Cloning

CLONING
Cloning is a simple method of replicating your plants. In most cases a clone is taken from a mother plant and grown into a new plant that contains the exact same genetic code as its mother plant.
In a selection of 30 seeds you may find a nice mother plant that you wish to keep. You can sustain and keep using her genetic profile indefinitely through cloning.

Any cannabis plant can be cloned once it's been grown to a certain height and has developed a number of node regions. The best place to take a cutting for cloning is above a node that has at least two nodes above it. The smallest cuttings on average are three inches in length. Once the cutting has been taken it is placed in the growing medium and should form new roots over the next one to three weeks.

One hundred and twenty clones rooted in rockwool!

Cloning straight to soil can have a low success rate and is very dependent on the type pf soil that you are using. Use the wrong soil and the clone will fail quickly. The best soil for cloning is a standard loam type with an even N PK ratio. Avoid using seedling or cutting soils as most of these have added hormones and nutrients that are not suitable for cannabis or cannabis cuttings.
Cloning in water also has a low success rate because the roots need air to breath once they have developed. If they remain submerged, the cuttings will eventually die. In water cloning, the cutting needs to be transferred to another medium, such as soil, rockwool or a hydroponics system. This means that the clone will have to move through a number of mediums before finally being transplanted to the main growing environment. Multiple transplants can lead to stress and the overall success rate can decrease because of this.

Some advanced growers like to use an aero cloning kit that acts like a miniature aeroponics systems for the propagation of clones.These systems can be expensive, however, and tend to require a lot of practice before getting cuttings to successfully root in the system.

The best medium for cloning is rockwool cubes or Oasis foam bricks. In order to increase your success rate with cloning you may wish to purchase a rooting solution, which can be bought from most grow shops.

Make sure you that use a clean instrument, or better yet a sterile instrument, when you make your cut. Try to take a piece of stem of no more than three inches between the cut zone and the next node level. The longer this section is, the more difficulty the cutting will have in the uptake of water and nutrients it needs to grow and produce roots. Take the cutting and dip the cut area into the rooting solution before placing it into the medium. Make sure that you close any holes where the cutting may have punctured the medium to prevent air from reaching the cut zone, which can stunt root growth. Do this by simply filling in any gaps with little pieces of the medium. Clones don't need much light to root. Try to avoid using the bigger grow bulbs for cloning as this can be a waste of electricity and bulb life. A simple window with some outdoor light is all you will need for the clone to root. Many people use fluorescent lights for clones.

When the clone takes root in the rockwool you will see the roots jut out from the sides of the cube. It is best to keep the cube size small so that you can observe the roots' progress. A two-inch squared cube is ideal for rooting cuttings. Any bigger and it will take longer for the roots to grow outside of the cube. When they do the clone should be transferred to its new grow medium: soil, hydroponics or aeroponics. This is the most successful way of producing clones. The great thing about cloning is that you can create hundreds of female plants from a single mother. Clones also flower more quickly and you know what you are getting in the end because you have already seen, smoked and grown the plant that the clone was taken from. For information about how to obtain the best results with clones,
turn to the section on SOG and ScrOG growing.

Two labeled trays of fresh clones. After a few days of rooting the clones will look more vigorous.
Although you can take clones at any time during the plant's life it is best to do so during the vegetative stage of growth. Clones carry the same age as the parent plant. Some clones used by seed-bank breeders are actually more than a decade old. They have been propagated for years and years by constantly taking cuttings from clones and then taking further cuttings from these cuttings. If you take a cutting a week before the plant is mature enough to display sex then the cutting should only need a week after rooting before it is able to flower. If you take a cutting during flowering the clone should be able to flower right away after it has rooted. If you want to revert a cutting from flowering to vegetative growth simply keep the cutting under 24 hours of light and clip away any calyx or flower formations that appear. After a short time under constant light, the cutting will revert to vegetative growth; however any manipulation of the photoperiod will throw the plant back into flowering almost instantly.

Clones that are taken from a plant during vegetative growth are much easier to control than clones that are taken from a flowering plant. That is why we generally take clones during the third or forth week of vegetative growth.

Growers can use cloning hormones or rooting hormones, which come in two main formats: powders and gels. Powder hormones are generally used for cloning in soil. The powder is tapped into a small hole in the soil and the cutting is placed into this hole. A small amount of the powder is then added to surface of the soil so that, with successive watering, the powder will seep down into the soil and promote root growth. Rooting gels are much better because they act as a seal, preventing air from reaching the cut zone. In addition, gels are not water soluble, whereas powders tend to be.This means that gels have a longer lifespan than powders.

