Stages before Cloning prep. Week 7 in the Life of a cannabis plant.

 

This week we have not done much. We finished up topping. We left the stunted one alone to let it catch up. Next few weeks we will be prepping for and cloning The plants which are ready. By ready i mean healthy and branching well. The banches will need 2 lower nodes and at least 3 upper nodes before we can safely clone off of them without effecting the growth of the mother as well as providing a well matured clone. If you try to clone off a branch thats not ready it will not grow back very well, will slow the growth to a point which makes planting new plants instead viable.

The Clones which are taken from an immature branch will have to mature before it will fully veg. This will result in a 3 tipped leaf branching that takes up to 4 weeks to grow out of after a slowed rooting process. Avoid this by simply waiting for the branch to be fully mature before attempting to  clone. Takes a little more time upfront but it will ensure a smooth transition from inside to outside. These videos provide a great example of a plant thats not mature enough to clone. But close enough to being ready that they look good enough to just go ahead and clone. Problem above as well as stunting of the mothers because in order to get viable clones will you need to strip all of the plant. Will take a month minimum to recover which can be fine if you dont plant on budding the mothers 2 weeks after taking clones. We do so we will be waiting for maturity and maybe a little past that. Keep in mind we don't know the sex of these plants yet. So if we want for example 20 clones this season. We have to take 10 clones or more from each plant. Then we have to sex either the mother or a clone off the mother. Remove all clones that come from a male and then we can pick 20 clones out of the clones which are female. In my experience its 40% female to 60% male. Assume half your crop is a male to ensure better consistent results in the long run. its also what makes this cloning process better then attempting to grow seeds. If i wanted 20 seeds to grow a crop i would need 60 plants to ensure 20 will be female. So if i take 6 seeds clone 10 each i should end with a minimum of 20 female clones and very little wasted resources. 60 clones costs 10 dollars for supplies. 60 seeds costs 300$ on a good day and 50% of those will never germinate. so double that if your lucky.