

Now pour water into the bucket,  about half or less than half to  

test the system or the sprinklers by  connecting the pump to power supply.  

Now let us take some plant cuttings, a few ficus  cuttings, a few mulberry tree cuttings. You can  

try any cuttings. Please follow the basic rules  of taking cuttings like 45 degree cutting angle  

and other stuff we have already discussed  in one of our episode on cloning plants.  

You can check that link in description below. Now insert these cuttings, first into the foam  

collar and then insert the foam collars  into the holes and keep it turned on.  

Now let’s look into the results on Day 8  and on Day 15. Please watch till the end!  

On Day 8, You can see rooting has already started  in most of the cuttings. In this setup roots  

develop faster, the main reason is oxygen supply  which is directly taken up from the air. If we  

go into the details of hydroponic and its types,  we are using Nutrient film method in this setup.  

You can also add nutrient solutions to this water,  like mainly phosphorous to start rooting faster.  

Once rooting starts, introduce Nitrogen and  Potassium into the water like how you do in  

hydroponic farming. Another hack to induce rooting  faster is to add half or 1 tablet of Aspirin 350mg  

dispersible tablet into the water. Aspirin is  acetyl salicylic acid and induces rooting faster.  

You can check aspirin hacks episode  from link in description below.  

On Day 15, you can see more roots have started  growing, with nice new set of leaves growing in  

to start photosynthesis. This is really  fast when compared to conventional method  

of growing a cutting in soil, which  usually takes 4 to 6 weeks time.  

You can also see some cuttings have progressed  faster with more root formation and healthy roots.  

And you can also see nice foliage growth and even  fruit formation in these mulberry cuttings. One  

simple tip here is: Snip off any fruits early to  redirect the plant energy or rather conserve the  

energy for root and leaf development for now. Well! You can repot these into independent  

containers after 4 to 6 weeks  once sufficient roots develop.  

Few years back we made use of the Deep Water  Culture type of hydroponics to make our plant  

cloner by using air stones. You can check that  episode from a link in description below.  

Please, Like, Share and comment below  with your feedback. Happy Gardening!