How does the age of the mother effect cloning?

zeddd

Well-Known Member
regeneration,correct,new growth will root faster than the harder stemed part of the plant ,but my plants some of them are years old so I just take a clone and this becomes my new mother once or twice a year.w e all know that the older parts will root dude,but I think you get better clones from nice soft stems new growth,they just root quicker,the older more hard stems still root but the take longer,
bollox, ive been taking cuts off cuts for years but u believe what u want
 

tyke1973

Well-Known Member
bollox, ive been taking cuts off cuts for years but u believe what u want
dude why ya so abrupt, no need,fair play you can take cutting from older stems,we all can ,why not just be polite when answering questions .Are you reading the post all the way through ,we are saying that we also take cuts of cuts,you have to or your mother plant would be outta control,Once they out grow my mother unit then i clone ,to form a new mother,This has gone on for many years with my mothers

We are not saying you are wrong zedd ,just a different answer,this gives him more options but no need to answer like you have,
 
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Lostnz

Well-Known Member
Personally. I would never take clones off mother younger then 2months old. I waited pass 2months before started to clone cutt. Only regret is I should have kept my mothers in soil and not coco. Grows to fast in coco. Pain in ass. I take bottom cuttings only. Small size but i make them a bit long.roots faster then a big cutt.
 

WeedFreak78

Well-Known Member
I usually wait to see signs of maturity before cloning, pre flowers at the nodes. If I top a plant early, I'll clone the top, usually around week 3 or 4 in dwc.

Where to take clones from and the terminology gets confusing. I hear people say top of plant or bottom of plant, it doesn't matter. Cannabis is a herbaceous plant and has 3 main stem types, old woody growth, semi woody growth and fresh green growth. Take clones from fresh green growth at the end of any branch, top or bottom. If your growing dedicated mothers train them for a flat canopy, to have more equal hormone distribution to the growth tips. Xmas tree shaped plants will show some difference in clones from top to bottom due to hormone distribution. This video helped me.
 

gogogogogogo

Well-Known Member
I usually wait to see signs of maturity before cloning, pre flowers at the nodes. If I top a plant early, I'll clone the top, usually around week 3 or 4 in dwc.

Where to take clones from and the terminology gets confusing. I hear people say top of plant or bottom of plant, it doesn't matter. Cannabis is a herbaceous plant and has 3 main stem types, old woody growth, semi woody growth and fresh green growth. Take clones from fresh green growth at the end of any branch, top or bottom. If your growing dedicated mothers train them for a flat canopy, to have more equal hormone distribution to the growth tips. Xmas tree shaped plants will show some difference in clones from top to bottom due to hormone distribution. This video helped me.
Thanks for that, a lot of useful information there!
 

TheChemist77

Well-Known Member
woody stems do take longer to root than new flexible stems.. as for age of the mother, i always start from seed and wait till the mother shows sign of its sex wile stil in vegitive state. normally between the seventh to tenth node.. never take clones before the plant is 50-60 days old, that way it should be mature.. you can clone a plant earlier, but you will not get the full potential of the plant as its not mature..once in a wile ill take a clone earlier but only to root it under 12/12 light to find the sex, but then after i know the sex its a throw away..clones i take from mature mothers are rooted under 18/6 light sced, once rooted usually after 7-10 days in my clone king, i place each clone into 1'' rockwool, placed into 4''x4'' rock wool blocks and onto my flood n drain table.. veg time depends on strain, some sativas can go wright from rooted clone into flower wile indica dominant strains need at least 1-2 weeks of veg time if its a strain that does not stretch much in flower i give it 3 weeks of veg before its put into my bloom room.
i however do not keep mothers after the clones are taken.. i keep the best 2 or 3 clones to be new mother plants.. after say 2 weeks wile all the other clones go into the bloom room the 2 or 3 best clones(mothers) stay in veg.. when my bloom room is 4 weeks into bloom, those mothers have now had 6 weeks of veg time and are ready to be cloned..this way the clones taken have just enough time to root then get 2-3 weeks of veg and by the time my plants in bloom are pulled,the clones are ready to go into the bloom room and 2-3 new mothers take their place.. doing it this way my mother plants are never around long enough to recieve any stress or degrade, if anything ive found they improve as the strain evolves or adapts to my grow style or my enviroment.. i had ran a nirvana misty strain this way for 7 years, i was probably into the hundreth or so generation of clone of clones from the original seed mom and imo the clones wher better than the original seed mom, they finished flowering in 50 days, wile the seed mother and first few generations of clones took 56 days to finish..they also had better structure, wile the smell, crystal production, and yields wher wroughly the same..that misty strain was very tough, i tried multiple times to get one to get pollen to create S1'S, the rhodilisation method, temp stress, nute stress,ph stress, light stress, even coildal silver,, i never could get that plant to produce any viable pollen.. after 7 years i lost it,, i had bought a batch of clones from a dispencery that brought with it a spider mite infestation.. now that strain is no longer available.. now im currently growing multiple strains but my best is T.H SEEDS BUBBLE GUM, ive been growing this strain for almost 3 years now using clones of clones for mothers.. this time however i used tiresias mist on a branch of a single plant and created S1 seeds so ill never lose this strain..i also NEVER buy clones or allow any way that can introduce bugs into my garden..lesson learned..
 

