When to clone

[dunc69]

I am beginning growing for the first time in over 20 years (THANK YOU, Mich. Medical MJ!) When I grew before I used something called the "sea of green" method. It required cloning off mature plants and developing small but dense plants. I would clone, let them root for about a week, and put them in to bud. The plants were small, but fairly dense. The thing is, when I started, I had 2 mothers that a friend gave me. They had been grown from seed, harvested, and put back in the vegitative state. In other words, very mature and healthy. Now, I find myself in the position to where I will have to start from seed. What I want to know is how soon can a seedling be cloned and put in the budding state? Will it have to go thru a "normal" budding cycle and then cloned, or can I start cloning right away. Do you think that if I started cloning too soon, would I have a problem with hermaphrodites?

If I haven't explained that thoroughly, let me know.

[farmergiles]

You`d want to take a clone from a plant which you knew to be female and had already shown preflowering.
Preflowering might show 3-4 weeks from germination and it`s only after this point that sex can be determined for sure anyway.
If you force flower the plant before then it might stress it and the plant may not flower any sooner anyway, depends on the strain I think.

[dunc69]

Thx, that makes sense. You think that I really don't need to take a new plant thru a whole budding cycle before I start cloning, right? I should now in about 4 weeks if it's a preflowering female?

[farmergiles]

Yep.

If you want to speed things up you can take speculative clones before preflowering shows, and discard the ones you don`t want after sex shows on the parent plants.