When is it a good time to take cutting and make clones?

MVcowboy

Active Member
Never grown my own clones before, always just bought them from different dispensaries. Wanna try my hand at making them on my own and stop buying them. I know you should do it when it shows that it’s a mature plant. Any tips?
 
Late veg or first week of flower. If you take clones at end of week one flower (it’s still in veg technically even in week 1-2) then this will promote better branching than when you take em in veg. Don’t go beyond week 1 of flower when taking clones
Okie dokie, I’m just alittle confused. I’ve heard about like “mother plants” that they never put them in flower and they just keep them in veg. Is that just what big grow ops do?
 
You can veg a mother indefinitely. Cloning can be done nearly anytime. (Dont do it when young of course) but its rather straight forward brother. If u need any advice to cloning just lemme know.
 
yes, clone from mature plant in veg up until end of week one flower.
If you have the luxury of more than one grow space you can do a perpertual harvest; get a bunch of plants to first week flower, take clones from these plants. Veg clones for 7-9 weeks (until you harvest the first lot) then put the mature clones into flower, clone, rinse and repeat.
You can also use mother plants which are plants kept in veg for the express purpose of providing clones to another flowering space. Different styles suit different people/purposes. Big grow ops usually have mother plants but I know of many farms (including ours) that do perpetual harvests for many generations of clone. There are various reasons a big op would work with mothers - genetic integrity/research/breeding programs/ suits their workspace to have a nursery with mothers etc. We keep genetic material in the form of seeds and tissue culture so we tend to do perpetual harvests and not use many mothers as it is more profitable for us to use the space we would need for 200-300 mothers for flowering plants.
 
Why should we wait until the first week of flower? Kinda curious about that.

In my case, I am running a perpetual SOG (sea of green) using clones taken from clones taken from clones. Keeping in mind that I am challenged by not having space for tall plants I have to start pruning soon to get plants that will be shorter. Awhile ago I started a couple of plants from seed just as a change of pace and to work with a different strain. Three of the seeds were Girl Scout Cookies and 4 of them were Papaya. None of them were feminized.

As soon as those new plants were tall enough to handle their first pruning I will use the cuttings to start clones. I know that the cuttings will struggle to root because of the cooler temps in the room because it was late winter and early spring but I do it anyway. Each and every cutting gets a note fixed onto its small pot telling me the date of the cutting and the plant it was cut off of.

If the cutting does not root then so be it and I toss the cutting onto the stuff headed for the compost pile. If it roots then I start to maintain it like any other clone.

Eventually the plant will show whether it is female or male. I wait another week or so just to make sure that I am looking at pistils and not just a figment of my imagination. If the plant is male it is headed for the compost pile and I can then go through all the clones pulling any that came from the male plant. It may seem like extra work to go through doing the cutting and rooting just to toss them because they are male.

But, if the plant is a female then I already have several clones rooted and being up-potted. Last winter I had several clones off of a couple of Blue Dream and already rooted before the mother started showing pistils. Toss the male cuttings just made room for more cuttings off of the female plants. That is how I did it last spring and it worked for me.

Have fun today.
 
Why should we wait until the first week of flower? Kinda curious about that.

I don’t think that was the suggestion. A week or two into flowering is about as late in the game as you’d normally want to take cuttings. Rooting becomes progressively more difficult the further you get into flowering, and there’s a longer reveg period after/if they do root.
 
I usually take my clones right before switching to 12/12. Just the other day I decided that I didn't have enough clones to supply all my friends with this season so I just finished cloning from clones. My clones are in veg and are now about 10" tall so I took advantage of some lower branch trimming and made a batch of clones. It is said that lower branches make better clones due to their higher ratio of natural rooting hormones but I'm still sceptical to that theory. I have taken clones from higher up on the plant and they rooted just the same as lower cuts.
Good luck! :ganjamon:
 
The timing is everything here. The best time to take a clone is in the last week of veg, right before the flip. If you give 7-10 days for the clone to take root, it starts veg at exactly the same time you start flower. Then you have 2 months of veg and flower and almost simultaneously as your bloom area gets done, the vegging clones are now ready to take new clones, and then go into flower. A perpetual garden is what you create, with properly timed clones.
Also, here is a link to my DIY bubble cloner... by far the most reliable method to create viable clones that I have ever used... and it is cheap cheap cheap to build!
 
Last week of veg is good to clone. I do it at end of week 1 flower as it promotes more side branching in the clones
 
On timing... when is the plant producing the most amount of growth hormones??

I wood suggest early in flower when the plant is in stretch. Do not take the main stem, that is where the growth hormones are mainly being produced.
Those growth cells are then translocated to the side shoots so they grow longer.

Take side shoots.
 
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