When Can You Clone a Cannabis Plant? The Best Way to Clone, Explained

If you’re interested in growing cannabis, you know that plant cloning is extremely popular among growers. When talking about cannabis, cloning is widespread between cultivators because it ensures that the new plant will have the same strain and the same sex as the mother plant – that means it’s always a female. Whether you’re asking yourself how to clone a cannabis plant or the best way to clone cannabis, you should know that it all depends on the timing and the stage of the plant’s growth.

So, when can you clone a cannabis plant? Ideally, you should do it during the vegetative phase, but not too early. Although you can take clippings of a mother plant to make clones at almost every stage of the growth, there are ways and moments to ensure a better cloning process, which we’ll dive into in detail in this article.

Healthy-looking cannabis clones growing into the vegetative phase.

What is a cannabis clone?

A cannabis clone is a cut taken from a plant, which once it grows, becomes a plant that is genetically equal to the mother plant. Cloning is a relatively common technique for creating copies of cannabis plants. The cut taken produces roots and becomes its own plant.

There are numerous advantages of cloning cannabis, which makes this technique crucial for all types of growers. Besides the evident benefit of no longer needing to buy seeds, cloning removes a lot of each growing process’s trial and error. You can repeat the environmental conditions that made the mother plant thrive and perfect your growing skills in every harvest.

Growing from clones can be faster than from seeds because the plant is already an adult. Also, there’s no need to worry about getting a male plant when you’re cloning. Forget about all the varying results you would get with seeds, or the guesswork and the risks of the germinating stage. With a cannabis clone, you skip directly to the vegetative stage, then let the plant grow for a couple of months before you switch to flowering.

When can you clone a cannabis plant?

First of all, it’s crucial to ensure that the mother plant is mature enough for cloning. If it is too young in the vegetative phase, it may not be a good time to take the cutting, as it will struggle to make roots. Between 4 to 8 weeks in the vegetative stage is the best time to take a cutting for cloning. This is because it’s the phase where the plant is growing the most and focusing all its energy on its stems and leaves.

The vegetative stage is the best time to take a cutting from your cannabis.

How to clone a cannabis plant in 5 simple steps:

Step One: Prepare a clean space

Start by setting up a clean environment with the materials to take cuttings of your mother plant. Think of a cannabis cutting process as surgery and make the place almost sterile. Make sure to wear gloves and disinfect your scissors or clippers and other materials.

Step Two: Set up your gear

Have a rooting cube soaked in water, a small pot with your chosen soil for marijuana, or another growing medium ready, as well as rooting gel or power. The scissors, clippers, or knife should be super sharp to make the cut precise. A blunt blade can crush the fibers, making it harder for the clone to root.

Step Three: Cut the right branches

Clip the lower branches of the plant with a 45-degree angle to ensure it will create roots and absorb water more easily. Ideally, pick the branches that are between 5 to 10 inches long with at least a few leaves. If you see some with a new top just growing, that’s the one you should cut. Besides choosing branches closer to the plants’ bottom, you should pick the ones that look healthier. You can take as many cuttings as you want so take more than you need so you don’t fall short.

Pick the branches that look healthier when cloning cannabis.

Step Four: Dip the cuttings into the rooting gel

Gently scrape the skin of the bottom of the branch cut to help generate roots. After taking your cuttings from the mother plant, put them into the water for a couple of minutes to avoid air flowing into the stem. Right after that, you can dip each cutting in the rooting gel or powder – which is a compound of enzymes that support root growth.

Step Five: Set up your clones for rooting

Place each clone into its wet rooting cube, and then put them all inside a plastic container or chamber with high humidity. Let the clones breathe once a day, change the air, and avoid mildew or mold. Trimming the leaves of the clones in this stage will also help them form roots.

Give your new clones at least 12 hours of light and spray them to keep the humidity high; this factor favors root growth. Ideally, you want to keep the environment warm and wet during this stage. If your clones are not closed within a plastic container or chamber, spray them with water droplets several times during the day to keep the leaves always humid.

Success, Your Clones Are Rooted!

After 2 or 3 weeks, the roots will start showing around your rooting cube, which means your cloning was successful! Transplant your clones into bigger pots, but be very careful, treating them as if they’re as fragile as seedlings. Don’t forget to label them too so you know when the cut was taken and what the strain is.

From now on, you can treat your clones as any regular cannabis plant, taking care of the nutrients, hydration, lighting, and humidity. If you’re looking for guidance once you’re clones start to grow, check out our tips for growing marijuana indoors,. As soon as your cannabis plants are big enough, you can take cuttings again to make new clones and following the process once more.

Our Cannabis News page is a place where you can find tips and reliable information about growing cannabis, written and curated by Homegrown Nursery. We’re your dependable source of healthy, feminized cannabis clones in California and Oregon.