Here's how you get ultimate marijuana cloning success!Marijuana growers have two choices when it comes to starting new plants: grow from seed, or marijuana cloning.
Nowadays, it’s easier to buy marijuana clones than ever before, especially if you’re in California, Colorado, or Washington.
And marijuana clones offer advantages that growing cannabis from seed can’t offer…
Growing from clones you’re sure to have all females, and as long as you do the cloning yourself, you know who the mother plant is and how your clones will grow, yield, and get you high.
But there’s an art and science to marijuana cloning.
Here are five “rules” for more-successful marijuana cloning:
Take your cannabis cuttings from a healthy motherplant. Marijuana cloning gives you genetic duplicates of your marijuana motherplant.
If your motherplants are strong, healthy, and have potent genetics, your clones get the best start possible.
Avoid using motherplants that are sick, or that are plagued with pests.
The only exception to this is if the sickness or pests can be purged from the clones using interventions.
In general though, if the mothers are inferior, the clones are too.
Give Your Marijuana Clones Consistent Climate. Most cannabis clones prefer temperatures slightly higher than your ideal grow room temperature, and they don’t like a day and night cycle with a temperature drop at night.
That’s why most growers root their cuttings under fluorescent lighting that stays on 24 hours a day.
The lighting itself creates temperature stabilization.
Temperatures between 74-77 Fahrenheit are the range you want.
If you go colder than that, the cuttings’ root development might stall or just never happen at all, especially if your cutting root zone is below 69 degrees F.
You can increase your marijuana cuttings’ root zone temperature by using a propagation heating mat.
If you’re growing in true hydroponics like deep water culture or aeroponics, use an aquarium heater to warm up your water temperatures.
If your cuttings’ root zone goes much warmer than 79 degrees F though, you run the risk of creating an environment favorable to damping off or root rot microorganisms that can ruin your cuttings.
In that case, you get a chiller, or you control clone environment so temperatures in the root zone are in the ideal range.
Clones like high humidity: Your cuttings need a humid environment in the 75-95% humidity range until they’ve created roots and are able to intake water through them.
That’s why many marijuana cloners use humidity domes. Other growers say the domes can create root rot or stem root conditions, so they prefer to mist their cannabis clones rather than putting a dome over them.
The best domes for marijuana cloning have aeration vents built in. You want to un-dome or ventilate your cuttings several times a day so they get fresh air.
Just remember, with clones it’s best to go for too much humidity rather than not enough. Until your clones have functioning roots, if they’re in dry air, they’ll die.
Use kind hydroponics lighting. You can use high-output fluorescent, LED, or plasma lighting for optimal marijuana cloning. HID hydroponics lighting is too intense for clones.
Keep your lights on 24 hours a day, and make sure that your clones aren’t too close to the bulbs or LED chips. Clones can easily burn.
Use sterile equipment and materials. You already figured out that your scissors, razor blade, or other tool for cutting clones has to be clean.
But you also want to make sure you trays, cloning domes, and root zone media are clean and sterile too.
Don’t re-use cloning cubes or cloning powders and gels. Start fresh every time.
When you follow these marijuana cloning tips, your clone success rate should be nearly 100%.
If you’re taking 20 clones and seeing only 10 of them survive, something’s wrong, and you want to closely re-evaluate your cannabis cloning techniques, the equipment and environment you use for cloning, and your marijuana motherplants.
We want you to enjoy 100% marijuana cloning success!
