imak

Hey guess its Imak again...
Heres the situation. I got a plant growing from seed that is now around 10 or 11 nodes tall..with internodal spaces of about 1.5-2 cm. Im very short on growing time, so Ive been wanting to cut it in half, maybe between the 57th and 6th nodes, strip the top half of most the lower leaves, and plant it, ending up with with 2 5-node small plants, with a V growing at the top of the bottom half. Will this work? In other words, im not sure where the cut for cloning has to be made. Ive read that you must cut off the the very tip of the plant to prmote horizontal growth, just not sure if there is a limit to how low down the plant you can go before making a cut will not allow the bottom half to regenerate.
I will be taking more clones using the branches of the plant once they start coming out and before flowering.
This is my first personal cloning attempt (although i used clones before) and as much info as possible would really help!

Peace and keep tokin...

ImAk

smokinrav

Cutting your plant in half will do nothing for your growing time. All plants will flower to a specific length of time depending on their genetics. All you have to do is cut the light back to 12/12.

I havent found it necessary to have a clone that is longer than two inches with one or two nodes minimum. Others recommend 6 inch cuttings. Ive found the less vegetation on your clone, the less root the clone will have to grow to be self sufficient, so make em small. For the procedure in taking clones, see the forums

bgetting

smokinrav is right in that cutting the topp ff your palnt isn't going to anything for your time. TTry looking at the threads here about supercropping. If you have a short period, clip it, train it, and get as much bud as you can from that one plant.

However, there is something a little weird about what smokinrav said about clones. I agree, small clones work fine as well, and they do great. However, less vegetation does not correlate to having to grow less roots to support. The plant doesn't "think" in that manner. I have found, and general plant physiology agrees, that the more vegetaion you have, the more nutrients are available to the plant to make those new roots, and support the rest of it while rooting.

This may be a dumb thing to say... all probably already know this, but when leaves yellow and fall off (especially right before harvest) it isn't always a bad thing. When the leaf yellows, it is because the plant is breaking down the proteins in the leaf, and transporting them, along with nutrients and other things, to other parts of the plant. This means for cloning that if you have a couple extra leaves that can yellow and die near the bottom, you have that much more nutrients to support the clone and keep it alive while it is growing roots.

smokinrav

Just reporting my observations. Ive actually cut the top off a couple of plants for cloning, and the ony reason I could see for failing to root them was excess vegetation. I had clones taken normally next to them, and the differences were noticeable.
I stand by my assertion that a plant with less vegetation to support on top will be able to be removed from the cloning chamber sooner.

wolfman

My experience leads me to agree on less vegetation on the clone; i carefully trim each and every one before transfering for the rooting chanber.

It's not something that i can explain easily, it's my believe that they lose less water this way, survival rate is stronger.
However, the plant do need leaf material to store nutrients and absorv light so probably it's just a question of balance with the trimings.

What is important is for those darn things to root or we cannot flower


wolf

bgetting

hmmmm, interesting.

smokinrav- I wasn't trying to say that you were wrong or anything, and actually, I just realized something. I have tried to clone the ery tops of plants before, with about 50/50 success. It may be that the top is just harder to root than the side branches, who knows. I would guess the stem thickness has a lot to do with it. The tops i tried to clone all had thick stems, whereas the shoots always have relatively thin stems.

wolfman- I definitely agree that more vegetation leaves a vector for more water loss. I keep all my clones in a small, clear, tupperware box. It is usually sealed, except for when I water or a couple of times a day I open it for fresh air.

Once again I am amazed by the fact that such simple-seeming organisms such as plants are really very complex machines, and they can survive some ****, huh?

lilbuddie

The best parts of the plant to clone are the actively growing shoots .... There is a whole big long scientific explanation for this that I don't have time to get into right now but if the shoot is actively growing it will tend to root faster than one that is not .... Kinda the green shoot vs the woody brown shoot reasoning ....

Also, the top of a topped plant usually roots just fine and makes one of the best cuts for rooting (it is a growing shoot techinically)... I have had 100% success in always getting the top cutting to root.

Ya know plants aren't all that simple Scientists still don't know exactly how chloryphyll converts light in to sugar

LB

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bgetting

Not to get off subject, but what are you talking about? There are intermediate reactions that aren't fully worked out, but the overall mechanisms and biochem has been worked out almost fully. I agree that they aren't that simple, but compared to a mammal, or other life forms on earth, they are pretty simple. That was my point actually, when you look at how know a ton about the human body, but we don't know a whole lot about many plant processes (with chlorophyll being one of the most understood.)