Is it just too late to do this? Cloning outdoor plant?

J

jokerlola

Well-Known Member
I grow strictly outside in Denver Colorado. I have a Funky Charms plant that I started from seed in early June. It sprouted on June 7th. It went from Solo cup to #1 pot to 5 gal pot. I topped it once. First of all, it is not showing any pre-flowers yet. Can I top it again at this date (Aug 6th) or is it too late since it will be going into flower soon?

Second, is it too late to clone those tops and grow 2 more Funky Charms plants outside this rest of summer?

One thing I could do is give them some supplemental lighting to extend their veg time by a couple of weeks.
 
Yes you could top it again, yes you could take clones, but unless you’re putting the clones under artificial light they’ll go into flower before they get any size to them. Given that it’s gonna take a week or more before they root, it might not be worth the effort.
 
More than one person has written about taking clones up to 2 to 3 weeks after the pistils start showing. My limit was 2 weeks.

Phytoplankton said:
unless you’re putting the clones under artificial light they’ll go into flower before they get any size to them
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Phytoplankton brings up an important point. I am in southeast Michigan and we have a later first frost of the season, later first snow and so on but I can relate to some of what you are thinking about doing.

I would not be surprised if the cuttings show their own pistils before they develop enough of a root system to start their new leaves, stems, etc. You would have to put them under the supplemental lighting first thing after taking them from the mother plant. Don't be surprised if the pistils and buds start showing on the mother in the next two weeks.

Even if the cuttings do grow roots and you have enough lighting to keep them from going into flower will there be enough time to get several weeks of good growth on them? Allow 2 weeks for roots and start of new growth. Then allow two weeks of actual growing of leaves and stems and that is 4 weeks so far. Add in the 8 to 10 weeks of flowering.

It has been longer than I like to think about since I've been in Denver but a quick on-line search shows that the average first frost there is Oct 7. Some years it might be sooner & some years later but most likely there will be frost before the last week of the month. Frost will not kill the plants but cold nights and cool days will really slow the plants down. Figuring that the average high for the area is about 60 by the end of the month means slower or no growth some days.

What you are asking about is something I would try just for an experiment but since I am set up with a grow room inside I have only gone as far as taking the cuttings, rooting them outside and then once they are growing well I have brought them inside so they were harvested in December or January depending on available room in the flowering area. In the meantime the mother stayed outside through frost and snow with a harvest in early November.
 
SmokingWings said:
More than one person has written about taking clones up to 2 to 3 weeks after the pistils start showing. My limit was 2 weeks.
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Cuttings taken later in flower can be rooted. It may be slower to produce roots, and there'll probably be some gnarly-looking growth characteristics until it reverts. To minimize both, remove all flowers, like you would with any other fruiting/flowering plant. (Yeah, I know it's more of a PITA than picking the larger flowers off of a pepper plant.)
 
TorturedSoul said:
Cuttings taken later in flower can be rooted. It may be slower to produce roots, and there'll probably be some gnarly-looking growth characteristics until it reverts.
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True. The Original Poster sounds like he is thinking about getting the cuttings to root and become outdoor flowering plants with a harvest by the end of this season. Since his outdoor grow is in Denver it seems like it would be pretty much a lost cause.
 
SmokingWings said:
True. The Original Poster sounds like he is thinking about getting the cuttings to root and become outdoor flowering plants with a harvest by the end of this season. Since his outdoor grow is in Denver it seems like it would be pretty much a lost cause.
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The other problem is probably that the plant I'm thinking about topping would have to have enough time recover and grow out from the topping and doing it possibly 2 weeks before flowering might be too late? Or is topping not a problem at this point yet?
 
SmokingWings said:
If the topping is not something radical I doubt that the plant would notice or spend more than a few hours, if that, to recover.
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I guess what I’m wondering is even if I don’t clone the tops, is there enough time for the topping to produce the higher yield on the plant? I topped it once already and now I would be topping the 2 main stems. I have other plants/strains that are starting to show flowers so this plant will be starting to flower soon. If I top to clone I would be cutting off more (2 nodes). If I just top for yield, I would be topping just the new shoots at the very top.
 
