Do you want to learn how to clone cannabis plants? Its always great to have an exact genetic copy of your favorite cannabis strain. lets explain how you can clone cannabis plants at home.

How to Clone Cannabis – The Essentials You Need

These Tools will allow you to have the most success at cloning

• Healthy Mother plant: Starting with a healthy female cannabis plant is one of the most important rules when taking cuttings. Never take cuts from an unhealthy mother as your clones will likely experience problems.
• Scissors: A sharp and sanitized pair of scissors or pruning shears is necessary to take perfect cuts.
• Rooting solution: We recommend Clonex Rooting solution for soaking Rockwool cubes / rapid rooters in.
• Gloves: Sterile rubber or surgical gloves can help prevent contamination when handling the cutting.
• Grow lights: Grow lights such as fluorescent, T5, CFL’s, or low intensity LED Grow lights can be used
• Rockwool OR Rapid Rooters: Choose Rockwool Cubes (Preferably Grodan Brand) or Rapid rooters for best results.
• Humidity tray with dome: A humidity dome (at least 7 inches tall) enables growers to maintain optimal humidity and temperature for clones.
• Heating pad: A heating pad can help growers maintain optimal temperatures by heating the tray and grow medium keeping inside the dome warm to allow ideal root development.
• 10% Bleach: This will be useful for cleaning your tools before and after taking cuttings to keep your mother plants clean and pathogen free.

Soaking Your Medium

Here is how we prepare our Rooting cubes:

1. Add 15ml of clonex solution to 1 gallon of water. PH should be 5.8 for best results.
2. Place you Rockwool OR rapid rooters in a large bowl.
3. Completely submerge your Rockwool/rapid rooters with the solution until they are covered.
4. For best results, allow them to soak for 8-24 hours.
5. Remove the rockwool/rapid rooters from the solution and place them in the humidity tray (Do not squeeze excess water).

Taking Cuttings

Here is step-by-step breakdown on how you can successfully take healthy cuttings:

1. Choose a branch atleast 5-8 inches long.
2. Cut the branch close to the main stem with a pair of sterile and sharp scissors or pruning shears. Make sure to make the cut at a 45-degree angle.
3. Immediately after cutting the branch, submerge about a third of the cutting in a cup of water. The water ensures that air bubbles do not enter the exposed part of the stem.
4. Lightly shave the end of the stem to allow roots to grow on the exposed area.
5. Cut the tips of the leaves and remove excess fan leaves to allow faster rooting. This is completely optional however we do recommend it.

Place Your Cuttings In Rockwool cubes / Rapid Rooters

After you’ve taken your cuttings, you can place each cutting into a Rockwool cube OR rapid rooter soaked in the clonex solution previously mentioned.

Humidity Control

Clones require a certain humidity and temperature to stimulate root development and grow into healthy plants. Temperatures should be between 75º and 80º F. Humidity levels can be between 70 and 80% relative humidity (RH). Higher humidity levels can increase the risk of root rot.

A humidity Dome’s vents should be completely closed for the first 3 days. After 3 days you can slowly open each vent and have the dome completely removed by day 10. Its important to slowly do this to prevent wilting, however you also don’t want to leave the dome on for longer than 10 days as this will allow stem rot and mold to be introduced.

Lighting

We recommend using weaker grow lights such as low intensity LED grow lights or T5’s since clones do not need much light. you can leave the lights on for 18 hours with 6 hours of darkness.

High-intensity lighting will damage young clones and prevent rooting if it is introduced early. Avoid introducing high-intensity lights until your clones have established enough roots to be transplanted.

You can identify when the starter cube is ready to be transplanted to soil when the roots start to form. Roots can begin to form after 7-10 days on average. For some growers, it can take up to two weeks or more to start seeing strong root production especially in colder environments or when working with hard to root cultivars.

Transplanting Your Clone

When transplanting your clone after enough roots have developed, you can fill your starter pots with a light soil or coco coir mix and carefully bury the clone without damaging its roots. after the clone has been buried, you can water the clone and place it back under a low intensity grow light until it becomes more established and is ready for stronger lighting.