Everything you wish you knew about cloning – from G. of Vancouver Island Seed Company.

Cloning is easy enough for anyone to do successfully, guaranteed. The information is everywhere: as close as your local nursery, or at your fingertips on the Internet. The first person to introduce me to the art of making cuttings was my grandmother, though my mother really entrenched the knowledge. My great-grandparents were farmers who earned their living off the land, and to this day I still associate the taste of a fresh-picked strawberry with the few memories I have of Nan and Granddad and the farm. The knowledge they learned while growing up was passed down to the next generation, both by tale and by example. The task my grandmother so impressed me with was simple gardening know-how for her – the ability to take one plant and make many from it. She would cut branches off a plant with a sharp knife, stick it into a solution (hers was made by soaking pieces of willow tree branches in water, a home-made rooting hormone) and, within a week or so, the cuttings would grow roots and become plants themselves. Cannabis growers call this cloning, but regular gardeners call it “taking cuttings”. Hey – asexual reproduction by any other name is still as sweet!Whether you’re a small gardener, large-scale farmer, or marijuana breeder/seed producer, cloning is a great tool to use because of the results: savings, and increased production. Let me state clearly that I’m not saying “clones instead of seeds”, but clones as well as seeds. This is a step-by-step walk through the process.I recommend obtaining a world-class strain by purchasing from fine seed breeders like Vancouver Island Seed Company (VISC) check our sponsors . For this article, we used the original Burmese. Germinate and plant your seeds (hopefully all seeds will germinate) and, when the plants are mature enough (see Photos 1, 2, 3 & 4 Maturity Descriptions), take ten clones from each of the Burmese plants, making sure to mark which plant each clone came from (using letters or numbers to match clones to parents). When the 100 or so clones have visible roots, flip the light regime to flower the plants (12 hours on, 12 hours off). Within a week –at most two – the budding plants will have shown their respective sexes (see Photos 5, 6 & 7 Revealed Sexes). Kill all male clones as soon as they show themselves to eliminate the risk of your crop being pollinated, which means seeded bud. You should now have five large Burmese females in bud with around five more weeks of fattening up before harvest, and 50 guaranteed female clones that need transplanting. These new clones will veg under 18 or 24 hours of light. Just before these 50 are ready to be flipped to bud, you can also clone them, giving you unlimited supply of guaranteed Burmese female cannabis plants.

What You Need

• A fine mist Spray Bottle, which you can purchase at any gardening or hardware store.

• A new and clean Razor Blade. It’s a good idea to have more than one; I recommend purchasing them in bulk from the painting department of your local hardware store. Get the type with only one sharp side to protect your fingers.

• A Humidity Hood (one that includes closable vents is best) (See Photo 8).

• A Waterproof Tray and Tray Insert (you won’t need tray inserts if using Rockwool® as your medium) and these MUST match so buy them as a set (See Photo 9).

• A pH Tester and pH adjusters (Up and Down). You can purchase an expensive meter or you can use the inexpensive drop kits such as the one made by General Hydroponics. (See Photo 11 pH Tester Drop) You can find pH testers and adjusters at a variety of shops including hydroponic shops, garden centers, pet stores and pool supply shops.

• A two-light fluorescent fixture fitted with plant friendly tubes. This allows you to create a separate “grow chamber” in a closet, or on a shelf. This is not absolutely necessary – I will often just place the clones off to one side of my vegetative room, like many growers do – but it is reco mmended. I also suggest using a supplement such as SuperThrive (www.superthrive.com) to add to the rooting medium, especially if using Rockwool.

The situation for the small gardener is as good as it looks, and for the commercial grower it gets even better. Similar to the home grower, the recommendation is to purchase then germinate and plant some seeds; only this time, as soon as it is possible to make one or two clones from the growing plants, do so. Once again make sure to carefully mark the clones with the plant they came from. Keep all of the plants in the vegetative stage to increase in size as the clones develop roots. As soon as roots are visible, place them into a 12-hour-on/12-off light cycle to induce budding and determine the sex of the plant; again, kill all the males. You now have five large female plants. Let these be your mother plants, revert to the 18/6 or 24-hour vegetative cycle and continue cloning from them. All of the clones you make are guaranteed female and you can make hundreds from these mother plants.

Remember, if I were to breed a 420 male with a 420 female, it would be an F2 cross (second generation) and the characteristics would vary. For guaranteed stable results, F1 cloning is the only answer, and is all that we at VISC do with our seeds. (If you are not a seed breeder like myself, you will not need to keep males around.)

So we have our list of equipment needed on page 34. Let’s get started. I assume that you have access to a healthy female marijuana plant and a supply of clean water, so we have everything we need to make clones. I assumed everyone who grows knows the pH levels of their nutrient solution is as important as the strength of their fertilizer; however, it turns out that many people haven’t learned important information. Make sure you have pH testers and adjusters in your garden!

The first step is to prepare the mother for the process. It is important to ensure that the mother plant is healthy, in the vegetative stage of life, and that nitrogen levels are low. Ensure this by holding off fertilizing with anything at all for five or six days prior to the procedure and spraying her leaves with plain water the day before. By not fertilizing the plant you’re reducing the amount of nutrients stored in her leaves, and by spraying her with water, you’re leeching the immediately available nitrogen from her. If a clone has excess nitrogen stored in the leaves, it will use up its energy trying to continue to grow vegetation instead of developing roots. I will also spray the mother down moments before actually cutting clones from her.

If using #4 Mix®, keep adding the pH-adjusted water, mixing thoroughly until it is evenly wet and nearly saturated; you can squeeze water out of the soil at this stage. Next, fill the tray inserts with the wet #4 Mix® and pack down with medium pressure. Plants need to be able to grow through the soil, but the soil holds the clone upright until it develops roots so it needs to be packed tightly enough to hold the clone in place. Let the filled inserts stand for a few minutes to drain off extra water, then place the insert into the waterproof tray. Next, poke holes in the soil with a toothpick or similarly shaped object just a little wider that the stem of the clones to be cut – do not make the holes deep enough to touch the bottom of the tray, as we want the clone must be surrounded by soil.

14. Place into rooting hormone.	15. Place clone in Mix4®.	16. Place clone in Rockwool®.	17. Top roots.
18. Bottom roots in Mix4®	19. Bottom roots in Rockwool®	20. Transplanting Clone.	21. Clone in beer cup.