Clones are branches from cannabis plants that are cut off and then rooted in order to obtain a replica (clone) from the mother plant. As a result, the plant grown has the exact same traits as the mother plant. This allows for a balanced grow, as well as high yields as you can grow the same exact plant over different grows. In this post we’ll talk about how to grow cannabis clones outdoors, its benefits, and tricks to get the best results.
Advantages of Growing Clones Outdoors
Growing cannabis outdoors can produce great results but it also needs quite a lot of care; generally speaking, growing clones outdoors can save you quite a lot of issues and can provide plenty of benefits.
- You can replicate your favourite plant; you can clone a plant that’s growing indoors or outdoors in order to have smaller clones, allowing you to either share strains or multiply the size of your grow in no time.
- If you’ve planted outdoors in the ground, you can take cuttings and place them out alongside it or even preserve the strain.
- You can take clones from one strain and preserve them inside in order to plant them again next season. You can keep your clones indoors using a small grow tent and a low light such as an 2x55w fluorescent system to cover half a square meter, or a 4x55w in order to cover one meter. You can also use an extractor designed to get rid of excess heat and renew air in the grow.
How to Grow your Own Cannabis Clones
The process of cloning isn’t hard, but it’ll need to be done delicately in order to not contaminate nor harm the cutting or, even more importantly, the mother plant. It’ll need to be extremely healthy, and all of your tools and surfaces must be clean and sterilized.
Prep the Plant
If you want to guarantee proper growth of your cuttings, you’ll want to keep your mother plants in good condition, well fed and not in the flowering stage, as this will directly reflect upon the clones.
- Before cutting the branches to take cuttings, you’ll need to prepare your plant. You’ll need to water a few hours before to keep it hydrated – the cutting won’t be able to absorb water for a few days.
- We don’t recommend using fertilizers during the last watering so that the plant doesn’t spend any energy on growing stems and leaves; you need it to produce roots.
- Use a preventive insecticide such as Proneem neem oil a few days before cloning your plants, guaranteeing a clean, insect-free grow.
Prepping The Growing Area
Like with any grow, it’s incredibly important to give your cannabis plants high quality substrate. When it comes to growing clones outdoors, their first growing medium will be either peat or a jiffy plug.
- Add water to your peat pr jiffy plug before putting your clones in.
- Wring out the jiffy’s in order to drain any leftover water and make sure it’s nice and aired out for roots to hrow.
- Fill out your cloning tray, even if you’re not using them all; they’ll help you to keep the humidity levels even in your propagator.
Taking the cuttings
Before cutting the branches off for your clones, you’ll need to sterilize your cutting tool. You’ll also need to do so if you’re planning if you change phenotype so that you don’t end up transmitting virus or illnesses to your plants.
- Choose the branches you want to take – find one with at least one node to guide it.
- Use sharp scissors or a cutter to make the cut at a 45 degree angle starting under a node.
Submerge your clones in cloning or rooting hormones; there are cloning hormones such as Vitroclon. With gel hormones you can directly plant your cuttings in your jiffy; if you use liquid hormones you’ll need to run them under water for your jiffy. Make sure to hold the stem properly when sticking them into your plug so that they don’t bend or break.
Storing the Clones
- Make sure to cut the tips off the leaves so that the plant needs less water and stays alive longer without roots.
- Keep humidity high in your propagator; clones are hydrated via their leaves until the roots grow out more. Make sure the jiffy stays humid, too.
- If there’s low humidity in the propagator, spray the clones with water on its own or water with rooting products such as Rootfast.
- You’ll nee to give your clones at least 18h of light if you have a small indoor grow, or give them as many hours of light as possible if you plan on keeping the propagator outdoors. If they don’t have enough light to grow, they’ll start flowering much too small.
- Keep the temperature stable in the propagator; if you have it outside, you can keep it inside at night if the temperatures are too low.
- Open it every day to renew the air inside, which can help avoid rot issues.
- Make sure to check them every day; once you see the first roots come out the bottom of the plug, it’s time to transplant them.
When to Plant Clones Outdoors
Growing clones outdoors isn’t that hard, although you’ll need to know when to move them outdoors; if you plant them before you should you’ll have issues.
- The cloning season outdoors is from May to July in the Northern Hemisphere and from November to January in the Southern Hemisphere. If you take your cuttings before this, they’ll start flowering early and too small due to low light, and they’ll start growing again once there’s more hours of light.
- The perfect month for getting cuttings outdoors is July in the Northern hemisphere and January in the Southern Hemisphere.
- You can keep your plants growing indoors for a few months and then take it out once it has enough light to not flower. Keep in mind that indoors you can provide 18h light – if you take it outside too early it’ll start to flower due to less hours of light.
Flowering Cuttings Outdoors
If you can keep your cuttings going, they’ll start flowering once there are less hours outdoors, harvesting within the dates established by the seed bank.
Due to having the same strain all around, you’ll have a balanced grow and you’ll be able to harvest all at once.
Why Make Your Own Clones?
Selling cannabis clones is illegal, and they’re also extremely expensive on the black market, so it’s best to make your own from your favourite mother plants. As we were saying before, with a small indoor grow you should have enough space to take clones all year round.
If you’d like a more detailed explanation you can check out our post about how to take cuttings step by step for the best professional results.
Explanatory video on how to take cuttings step by step:
