Cloning cannabis is a very convenient way of plant propagation. And buying clones, where it’s legal, is probably the easiest way to start a grow. The other thing that makes the life of an amateur grower so much easier is using autoflowering genetics. You put two and two together, you want autoflower clones. But does anyone sell them?
While autoflowers CAN be cloned, what you can’t do is keep them from flowering. Autoflower clones may begin to flower even before they have rooted. And, once in flower, you can’t revert them back to veg. As a result, autoflowering clones will stay small and yield very little.
So your best bet is to grow autos from seeds. Luckily there are enough online vendors that will deliver them right to your door. Click this link if you want a reliable seed shop that has shipped close to a million orders to practically all the countries in the world, including the U.S. and the UK.
Why Buying Autoflower Clones is Virtually Impossible
The reason is that you want two mutually exclusive things from these autoflowering cuttings:
- you want them to flower automatically,
- you DON’T want them to flower automatically, at least not till they’re big enough for your needs.
Autoflowers are a special kind of cannabis. The presence of Ruderalis genes in their DNA makes them ignore the light cycle. It doesn’t matter if you’ve planted them in spring or summer or fall. They simply don’t care for how long the days or the nights are.
And indoors, they don’t care for the light schedule. Whether 12/12 or 18/6 or even 24/0 or anything in between, it doesn’t change their timeline. They come up out of the soil, have short but vigorous veg, and then enter the flowering stage which doesn’t last very long either.
And when you take cuttings and root them as autoflower clones, the transition to flowering doesn’t slow down. Well, maybe for a couple of days compared to the main plant. So your autoflowering clone will be nothing but a rather small branch with a handful of flowers on it. It will never have a chance to develop into a large multi-branch bush.
Compare this with the results of a most unremarkable, run-of-the-mill Gorilla Glue Autoflower grow. You simply don’t want to purchase clones if you can buy seeds like these.
Cloning Early Versions and Fast Versions
When browsing seed shops, you may come across varieties that have ‘fast version’ or ‘early version’ added to their names. These strains are photoperiod-dependent, but they have enough autoflowering genes in them to start and finish flowering (outdoors) a couple of weeks earlier than normal photoperiod strains. A very handy feature for climates with short summers. You CAN clone these genetics and keep them in veg indefinitely. We’d say offering fast/early version clones for sale would make sense.
Taking Autoflowering Cuttings from Superautos
Superautos isn’t an official term or anything. These plants are supposed to be normal autoflowers, but, for some reason, they don’t start to flower automatically. When dealing with a superauto, the grower may need to change the light schedule to 16/8, 14/6, or even 12/12 before the plant transitions to the flowering stage. You can clone such genetics, too.
Well, that wraps it up. Stop looking for autoflowering clones. Nobody sells them. Or if they do, they shouldn’t. Autoflowers are a kind of genetics that are only grown from seeds, not clones.
All images in this post were taken from GrowDiaries, the world’s largest weed-growing community.
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