013 said:
Hey Jokerola!!

east coaster here but don’t think clones will have enough time for outdoor in Colorado…

Capt Obvious sez if you could move them indoors late in season then yup totally doable

On the topping question - how many nodes or pairs above ground, is it showing even nodes or staggered nodes… maybe drop us a pic
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7CC41AAC-5534-4B98-97FA-BA18EA116697.jpeg
 
jokerlola said:
I guess what I’m wondering is even if I don’t clone the tops, is there enough time for the topping to produce the higher yield on the plant? I topped it once already and now I would be topping the 2 main stems.
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Probably not enough to be noticeable and worth the effort involved. Time to start the bloom or flowering fertilizer mixes.

jokerlola said:
I have other plants/strains that are starting to show flowers so this plant will be starting to flower soon.
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Good job and right on schedule. Two of my outdoor plants started Monday with the growing tips looking like they were just starting to increase in size. Yesterday the first pistils were there and it was this side of pure amazement how much the increase in size was.
 
Personally I’d just roll with it / no further topping but 5 gallons is really small for outdoors.

Also you need to double foil wrap those white buckets pronto, you are getting light pruned big time!!! Light penetrates translucent bucket and weed roots will not grow where there is light exposure. To say it differently that plant can never get rootbound or utilize an inch or two around outer edge.

Can you plant those in the ground? Are worried about getting ripped?
 
013 said:
Personally I’d just roll with it / no further topping but 5 gallons is really small for outdoors.

Also you need to double foil wrap those white buckets pronto, you are getting light pruned big time!!! Light penetrates translucent bucket and weed roots will not grow where there is light exposure. To say it differently that plant can never get rootbound or utilize an inch or two around outer edge.

Can you plant those in the ground? Are worried about getting ripped?
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I need to be able to move them indoors since growing cannabis isn't allowed in our stupid HOA (Never buy or build a house in an HOA. It's nothing but headaches).

I sometimes grow in these 2 white 5 gallon buckets and I've grown some some pretty big plants in them. I didn't know about light pruning. I usually just stick to my 5 gal Smart Pots but I wound up getting extra clones and don't have anymore Smart Pots.

There's a guy on youtube that grows some impressive plants in white 5 gal buckets: ( GrowingWithJames ).
 
013 said:
Also you need to double foil wrap those white buckets pronto, you are getting light pruned big time!!! Light penetrates translucent bucket and weed roots will not grow where there is light exposure. To say it differently that plant can never get rootbound or utilize an inch or two around outer edge.
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jokerlola said:
There's a guy on youtube that grows some impressive plants in white 5 gal buckets: ( GrowingWithJames ).
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This came up a couple of years ago and one of the long-time members told us about a larger grow he was involved in. They had more plants than they had typical black planting pots so they put some of the extra plants into white pots.

They did not notice any real difference in size or conditions of the plants while growing. At harvest time all the plants looked great and the anticipated amount of harvest looked good. After the harvest they noticed the plants that were in the white pots or buckets did produce a little bit less than the ones in black pots. They pulled the plants and looked at the root system. The plants in white had less visible root mass around the edges. It was a fairly thorough story and explanation on what they did.

What I got from that is that most of us would not notice any difference between white or black containers and the observations he and his friends made about the differences between the different containers made sense. When we have a choice leave the white containers for emergencies and it sounds like "jokerlola" had such an emergency when he ended up with more clones than Smart Pots ;).
 
SmokingWings said:
This came up a couple of years ago and one of the long-time members told us about a larger grow he was involved in. They had more plants than they had typical black planting pots so they put some of the extra plants into white pots.

