If you’re just getting into marijuana planting, you may have heard people talking about “cloning” their plants. Is this some advanced farming technique that only veteran farmers can employ? Not at all, but it certainly is an amazing technique that can help you increase the size of your plantation very quickly. Marijuana plants, like many other plants, can be cloned. What this means is that you can take cuttings from your existing plants and encourage them to grow roots. Once a cutting roots, it effectively becomes a brand new plant.
Plant cloning is a fairly common practice, it’s is popular at commercial levels where plants need to be grown efficiently and with consistency. Since plant cloning is an asexual process (meaning the newly-made plants have the exact same DNA as the plan from which they were cloned) you can copy all the characteristics of the “parent” plant.
As a marijuana farmer, why should you be interested in plant cloning? Cloning your marijuana plants can really improve your ability to produce quality cannabis. Plant cloning is also useful for people who are about to start their marijuana farm. Instead of buying seeds and starting from the ground up, you can buy quality marijuana clones and plant them instead. You can check out the best clones sold here.
How to Clone Marijuana Plants
The cloning process for pretty much any plant is the same. You need to identify a healthy and successful plant. One whose traits you would want to replicate in other plants as well. Once you have identified your plant, you will proceed to take cuttings from it. These cuttings are then prepped and placed in rooting mediums.
With the right conditions and regular care, these cuttings will eventually begin to grow roots. After they have developed a proper root system, they can be transplanted into soil. At this point, your cuttings will have become independent plants that will become a part of your collection.
In order to successfully produce marijuana clones, you will need the right tools. It is important to prepare your cuttings in the correct manner. Otherwise, they will fail to root or produce weak plants.
Benefits of Producing Marijuana Clones
- You get exact copies of your best plants. A clone’s traits such as its yield, the flavor of its cannabis, growth time, etc. are all similar to its parent plant.
- You won’t have to learn about your clone’s characteristics since it’ll behave just like its parent plant. This means that you will have to experiment less in order to produce quality yields.
- You can get dozens of clones from a single plant. Even if all of your clones don’t root, you can still produce around 6 to 10 new plants in a week.
- Plant cloning is incredibly low cost. The supplies you need for cloning are very basic, and that’s pretty much the only cost you’ll need to bear.
- Marijuana plants can be used for cloning at any stage of their life.
The Cloning Process
Cloning a marijuana plant is quite straightforward. But before you begin, you should make sure that you have all the equipment you need on hand. Here’s what you need:
- A pair of sharp scissors or a razor blade
- Rooting Medium
- Rooting Hormone
The scissors are going to be used for taking your cuttings. They need to be sharp to make nice and clean cuts. When taking your cuttings, you don’t want to accidentally damage the base of your cutting as you remove it.
- Prepare your tools for cutting by cleaning and sterilizing them. Dirty tools can infect your plant and cutting.
- Identify branches that are sturdy and have at least two nodes on them. Your cuttings need to be healthy enough to propagate into strong plants. You should take cuttings from the middle of your plant.
- Begin clipping your selected cuttings and set them aside in water. don’t leave your cutting in the air, otherwise, air bubbles can end up entering the stem.
- After removing them, use a razor or your scissors to cut their base at a 45-degree angle. This will help encourage better root growth. Alternatively, you can immediately dip your cutting in a rooting hormone.
- Before planting them into your rooting medium, get rid of any leaves that are growing close to your cutting’s base.
- Place your cutting into your rooting medium and place it somewhere warm and humid. Your cuttings need a decent amount of sunlight, moisture, and warmth to grow successfully. If your area doesn’t have the right conditions, you will have to buy a humidity dome for your clones. Humidity domes help you regulate the environment in which your cuttings grow.
- Regularly check on your cuttings and make sure they’re growing in the right conditions. Clones that are successful will start sprouting roots from their base after a week.
- Once your clones have developed a proper rooting system, you can place them in soil.
The learning curve for plant cloning isn’t extremely steep, meaning that most people can learn how to clone plants after a few tries. And once you get the hang of it, you can begin replicating your best plants at a very fast pace.
Conclusion
Cloning your marijuana plants can be a great way to multiply your plantation without worrying about ruining the quality of your yield. Since plant cloning allows you to replicate your existing plants’ characteristics, you can gain better control over your plantation’s quality. This is especially useful for marijuana farming since you can bring consistency into every batch that you produce.
Cloning a marijuana plant is fairly simple as this plant is quite robust. But this does not mean that you don’t need to provide it with extra care. Plant clones need to be kept in the right environment in order to maximize their chances of prorogating. Once they develop a rooting system, you can place them in soil and start treating them as a fully grown plant.
