Biostimulant rooting gel, hormone-free

An aquaponic system produces its own cuttings. The basil, mint or sage plants growing in the grow bed can be trimmed regularly, and each stem you cut can become a new plant, identical to the parent. On tomatoes, the side shoots you remove between the stem and the leaves root in the same way. You can thus renew your herbs and carry on a tomato variety without buying more seeds, at the pace of your harvests. The article on herbs in aquaponics presents the species that thrive best there.

Taking cuttings is done alongside the circuit: the gel never goes into the fish water, and a cutting without roots would not find in a grow bed the air humidity it needs anyway. Root it in a pod, in a rockwool cube or in a hydroponic cloner, on a nursery shelf. Once its roots exceed 2.5 cm, place it in a basket filled with clay pebbles, then watch it closely for the first few days, as the move from a very humid atmosphere to open air remains the most delicate stage.

The bottle contains 150 ml of gel and ends in a pouring spout that makes it easier to fill your pot. At 0.3 ml per cutting, its contents theoretically correspond to around 500 cuttings, a little fewer in practice since the gel left in the bottom of the pot is thrown away after each session. For a gardener who renews their herbs and takes a few tomato side-shoot cuttings every summer, one bottle covers several propagation seasons, within its shelf life.

The gel keeps for one year after its production date, in an unopened bottle, between 5 and 25 °C and in the dark. It is a light brown gel, without foam, with a characteristic smell. Write the opening date on your bottle's label and keep the bottle in a cool cupboard rather than in the greenhouse, where the temperature often exceeds the upper limit in summer.