They did not notice any real difference in size or conditions of the plants while growing. At harvest time all the plants looked great and the anticipated amount of harvest looked good. After the harvest they noticed the plants that were in the white pots or buckets did produce a little bit less than the ones in black pots. They pulled the plants and looked at the root system. The plants in white had less visible root mass around the edges. It was a fairly thorough story and explanation on what they did.

What I got from that is that most of us would not notice any difference between white or black containers and the observations he and his friends made about the differences between the different containers made sense. When we have a choice leave the white containers for emergencies and it sounds like "jokerlola" had such an emergency when he ended up with more clones than Smart Pots ;).
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Yeah, I have more plants than I intended this year and 2 of my Smart Pots are taken up by my failed, stunted Auto plants. I grew for the first time in these white buckets last year when I wound up getting 2 extra clones at the last minute. I need to get some extra Smart Pots for these kind of emergencies because they really do grow superior, larger plants for their pot size. It's actually pretty amazing what air root pruning does in these pots.
 
Sorry, I didn't read the whole thread carefully, but... if you take cuttings (from photos of course), I recommend bringing them indoors under low-watt LED full spectrum or grow light bulb(s). Make sure there's only about 9 hours of dark, or provide night interruption lighting – a short blast on a timer – to prevent flowering. With my clones, lights go on 3 times in the middle of the night for a few minutes each, midnight, 2am, 4am. They are in my veg house with all the veg plants, all getting night interruption lighting.
 
Outdoor plants dont flip from veg to flower like they do indoors its more or less a month long process when stretching starts till budletts show. Any clone Ive taken after the first of august pretty much always has a reveg phase that sets the clone back 4 weeks
That said try it post about it and maybe your on the right track.
GoodLuck Happy 420!!
 
SmokeLake said:
Outdoor plants dont flip from veg to flower like they do indoors its more or less a month long process when stretching starts till budletts show. Any clone Ive taken after the first of august pretty much always has a reveg phase that sets the clone back 4 weeks
That said try it post about it and maybe your on the right track.
GoodLuck Happy 420!!
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Except here in Hawaii, ha ha... we have flowering year round for most cannabis strains. Well, we are 1,374 miles from the equator, so there's quite a swath of the planet where this is the case. (The "tropics" extend 1,617 miles from the equator, if my calculations are correct. I would need to do further calcs to determine where the "cannabis photoperiod flowering line" is... I just made that up :) )

When I move my photo plants from the veg greenhouse to the flower greenhouse, they usually start flowering within 2-3 weeks. They finish flowering in 5-7 weeks. This is year round. I have "photoperiod lighting" in the veg house, which keeps the plants in veg until I'm ready to move them to flower.
 
Since you are not in flower yet this is the time frame.
cutting to good roots 2 weeks
flip to flower 2 weeks
flowering 8 weeks
12 weeks from now is Nov 5th. and first frost there is Oct 7th and that is 0 veg days. Outdoor cloning is out of the question. Not to mention you will need light to stop the clone from flowering. Topping will delay the flowering and in Denver you don't have enough season left to delay. Average first frost is 8 weeks away.

If you want to save the genetics you would have to set up an indoor grow. I've taken cuttings from lower branches the week before harvest to save irreplaceable land strain genetics. You have time but the longer you wait, the harder it gets.
 
cbdhemp808 said:
Except here in Hawaii, ha ha... we have flowering year round for most cannabis strains. Well, we are 1,374 miles from the equator, so there's quite a swath of the planet where this is the case. (The "tropics" extend 1,617 miles from the equator, if my calculations are correct. I would need to do further calcs to determine where the "cannabis photoperiod flowering line" is... I just made that up :) )

When I move my photo plants from the veg greenhouse to the flower greenhouse, they usually start flowering within 2-3 weeks. They finish flowering in 5-7 weeks. This is year round. I have "photoperiod lighting" in the veg house, which keeps the plants in veg until I'm ready to move them to flower.
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Hawaii don’t count lol
I envy you do have the ability to grow amazing sativas though with endless weeks for flowering and green house would allow control of many variables!
 
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