TheChemist77

Well-Known Member
i also NEVER re-veg plants or take clones off a plant in flower,, i tried this method, i believe it was called monster cropping,, it involves taking clones off a plant 3 weeks into flower, then rooting them and re-veging them,, it does work,, however the clones take longer to root and even longer veg time to get back into a vegative state,,yes there seems to be tighter nodes and tons of bud sites on these re-vegged clones but imo its not worth the time put in as i can root and bloom a regular clone in the time it takes to get 1 monster cropped clone rooted and vegged...i also believe re-vegging like this will degrade the plant in time as its alot of stress..im not saying its bad or im wright,, many people monster crop with great success,,,im just not one of them...grow well and be well to all
 

6ixtynin9

Well-Known Member
I've read a lot of people say not to clone from a plant before it's about two months old... is there any science to back this up?

I'm currently growing from seed in an effort to weed out the undesirable phenotypes before selecting one mother plant to keep and am trying to keep a 6 week veg cycle. They're at day 29 now I believe and have several lower branches capable of being cloned. The goal is 4 clones from each plant...

Is there really a problem with taking clones from a plant this early? Or is it all just a bunch of talk?
No, a plant does not need to be 2 months old before you can start taking cuttings. Though the more mature a plant is, the more hormone it has, therefore, a higher success rate, plus more abundant cuttings to take. On my S1 projects, I'd literally grow plants out from seeds just to chop it in half @ 7 - 9 nodes (2.5 - 3.5 weeks), so I can clone the top half. You're pretty much 1 month in, you're good to clone. Also, cuttings can be taken from anywhere on the plant - does not have to only be from the bottom. There's lots of BS and misinformation floating around. Best thing if you really want to know, is do it yourself. Pheno hunting is a good thing and people are practicing it now more than ever.
 

MichiganMedGrower

Well-Known Member
The reason the old guideline is to wait 2 months from seed before cloning is to be sure the plant is mature and sexed.

And lower branches will root faster than upper ones as they will return to producing rooting hormones faster than apical branches that are focused primarily on new shoots.

Of course if they have turned stiff and woody its best to move up to a softer one.
 

6ixtynin9

Well-Known Member
The reason the old guideline is to wait 2 months from seed before cloning is to be sure the plant is mature and sexed.
Not if it were feminized seeds.

And lower branches will root faster than upper ones as they will return to producing rooting hormones faster than apical branches that are focused primarily on new shoots.
Half true. Attached to the plant - apical branches are focused on growth. Severed from the plant - it means nothing. Once severed, the cutting itself has no way of sensing whether its the apical or lower branches, despite containing traces of hormones. I've had top cuttings that have rooted faster than bottom cuttings, bottom cuttings that have rooted faster than the top, top/bottom cuttings that have rooted at the same time, woody stems rooting faster than soft green stems and vice versa.
 

MichiganMedGrower

Well-Known Member
Not if it were feminized seeds.



