Benefits of Cannabis Clones Over Seeds
Buying bulk Cannabis clones is a perfect way to start your crop. Clones remove the uncertainty factor that comes with seeds. Let’s look at all the benefits that cannabis clones have over seeds.
Gender Matters
Like most plants, Cannabis plants are each either male or female. Only female Cannabis plants are used for cannabinoid extraction and processing due to their high cannabinoid content within the Cannabis flower and other parts of the plant. Male Cannabis plants, besides the potential of pollinating your crops, have only small amount of cannabinoids comparatively and therefore are not used for these purposes.
Every Cannabis seed can be either male or female (with the exception of feminized Cannabis seeds). You only know the gender of plant any given seed will produce until it has grown to a height of at least several inches, and is @least 6 weeks old. After all that wait, any male plants you identify you’ll have to remove. They don’t provide sufficient cannabinoids to harvest and will only seed your female plants, thereby reducing yields & cannabinoid-production capacity.
By contrast, a clone is always the same gender as the mother plant from which it was cut, a genetic duplicate. Therefore, instead of wasting all that time gambling with regular Cannabis seeds that may not even be useful to you, grow from clone and start with a crop you know is all female and all the same potency.
Certainty and Consistency
Not all Cannabis plants of the same strain are equally strong, prolific and potent. When you grow Cannabis from seed, you may know the strain, and if you pay extra money for certified feminized hemp seeds, you may even know the sex. But you never know what quality of plant, of that strain, any given seed will produce. You may, for example, grow some runts. You may grow a hermaphrodite plant that produces its own seeds, diverting nutrients from cannabinoid production. You may simply grow a different and less desirable phenotype of that strain.
When you grow from clone, those clones are cut from a mother plant. Only the strongest, most vibrant, prolific and potent plants of a given strain are chosen to be mothers. Since clones grow identically to their mother, when you grow from clone you have certainty that the plants you grow will consistently match the highest levels of quality of that phenotype of their strain. Allowing the signing of contracts before the crop is even harvested, even planted.
Growing Time
Growing Cannabis from seed takes from a month to six weeks longer than growing Cannabis from clones as that’s about how long it takes for the germinating seed to grow into a plant the same size a clone is already. Growing Cannabis from clone is a lot faster from start to finish than growing from seed, allowing you to reach harvest sooner and potentially plant more crops in a single space in the same period of time.
Care & Attention
By their nature, seedlings are much more delicate than clones. They require far more care and attention as more can go wrong. With clones, by contrast, you can generally grow quality Cannabis successfully with far less diligence and effort. Conversely, clones do not grow a taproot, only seeds have this capacity. Potentially increasing yields but again....you run the risk of runts, hermies, no-sprouts and other unforeseen issues. Not to mention a vast difference in flavor, effects & potency.