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How to Clone Weed: Step-by-Step Guide
In This Article
Why You Can Trust American Marijuana
Why Should You Clone Cannabis Plants?
How to Choose the Cannabis Mother Plant
How to Clone Cannabis: Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Finding the Right Root Medium and Setup
Step 2: Taking the Cut From Your Mother Plant
Step 3: Transporting Your Cannabis Plant Clone
Cloning Weed FAQs
Why You Can Trust American Marijuana
American Marijuana has been a trusted cannabis site since 2014, with a team of experts in the field working to ensure you’re only receiving premium quality information.
Why Should You Clone Cannabis Plants?
If you’re new to growing cannabis, you may find yourself struggling to germinate marijuana seeds. This is natural as the germination and followed planting process can be quite complicated.
For this reason, many newcomers opt to clone weed instead. Beyond the fact that cutting off a branch and planting it is a much easier process, it also cuts down time on the entire growth cycle. In fact, cloning cannabis takes about a month off the whole process.
Furthermore, cloning marijuana will save space in your garden. When grown from seed, you need to wait some time before determining the sex of your cannabis plant. Through cloning, you can ensure all plants are feminized and produce the rich buds you’re looking for.
However, the best part about cloning is the fact that it’s a genetic replica of an already-established cannabis plant. Therefore, if you have a particular marijuana plant whose effects you enjoy, cloning is the best way to garner more of those effects.
The only downside to cloning is that over time, your plants may degrade. Still, there’s no conclusive evidence to confirm these speculations.
How to Choose the Cannabis Mother Plant
Simply put, the cannabis mother plant is any of the cannabis plants that you want to clone from. When choosing a mother plant, most growers opt for those whose effects they enjoy and those that are built strong and sturdy. In other words, you’ll want to avoid sickly mother plants as these may create sickly clones.
When choosing a mother plant, you’ll want to ensure it’s in the vegetative stage (or on its way to this stage). Plants that are in the flowering stage may produce hermaphrodites which can cause damage to your cannabis clones.
As you can imagine, some growers have dedicated mother plants that they’re consistently producing clones from. However, if you’re a newcomer, this may not be the best route to take. Maintaining a mother plant can be costly (both financially and space-wise). Not to mention, you won’t obtain any buds from this dedicated mother plant as it must always remain in the vegetative stage.
The best way to go about mother plants is as follows:
- From your initial cannabis plants, find a mother plant that you want to clone.
- Cut off a set of branches that will (in the future) be used as new mother plants.
- Now allow the original mother plant to enter the flowering stage.
- With your clones, allow them to grow into the vegetative stage.
- Carefully cut off a number of clones for the next cultivation and continue the cycle.
Since cloning cannabis plants will ensure genetic consistency, you don’t have to worry about future plants having any differences in their genetic makeup. That is, as long as you’re choosing your clones correctly.
As mentioned, it’s best to choose a mother plant that is strong and sturdy. It’s even better if she can supply you with big yields, a density of trichomes, and is contaminant resistant.
How to Clone Cannabis: Step-by-Step Guide
In order to go about cloning, there are a few different methods you can take. However, regardless of the method you choose, you will need the following supplies:
- Scissors – For garnering a cut of the mother plant
- Razor – For trimming the above-mentioned cut
- Rooting Setup – See more information below on various setups
- Rooting Hormone – To ensure the health of your clones
Step 1: Finding the Right Root Medium and Setup
It’s highly recommended you DO NOT place freshly cut clones into the soil. The simple reason for this is fresh clones require stability. When placed in soil, there’s the potential that it can move around too much and cause damage.
As a result, it’s important to determine a rooting medium before you go about cutting clones. There are a few different ways to go about this. These are as follows:
- Rockwool or Root Cubes – This is the cheapest way to go about cloning cannabis plants. Through root cubes (or Rockwool), you can place each cube in a tray filled with water and have complete environmental control over your clones.
- Cloning in Water – You can also use aeroponics to grow clones.
- Auto-cloner – There are also machine sprays that incorporate aeroponics to automatically clone cannabis plants. However, these are pricey and should only be used if you plan to clone many plants.
It may take some experimenting before finding the right rooting medium for you. If you’re new to cannabis cloning, we recommend going with Rockwool or root cubes simply because it’s the cheapest and easiest option.
Step 2: Taking the Cut From Your Mother Plant
We’ve already discussed how to go about choosing your mother plant. From here, you’ll want to make the initial cuts for your marijuana clones.
As mentioned, you only want to make cuts on mother plants when they’re in the vegetative cycle. More specifically, about 2 months into the vegetative process. Once the mother plant has entered the flowering stage, DO NOT make any cuts.
Preferably, you’ll want to wait a few days after fertilization to make your cuts. This will ensure there’s no excess of nitrogen in the leaves and stems. Such cuts may result in your clones having nutrient deficiencies.
When making your cut, you want to:
- Pick a branch that’s long, sturdy, and healthy.
- Use scissors to cut the branch right above the node. If the middle of the branch is too tough, use a razor.
- With your cut, right below the node, cut at a 45° angle with your razor. This ensures the promotion of faster growth.
- Put the fresh cut into a rooting hormone immediately. From there, put it into the rooting setup you have (see above).
- With your clone in the rooting hormone, you want to cut off any leaves towards the bottom. Furthermore, you want to clip the tip of fan leaves to support photosynthesis.
Step 3: Transporting Your Cannabis Plant Clone
It will take clones between 3 to 14 days before they’re ready to be transferred into the soil. During this time, there are a number of things you’ll want to do to ensure their health:
- Make sure clones have enough water to support growth.
- Increase humidity for clones – you can do this by spraying the leaves with water.
- If a clone dies, discard it immediately. This will ensure mold doesn’t populate and contaminate other plants.
If the white roots on your clones have reached 1 to 2 inches, they are ready for transfer. In order to do this, you’ll want to make sure the environment you’re in is sterile. Lack of a sterile environment can cause transplant shock and effectively kill your plants.
When transferring:
- Make sure your pots have plenty of soil.
- Water soil before planting (to prevent soil from moving when the clone is transferred).
- With the water drained, dig a hole that’s 1 to 2 inches deep to bury the clone’s roots.
- Gently place the clone in the soil.
Cloning Weed FAQs
Cloning cannabis is a straight-forward process and, in fact, considered easier than growing from seed.
Clone weed will have the same consistency as the mother plant, making it an ideal solution for garnering more yields of your favorite cannabis plant.
If you’re planning on purchasing an already cloned cannabis plant, you’ll likely be paying between $20 to $40 USD.
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