Half true. Attached to the plant - apical branches are focused on growth. Severed from the plant - it means nothing. Once severed, the cutting itself has no way of sensing whether its the apical or lower branches, despite containing traces of hormones. I've had top cuttings that have rooted faster than bottom cuttings, bottom cuttings that have rooted faster than the top, top/bottom cuttings that have rooted at the same time, woody stems rooting faster than soft green stems and vice versa.
Feminized seed plants are all I grow personally. They are better in many ways when flowered after maturity.

But the guideline being asked about is older than feminized seeds.

And I realize there are tons of variables but the hormones present in a low branch are different than an apical one.

And cutting low doesn't slow down the donor plant as much.
 

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
Its always a pleasure for me when I top a plant, to use this top as my copy. tops have always rooted faster, grown stronger and stunk more in veg for me. I've taken copies from tiny couple week old plants, even tops from them are fine, tender, but clone simply if careful.
 

MichiganMedGrower

Well-Known Member
Its always a pleasure for me when I top a plant, to use this top as my copy. tops have always rooted faster, grown stronger and stunk more in veg for me. I've taken copies from tiny couple week old plants, even tops from them are fine, tender, but clone simply if careful.

Funny. I have had the opposite experience rooting tops.

I just put cuttings in a cup of ocean forest. No aero cloning or anything.

You?
 

boilingoil

Well-Known Member
The problem stems from taking cuts from a seed plant that is not sexually mature yet. A lot of that is because the plant hasn't had that a chance to start storing starches to support its needs during the rooting process. Hell when I clean up the bottom of my plants before flowering I throw the branches in a cup of tap water, no hormones and 90% of them will root in 10-14 days with just changing the tap water every 2 days.
 

6ixtynin9

Well-Known Member
Feminized seed plants are all I grow personally. They are better in many ways when flowered after maturity.
+1 on feminized seeds

And I realize there are tons of variables but the hormones present in a low branch are different than an apical one.
True but it's hard to determine which branch, and at what concentration level, that the hormones are stored in as hormones are not distributed evenly. That is unless you maintain a flattop but that would be too tedious just for the purpose of cloning. I take 100-200 cuts every week and I find that all cuts (even those that are next to each other) root at different rates.

I broke my rapid rooter habit just a month ago with 100% success so far. wet pro mix, clonex and a cup. fuck them rooters
Yeah buddy! That's my prefer method, except no hormones, for spring and summer runs. During colder weathers, I find that aero/bubbler seems to work more efficiently for me. Left over cuttings, I just stick it in 3" neoprene inserts and float it on top of my planted aquarium tank. They root.. And Grow... And I often forget about 'em...
 

chemphlegm

Well-Known Member
The problem stems from taking cuts from a seed plant that is not sexually mature yet. A lot of that is because the plant hasn't had that a chance to start storing starches to support its needs during the rooting process. Hell when I clean up the bottom of my plants before flowering I throw the branches in a cup of tap water, no hormones and 90% of them will root in 10-14 days with just changing the tap water every 2 days.
I dont experience that problem when I take tops off of very young seedlings male or female and root them. They root as fast as the others. I dont practice this normally but have done it a bunch. I do put them all in a dip and into dirt though, maybe its the water only/no hormones that makes your cuts from young plants a problem?
 

boilingoil

Well-Known Member
I dont experience that problem when I take tops off of very young seedlings male or female and root them. They root as fast as the others. I dont practice this normally but have done it a bunch. I do put them all in a dip and into dirt though, maybe its the water only/no hormones that makes your cuts from young plants a problem?
Those are just clean-up cuttings, I really don't do much with them but use them outdoors in the summer season. A lot of them just get thrown away.
I'm sort of like 6xitynin9 there as I religously take 21 cuttings every 2 week but I need only 12 every 3 weeks for my rotation. Pick the best, most healthiest for the flower rooms trash the rest at some point, I do have a problem with just killing off healthy plants, probably why my veg room is as big as my flower room.
My prefered method is 3 ounce dixie cups of coco coir, a side scrape to expose a little phloem and a quick dip in some root gel and water them in.
 

Father Ramirez

Well-Known Member
It seems that no matter the point being made, someone has a valid counterpoint. The lesson to us all is that each of our experiences is singular, not universal. And that our crop of choice is adaptable, and will overcome our failures.
 
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