My clones are drooping over

Hey guys. I need your help. It’s been 12 hours since I took cuttings and they are drooping over in dome. All videos I ever seen show cuttings drooping only when out in air and go back upright when in high humidity dome. Why would my clones be drooping after 12 hours of being in a closed dome? What do I do?

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They will continue to droop until a root system develops. Have patience.

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Let them droop. Don’t touch or prop them up. They usually stand back up I. About 48 hours.

If they are still drooping after 7 days, my experience is they are toast. Give a solid hands off week of waiting. Most times they straighten out in 2-3 days and are fine. But if I mess with them they always die. No proping or touching!

Next time trim the leaf tips back so they fit better into the footprint of the pot. They won’t drop more or less this way, but they fit in a lot better as they start to take off. Crossing stems can cause wet spots and promote PM in the dome/ humid environment during rooting.

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You just got great advice. Takes a few days for them to stand up. A touch more foliage than i leave. The big leaves can be clipped on the ends. Helps grow roots over more foliage or feeding existing foliage.

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Thanks. I did hear some guy on some video on YouTube say that he makes his clones and closes up the dome and then doesn’t look at em for at least a week. I guess if I just closed my eyes everything woulda been ok :grinning:

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Thanks :+1:

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End of day 2 and they are still drooping. The tall ones and the short ones. I never seen anything like it on any of the videos I watched. It’s actually backwards compared to the videos I saw. Vids would show plants drooping when outside of dome and perk back up and stand straight when in dome. Which makes me think the humidity isn’t high enough in the dome but that can’t be cause it’s a real dome, not some diy and all vents are closed. Something ain’t right. I’ve seen so many videos and no one had a drooping problem using this method. All their cuttings stay perky and standing straight through entire cloning process, unless they are left out and not in high humidity. Mine are drooping inside a closed dome. Luckily they don’t look dead and the drooping seems to not get worse and from what I’ve seen clones can get roots pretty fast, within days, so, basically if the roots grow fast enough I think the clones will recover but there’s still an unidentified issues that caused this. Maybe it’s because I didn’t put the cuttings into water. What I did was trimmed up the plant so cuttings were basically ready to stick in plug as soon as cut, and then I took a cut and made a 45 degree cut and shaved off the skin and dipped it in clonex gel and then stuck it directly into plug and then put the plug in the dome tray. I didn’t soak the plugs either cause I checked em and they were moist enough to drip when squeezed so just used the plugs as is, which I’m guessing is what the manufacturer intended and probably contains things to help cuttings root. I believe I used rapid rooter plugs. I lightly misted underneath dome tray and lightly misted inside of dome and lightly misted cuttings then put dome lid on and in grow tent. Light is on lowest setting and way up high. temp stays between 70-80 from night to day. Not sure if skipping putting cuttings in a cup of water step caused this. It’s only my first time and can only compare to videos. Did you ever skip the cup of water step? Does that usually cause this or other problems? If I clone again I want to have healthy perky upright clones throughout the cloning process. Reason I packed em in the cloner is cause I’ve seen videos of people filling an entire tray and not having any issues. I thought about using a standard clear storage tote upside down to have more space but didn’t want to risk it so bought the only one on Amazon that seemed legit which was ac infinity but it’s small. Can’t really fit many clones if each one doesn’t touch the next. I think i got over 20 clones in it. From the tiniest to the tallest. I gave most of the plugs a little squirt of water and misted the leaves this evening. Will see if that helps by tomorrow. There should be some sort of roots happening by now, even if super tiny. But what do you think? Do you think skipping putting them in a cup of water caused this?

You have a lot of leaves on the cuttings and they are only 2 days old. It takes several days for the wound to heal where they were cut and a week before they start to show baby roots. Once the baby roots start to appear the cuttings will stand up.

Be careful not to have it too humid in there or fungus can grow and kill them.

I had best results with cuttings using an aeroponic cloner. They are actually a hybrid between aeroponics and hydroponics but you get 99.9% success rates and the cuttings have decent roots in 2 weeks. You can look on YouTube for how to make one yourself. It will be cheaper than buying a pre-made unit and probably have better parts.


If you are taking cuttings from a plant you should water and fertilize the doner plant well for several weeks before taking the cuttings. this allows the plant to build up some strength before the cuttings are taken and the cuttings will usually do better. You should also water and fertilize the doner plant a few hours before taking cuttings so the stems and leaves are full of water and nutrients and the cuttings will be more likely to survive.

Cuttings should be put straight into a glass of tap water as soon as they are cut and left there for 15-30 minutes. Plants suck up moisture in the stem when cut and putting the cuttings into water immediately for a bit will prevent air from going up the stem.

After sitting in water for 15-30 minutes the end of the cuttings should be dipped in a rooting hormone (gel or powder) and then put into a growing medium. Be careful not to damage the cut stem because it can rot and the cutting will die.

Give the cuttings 16 hours of light per day and 8 hours of continuous darkness. They should remain on this lighting schedule until they have had roots for a month, then you can increase the lighting period to 18 hours a day if you like.

Don’t let the container housing the cuttings get too hot or you can cook them. Most cuttings do better if there is some airflow.

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I thought about getting the aeroponic method but felt more comfortable using the plug and dome method. I probably should have watered before taking cuttings. That might be part of the problem. Every video I saw said to have dome closed and all vents closed for first few days. Not sure how one could create an environment that is too humid when everyone recommends an environment that is as humid as it can get for initial part of this cloning process. I think an environment more humid than a closed dome would be to have the entire cutting submerged in water. I promise I won’t do that. This is a learning process but considering seed have over a 90% germination rate, seems safer to just buy or breed seeds and deal with the non uniform results that come from that. Only reason I did clones was to try to get uniform results. Doesn’t seem worth it so far