With this topic, we are going to talk about How To Clone A Marijuana Plant. A process of taking a branch off of one plant and creating a whole new plant that carries the exact same genetics from the mother plant.
Why would you want to create a new plant from an old plant? Well, let’s say you have grown this really nice looking plant that has lots of Trichomes, smells nice and has all the qualities of a cannabis plant that you want to grow again. But you don’t have any more of those seeds, or maybe you don’t know the strain as you got the seed in a bag of weed. This is a way for you to produce the same plant without needing to grow from seed.
In this article, you will learn how to successfully clone a cannabis plant. Let’s get started.
How to Clone with success
There are numerous ways to clone a plant, however, this is my favorite method. You can clone your plant during two cycles of a cannabis plant life; Vegetation and/or flowering.
By cloning, you are taking a cutting from the main plant, and making a different plant, both having the same genetic makeup.
Instead of growing from seed and waiting up to 2 weeks for germination, and another 2 weeks for the seedling to grow into vegetation stage, you will take a cutting and grow roots from the base of the stem. By doing this not only you keep the same genetic makeup of the mother (strain, female and characteristics of growth) but you will also lessen the time that it takes for the root system to grow (about 2 weeks until ready for the vegetative stage)
Tools for Success
The process of cloning is relatively easy. What you will need to clone successfully is:
- Healthy cannabis plant in the vegetation stage or beginning of flower stage (aka: monster cropping)
- a razor blade, scalpel, or cutting sheers.
- Rooting hormone
- a cup or glass of water
- rock wool cube or another medium that holds moisture well
- a tray with dome
- Rubbing Alcohol
- PH balanced water (5.8 to 6.8)
- spray bottle
Step By Step Cloning
The best place to clone a plant is from the lower branches (the oldest part of the plant) as the growth hormones have already been established. The roots that will be growing, grow quicker and stronger from this part of the plant.
- Clean Your Tools – First, you will want to clean your cutting tool with isopropyl alcohol to sterilize it. If you choose to skip this step, know that you might be introducing disease to this new plant.
- Set up Your work area – Next make sure that all the set up is in place before you start cutting. Tray and dome are clean and place. The rock wool cube is wet with distilled PH balanced water. Have a cup or glass with PH balanced water ready for when you take the cutting. (By putting the cutting directly into the cup of water will prevent an air bubble from entering into the stem)
- Take your cutting – When cutting the plant, locate a node on the lower part of the cannabis plant that is 2 or 3 nodes from the site of new growth. Cutting at a 45-degree angle just above the node.
- Place cutting in Water – as soon as you take the cutting place it into the cup of ph balanced water until you are ready to plant it in the Rock wool cube. In the meantime, you can go and take more cuttings while placing them in the cup of water.
- Slice the stem – Take the cutting from the cup of water and slice the bottom portion of the stem into two “legs” that way it doubles the area for roots to form. *refer to picture*
- Dip the stem in rooting hormone – Once you have cut the stem, dip the stem into the rooting hormone at least 2 inches in.
- push clone into rock wool cube – Take the freshly dipped clone and push it into the rock wool cube (about halfway through the cube, you want the base of the stem protected within the cube)
- Trim the leaves – Once the clone has been placed into the cube, cut lower branches off and keep 2 or 3 small fan leaves attached. Proceed by cutting each fan leaf “finger” in half. The reason why You should do this, the plant no longer has roots to uptake nutrients and water it needs to get its source of water from the leaves. Since the plant has no way of getting nutrients, it won’t have the energy to keep growing the leaves that it still has. By cutting the lower branches and the fingers of the leaf it is helping the plant use that much-needed energy into producing roots.
- Mist the leaves – Now that you have your cutting into its growing medium, how do you keep it alive? You will need to place it on the tray and provide a high humidity environment. Take the spray bottle with the pH-balanced water and mist the leaves; that is where the plant will now absorb the water from until it has roots. You want to keep the humidity level above 70% and below 90%. If you don’t have a hydrometer you can determine the humidity level by observing the water droplets on the inside of the dome. If there aren’t any droplets you will know that the humidity levels are too low and you need to spray the plants again with PH balanced water.
- Check and mist daily – That’s it! The hard work is done. Now you check on your plants every day to make sure that the leaves are still wet and the humidity is still high in the dome. Within 2 weeks you will start to see the roots poke out from the rock wool cube and then you can transplant them into whatever growing medium you choose to grow in.
Monster Cropping
Monster cropping is the same process as cloning a Vegetative plant as mentioned above. However, the difference is that you are taking a clone from a flowering plant. The reason you might want to do this is that this new clone when it grows up it will grow many more bud sights, and provide a heavier yield. Almost as if it turns into a monster.
Here is an example of a monster cropped plant.
You, Will, Be A Pro In No Time
Great! You now know how to clone a marijuana plant. This technique can be used for almost any other species of plant, that you don’t want to have to grow from seed. You can now make a genetic copy and keep growing that same strain.
If you have any comments or questions about cloning or any other topic please feel free to leave a comment down below and we can have a conversation about it.
Until next time,
Happy Growing!