Pretty cool. Let us know how it works out.

Maybe rockwool as a medium?

I'll swing by Home Depot this weekend and see if they have it in anything less than 50' rolls.

That's pretty cool.

Will the cuttings and medium be sitting in the aerated water, or will they be suspended above it in moisture-saturated air?

Either way, please give us updates on your cloner's performance. It would be interesting to know how cloned pepper plants compare with seed-grown wrt time until harvest and productivity. It would be cool if you could start the same plants' seed at the same time for a head-to-head comparison.

Alex

Nice set up.

Cool.. most definitely keep us updated, with photos. And I applaud you drilling skills.. whenever I put the drill to plastic cups they look horrible, yours look professionally done.
Pam

Lol, oh please, there aren't two holes in a line on any of those cups. But I was just knocking them out for my own use, didn't need to be perfect, just perforated.

I think I found a good standby medium until I can find something better. Got a bag of spanish moss. If I pack that in the cups, it should hopefully be thick enough to hold things in place and wick up some water without being so dense as to choke things to death.

Had considered things like toilet paper (would biodegrade in the group pretty quickly and easily, but would be a soggy mess in the cup), soft burlap (good wicking, lots of holes for roots, but dunno if it would degrade fast enough to keep from pinching the roots after transplant), aquarium gravel (too small, falls out of the holes I drilled), shredded coir (if the gravel fell out of the cups, I'm sure the coir would be a mess).

Will hit Home Depot this weekend and see if they've got rockwool insulation in anything short of 50' rolls.

Current plan for it is that it will be roughly half in water, half out. That way I can start seeds at the top without them being actually in the water directly, and still have ample aerated water contact at the bottom to wick up into the rest of it.

Well they may not be perfect, but they make mine look bad. Mine are usually jagged from pieces breaking off as I drill. Yours look great compared to mine.
Pam

Would real sponge work? I'm thinking about making one of these. All my cloning has been done in potting soil and have had success, but to my understanding these set ups work much quicker.

I dunno. My worry was that the holes wouldn't line up enough for the roots to pass through.

Home Depot didn't have rockwool insulation, but I got some long strand sphagnum instead.

If you have an Orchard Hardware, they carry 24 packs. I believe you can also order online.

Home Depo never carries that stuff. Maybe Lowes carries it.

Least it warmed up enough today to paint the cloner.

http://livingdeathbonchi.blogspot.com/2015/01/here-we-go.html