A proper rooting hormone should contain the vitamin Bl (Thiamine). As an experiment, cut some roots from a test plant and place half of the 'dead' roots into a solution of water and the other half into a solution of water and vitamin Bl.The roots in water with added thiamine will continue to grow for quite some time, while the roots in the plain water solution will die.

The time it takes to root a clone depends on the strain and the cloning method used. Some strains, like Blueberry, are notoriously hard to clone. Others are much easier. On average it takes about a week and half for a clone to develop a root mass suitable for transplantation. Do not be surprised if you find that it takes a set of clones more than three weeks to develop a root mass.The best way to tell whether or not your clones are rooting properly is to clone in batches from the same strain. If some of the clones do not develop a root mass after the others have, chances are that these clones have failed to root.Take one of the clones without any obvious root mass from the medium and pull it up to check for roots. If none have developed then the cutting has failed to root and should be discarded.
You should never let your cloning medium dry out. Keep it damp (not soaking wet) and check for fungi development regularly. Cloning environments containing damp mediums like rockwool are ideal breeding grounds for fungi. If you find that fungi is attacking your clones, consult chapter 12 for details on how to eradicate it from your grow space.

Another method of cloning, called air layering, is described next by Strawdog.

How to Air Layer a Clone
Items Needed:
• Plant
• Match sticks or toothpicks
• Tape
• Razor blade (preferably sterile)
• Rooting hormone (Clonex)
• Tweezers
• Plastic wrap
• Scissors
1) Sterilize all your cutting tools before using them
2) Find a branch that is at least 1/8 inch thick with a minimum of two nodes
3) Use the razor blade to split the branch vertically/lengthwise. Cut at least 1/4 into the branch to meet the phloem.
4) Use tweezers to open the slit; do not break the branch completely
5) Apply rooting hormone to the open wound. Tape a matchstick parallel to the stem for support
6) Pack the open wound carefully with any grow medium, or use a rockwool cube to cover the area (just split the cube down one side and slide over the branch)
7) Wrap the area with the small plastic bag. The effect should be a funnel-shaped plastic wrap enclosure
8) Pack the bag with grow medium before sealing with tape
9) Use a pin to create holes around bag so that you can water the medium
10) Use an eyedropper to keep the medium wet every day
After two weeks, your cutting will have developed roots and you can cut away the branch below the roots. Now you have a clone with roots ready for growth. You can choose to remove the plastic bag if you feel that it is too tight to allow all the roots to pass through it and transplant the clone to its new growing environment.
This method is especially good for growers who wish to transplant a cutting with roots directly to a hydroponic or aeroponic system. It effectively allows you to skip at least one transplanting step, reducing the risk of shock to your clones. The fact that you can grow roots without using a medium (do not use rockwool if this is what you want to do) makes it an extremely effective cloning method for aeroponic systems.

Bonsai Clones
Bonsai clones are easy to make. The objective is to produce a small bushy clone
with multiple branches so that lots of cuttings can be taken from it.
Simply prepare a cutting using your preferred method and prune the clone using the 'how to make cannabis bushes'technique. The end result is a clone with multiple branches and node regions that can give you a constant supply of cuttings.
Keep the bonsai short, about 1.5 feet in height, and you can store it in a very small place. Diminutive bonsai mother plants can be used to generate at least a hundred clones per year.
In countries where cannabis clones are legal, there is quite a market for them. Medical users especially like to buy clones from experienced growers because they know that the grower has worked on multiple strains to find a 'special' mother that suits the medical users needs.
SINSEMILLA HERMAPHRODITES
It is not uncommon for some strains to generate a few hermaphrodites in the final weeks of flowering. This is quite a familiar condition with sinsemilla crops as some plants, in a last ditch effort to continue their line via seeds, will generate a few male flowers to try to self-pollinate. In most cases the pollen produced is not viable, but as a precaution you should clip them away. Simply check your sinsemilla for small yellow banana shapes in the bud during the final weeks of flowering and clip them away.
INCREASING YIELD
Yield, the amount of bud your plant will produce at the end of its grow, is what marijuana cultivation is all about.The more you grow the more you'll learn about what your plants need. The two most fundamental factors in high-yield growth are strains (good genetics) and lighting. Optimal lighting along with good strains will lead to great yields and bud-rich plants. Of course, high yields may not mean highly potent bud. Remember, potency depends on both the strain and how well your plant is grown.
Many growers have found that some of the grow bloomers and advanced-feeding products actually produce greater amounts of bud, but reduce potency and produce a different taste. Learning which feeding products are best requires a degree of experimentation on your part, but experimentation is what growing is all about. To discover1 new methods of growing, the marijuana cultivator must experiment and through failure learn more.