Rooting clones with Green House Feeding Bio Enhancer

As some of you may know, we've recently added the new Green House Feeding Bio range of nutrients for plants to our catalogue, which is composed of three excellent products. On the one hand, we have two completely organic base nutrients in powder form, one for the growth phase (Powder Feeding BioGrow) and another one for the bloom stage (Powder Feeding BioBloom). On the other hand, we have a highly efficient root stimulator called Additive Feeding Enhancer, which we'll test in this article.

GH Feeding Enhancer is a complete mix of humic acid (75%), fulvic acid (3%), seaweed extract (10%, Ascophyllum nodosum), Trichoderma harzianum (10%), Bacillus subtilis, alginic acid, manitol, fucoidan and several amino acids (alanine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glycine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylamine, proline, tyrosine, valine and tryptophan). This complex provides the root system of your plants with all the necessary elements for explosive growth, plus extra protection against several phytopathogens that may harm the root ball. Furthermore, it also enhances nutrient uptake while stimulaitng microbial life, improving the vitality and resistance of plants against adverse conditions.

Besides its multiple benefits during the whole life cycle of the plant, the guys at GH Feeding also told us amazing things about using Enhancer for rooting clones. According to them, they've got awesome results at their labs by using Enhancer to moisten the rooting media, without any other type of rooting hormone. After talking to them, we could not resist to test it, with the results that we present in this article.

Green House Feeding Enhancer to root clones

For this test, we'll follow the same exact method for rooting cuttings that we normally use, with the only difference of using Additive Feeding Bio Enhancer instead of rooting hormones. In this way, we can easily check any difference during the process. We only need some Enhancer, a small plastic plant propagator, a scalpel, some water and some type of propagation medium, in this case RootIt propagation sponges. Let's get started!

First thing to do is to fill up a bowl with one litre of water at around 20ºC and at pH 5,5. Remember that hard water should be avoided for proper rooting, it's always better to use RO or distilled water. Next, add half a gram of Enhancer and stir the mix until dissolved. Soak the rooting sponges in the mix - which will get moistened almost instantly - and gently drain excess water by pressing them a little bit. We can now put the sponges on the tray and prepare our cuttings.

We grab each cutting, cut out the tips of the leaves and remove at least one node at the lower part of the stem, which will be in contact with the RootIt sponge. Next, we make some cuts (superficial) across this part of the stem to enhance the production of new roots. While this technique can be ignored, it is highly recommended to root the clones much faster, although you must be careful not to slice the stem!

Once the clones are ready, we just soak in our bowl the part of the stem that will be in contact with the sponge (as if we were using some rooting hormone) and plug each clone in its sponge. We spray the clones with some water, close our propagator and put it under two 55W fluorescent tubes.

From now on, we just have to open the propagator every day to give our clones some fresh air and spray them with some water. We'll also gradually open the slid of the propagator to reduce a little bit the humidity inside it. In this way, we're reducing the risk of fungal infections while providing our small plants with fresh air. With this method, our clones were rooted after 8 days, with the roots that you can see in the picture below.

Transplanting with Additive Feeding Enhancer

After the splendid results achieved when rooting clones, we decided to continue this test by transplanting some of our cuttings and using Enhancer in the first irrigations. We then put half of our clones in small containers with coco coir, while the other half were also transplanted but without using Enhancer to water them.

After transplanting the clones, we put them under the same lighting system used to root them, two 55W Blue Sky fluorescent tubes. The nutrient solution was the same that we normally use with coco coir, although we decreased its pH level to 5 before adding Enhancer (as the product instructions indicate). After three days, results speaked for themselves:

After 3 days:

Conclusions on Green House Feeding Bio Enhancer

As you have seen, the results achieved with Enhancer are spectacular, both for rooting and after the transplant. It is an organic, easy to use product not only suitable for rooting clones without any rooting hormone but also for obtaining awesome root systems in just a few days after the transplant. The ingredients in its formula enhance root growth while protecting them from pathogens like fusarium, which is crucial given the difficulty of treating these diseases once the plants are infected.

Additive Feeding Enhancer can be used via foliar (0,3 to 0,5 gram per litre of water) or via irrigation (after each transplant and twice a week during the life cycle of the plant, at 0,5 to 1 gram per litre of water).

Without a doubt, the characteristics of this product highly improve root growth, enhance nutrient uptake and protect the plants against some of the most devastating infections. Highly recommended!

Happy rooting!