It can be tough to decide how to start cannabis plants, but cloning is a popular option for cultivators who want a head start on their grow.
Cloning cannabis plants is simpler than it sounds, and it offers many benefits, including cost-effectively generating new plants, growing much more quickly and uniformly, and guaranteeing female plants if you’re cloning from the correct mother plant.
So how do you clone a plant? Check out this how-to guide for some helpful tips!
How to Start Cloning
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Choose your mother plant. Look for healthy plants with traits you want to reproduce, including aroma, flavor, potency, height, flowering time, and yield.
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Prepare the rooting media. This can be rockwool, a tray and water setup, peat, or even foam. Make sure the clones will have enough support while rooting and have plenty of access to water/rooting hormone.
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Choose a branch to cut. Pick one that is sturdy, healthy, and free of disease and pests. You’ll also want to make sure that the tip of the branch has new growth!
4. Use sterile scissors or a razor to cut above the node on the mother plant.
5. Trim the cutting at a 45-degree angle just below its bottom node.
6. Dip the cutting immediately into a rooting hormone and then place it into the rooting media.
7. Remove unnecessary leaves at the bottom of the cutting. We recommend trimming back all but the top two leaves.
8. Keep moist over the next 10-14 days.
9. Transplant when roots reach 1” in length.
Tips for Successful Clones
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Take cuttings from a mother plant when it is in the vegetative stage for quicker growth.
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Don’t fertilize the mother plant leading up to the cutting, this can cause the cutting to put off leaves instead of roots.
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Add perlite to the bottom of your tray to help retain moisture.
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Trim the tips of the fan leaves on the cutting to promote photosynthesis and root growth.
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Add a dome to your cloning environment to keep the humidity up and encourage root growth.
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It’s common for clones to die in the cloning process. When they do, remove them immediately so that they don’t mold and infect the other clones!
Time to Get Cloning
When starting cannabis, choosing how to do it comes down to many factors, including personal preference, grow space, and time between harvests. We hope this guide to cloning comes in handy when you’re deciding how to grow!
Check out our blog for even more tips and tricks for your grow!
