Goldengoose7

Plant of the Month - September 2011 & November 2012 - Nug of the Month - October 2012

Join Date Jun 2011 Location alifornia Po!t! 2"2#$

How to Top Your Plant and Clone the Tip!

How to Top Your Plant and Clone the Tip!

A photo guide to topping your Cannabis plant and cloning the growing tip at the same time!
While everyone loves the look of a Cannabis plant in its natural state, the ultimate goal is to produce as much quality bud per square foot of space as possible! One of the oldest gardening tricks in the book is the technique of removing the growing tip of the plant in order to force the secondary branches to develop more rapidly and increase the number of growing tips from one to sometimes as many as five depending on the plant and the strain. When used on Cannabis, the plant puts all of its growing energy into the remaining upper branches and does indeed begin to create multiple main growing tips instead of just the original one. ou can use this technique multiple times to turn your previously !"#$%C&' creeping vine, into a dense bushy looking hedge covered with growing tips! You want to do this at least FOUR !!"# $!FOR! F%O !R&'(! hy) ou need to allow enough time for the emerging new growing tips to develop and mature before being e(posed to the )*+)* flowering light cycle. , weeks is about the right amount of time for this to take place. -or our little ."/O we are going to use one of our 0rand .addy 1urple clones that are now heading into their si(th week of veg.
'OT!* While this cloning process can be done using traditional Rockwool and cloning gel; Due to the larger size of the cutting and its more demanding need for fluids and a balanced PH level, a cloning machine is recommended for best results.

(+P ,- .easures -/0 tall 1rom base o1 stal2 to the top o1 the growing tip

W&% 2efore taking the scissors to your plant, you need to prepare your cloner! -ill th e reservoir with fresh #O or comparable water. &dd ,3 ml of Clone( Cloning 4olutio n per gallon to your reservoir. /i( thoroughly and run your pump for about an hour . Check 15 and adjust to appro( 6.* to 6. 7O$ : If you are using some other brand of cloning solution, strain it through a fine mesh screen to remove an sand or grit that ma be in the li!uid. "lone# i s generall free of these impurities, but $ filter it through a mesh screen an wa . Don%t want our &ets getting plugged up with guck' (onitor water temp and tr t o get it to stabilize at around )* degrees 7ow that you have the cloner all ready to go, lets head over to the plan t you plan to to $he first step is to pick the best place to C8$ the tip off the main plant. ou want t least $WO nodes to be available 2"'OW the surface of the growth medium for th e future clone, and the remaining plant needs two strong secondary branches a s close to the cut as possible. 1lants in the , to 9 week of veg growth range are th e best candidates for this procedure.

The cut is made!

1lace cutting immediately into a container of 15 balanced water containing !itamin 2) $ransplant 4olution. $his helps reduce transplant shock and in this case, helps prepare the cutting to accept the cloning gel and nutrient enriched cloning machine solution

$he 2ulk of the fan leaves are cut away. ou don:t want any serious transpiration going on since our little friend has no roots to supply all that growth right now!

The main plant AFT!R Topping

$wo new growing tips will emerge on each side of this cut, and all branches below will also increase their development energy into additional growing tips

'ow333 $ac2 to the Cloning!

5aving travelled to the cloning machine room, the base of the growing tip is shown here. 7otice the two nodes that will be 87."# the cloning collar and provide the primary source for future root development.

$he ne(t step is to take a sterili;ed ra;or blade or <acto knife and slice through the nodes that will now be hosting the root growth when the time comes. 2y cutting half the node off, you e(pose more of the tissues to the cloning gel and cloning solution. &fter enough time has passed, the root spikes will emerge from these two nodes first. We have also put cuts down the stem and scraped them with the knife to e(pose more tissue around the nodes to the rooting hormone in the cloner:s reservoir.

7e(t we pour a small amount of cloning gel into a narrow glass container to allow us to dip and swirl our cutting around in the gel. $his is done to ma(imi;e e(posure of all future root surfaces to the rooting hormone in the gel. 'eave the cutting emersed in this gel for about )3 minutes.

&fter the cutting has been thoroughly coated in the gel and allowed to rest in it, yo can insert the cutting into a clean cloning collar and then into the cloner

W&%$ .o not turn on the cloner:s pump just yet! ou want to let the cutting sit for another )3 minutes to absorb more of the hormone into its tissues. Once that

pump comes on, the bulk of the concetrated hormone in the gel will get washed off by your cloner:s jets! %n addition to the cloning gel, we have added )=3 ml >,3 ml per gallon? of Clone( cloning solution to the ,.6 gallons of 15 balanced water in the $,=:s reservoir. $he more cuttings you place into the cloner, the more cloning gel will get washed into the water and mi(ed into it, thus adding to the nutrients being sprayed at your cutting:s future root nodes! When running the $,= at capacity for e(ample, there would be plenty of hormone in the water from all the washed off cloning gel. 5owever, with smaller sessions like this, you need to boost your reservoir with additional cloning solution. We will also be adding @.6 ml of Home and +arden ,Roots -#celerator, to the reservoir as soon as root buds begin to appear. >&round day =A)3?

&fter the additional )3 minutes have elapsed, turn on the cloner:s pump and activate your lighting system! .epending on your cloning location, you may need t place a humidity dome over the cutting for the first *,A,= hours to avoid it drying out. .on:t subject the cutting to fans or any high amount of air circulation for the first few days either

You4re +one!

Well... 7ot really, but you are done for now! %t needs to be mentioned that growing tips can be a bit tougher to root than typical cuttings, so don:t be discouraged if you need to run your cloner longer than the amount of time you normally do. $he roots will come! 'OT!* $f ou are running a timer with our cloner, $ suggest letting the pump run for at least ./ minutes on with a ma#imum off time of * minutes. 0his will give the cutting a good suppl of water and cloning nutrients, while still allowing a little time for gas e#change during the off period. 1fter the first *. hours, ou can reduce the pump on time to between 234 minutes, and increase the off time to around . minutes for the duration of the cloning session.

One more thing333 0his lonel growing tip will soon have some compan ' 0omorrow we will be adding some 5lue "heese and +DP cuttings to the cloner and begin our ne#t 0urbo 6lone run' 7ou can follow along and watch our progress via our &ournal linked below in m sig'
5ope to see you there! Cheers.