Transplanting cannabis clones

Cutting a clone is the easy bit. The fortnight after it goes into its new pot is where it’s won and lost, usually by being loved too much.

Choosing a clone

Look for vigorous growth — firm stem, healthy leaves, no wilting, no sign of pests or disease. Pale, leggy or limp clones are already behind and they know it.

Check the roots if you can. You want a well-developed system that has filled the container without winding itself tightly into a spiral. A root-bound clone needs its roots teased apart before it goes in, or it’ll happily keep growing in a circle for the rest of its life.

And weigh the genetics honestly against what you’re actually trying to grow — yield, resilience, how much space you have, how long you’re prepared to wait.

When it’s ready

Three things to weigh:

Roots. Wait until they’ve filled the current container. Transplant before that and you’re handling a rootball that falls apart in your hands.

Growth stage. Transplant during vegetative growth, not flowering. A plant in flower is committing its energy elsewhere and recovers from the disturbance far more slowly.

Time of day. Indoors, transplant at the start of the dark period. The plant isn’t photosynthesising, transpiration is lower, and it gets hours to settle before anybody asks it to work.

Doing it

Pick a pot a size or two up rather than going straight into something enormous. A small root system in a huge volume of soil sits in wet medium it can’t drink, and that’s how clones drown.

Water the clone lightly beforehand so the medium holds together.

Fill the new pot partly, make a well, and support the stem while you turn the clone out. Handle it by the rootball or the pot. Never by the stem.

Set the clone at the same depth it was growing at. Backfill gently and firm just enough to remove air pockets — do not compact it.

Water in immediately. That settles soil around the roots and is the first point of contact between the old rootball and the new medium.

The first fortnight

Keep the light a little gentler and the humidity a little higher than usual for the first few days. A newly transplanted clone can only take up so much water and can lose more through its leaves than it replaces.

Don’t feed it straight away. Fresh medium has plenty in it, and a stressed root system does not want a nutrient load on top of everything else.

Expect a few days of nothing visibly happening. This is the hardest part and the part where most clones get fussed to death. Growth resuming is the sign the roots have taken.

Our clones

We grow our mother plants in living soil and take cuttings from selected phenotypes. Clone season runs in the spring — the clones page says where the current season stands.