Cloning plants other than Cannabis

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
Okay, this has been something I've wondered for a long time...

Marijuana; it is a photo-periodic plant (aside from autos), using the amount of sunlight it receives each day to let it know what its supposed to do.

My question is, what other kinds of plants CAN you clone?

And whats the deal with Tomatoes? Can or can't you clone them? I've heard of people cloning them before, doesn't make sense to me, as they aren't photo-periodic plants.

I have a lot of confusion in this area. Someone enlighten me.
 

ltecato

Well-Known Member
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to clone tomatoes, but then again I never tried. You can clone tons of other plants, some a lot easier than others. African violets are not that hard but they take a long time to root and produce a new plant. Cactus are usually easy clone. Generally clones come from perennial plants as opposed to annuals. Cannabis is the only annual I can think of that is propagated by cuttings. If you want to start with something easy, try some kind of vine houseplant like English ivy. Sweet potatoes are easy to start as cuttings, if you can get one of the tubers to root in water. Cut off a few of the vines that sprout and plant them elsewhere, very easy.
 

Jogro

Well-Known Member
You're confused about something that's really very simple.

"Cloning" is just a fancy way to refer to taking a "cutting".

This has nothing to do with photoperiod or vegetative growth. Just that virtually every plant's growth areas will be stimulated to put out roots if placed into a high humidity area.

MOST plants can be perpetuated that way; it just works easier with some compared to others.

Of course cannabis plants can be "cloned", but also pretty much any herb or vegetable: Mint, cilantro, yes tomatoes, even oak and other trees, grape vines, etc.

I've seen MANY plants that actually "self rooted", when a top bent over and got pushed over into dirt. The top part started growing its own roots into the soil!
 

thump easy

Well-Known Member
man i want to clone an orange tree or avocado tree, thats what i want to know has anyone tried these yet mabe i should look on you tube. but good question.
 

Jogro

Well-Known Member
I don't know why you wouldn't be able to clone tomatoes, but then again I never tried. You can clone tons of other plants, some a lot easier than others. African violets are not that hard but they take a long time to root and produce a new plant. Cactus are usually easy clone. Generally clones come from perennial plants as opposed to annuals. Cannabis is the only annual I can think of that is propagated by cuttings. If you want to start with something easy, try some kind of vine houseplant like English ivy. Sweet potatoes are easy to start as cuttings, if you can get one of the tubers to root in water. Cut off a few of the vines that sprout and plant them elsewhere, very easy.
A few comments here.

The easiest plant to clone I've ever seen is mint. Its basically a water-loving weed that easily puts out roots and grows fast. One time I had a nice meal at a Thai restaurant, and they garnished my plate with a sprig of mint. For the hell of it, I literally took that sprig off my plate, brought it home and rooted it successfully just by dropping it in a cup of water for a week.

Tomatoes are actually fairly easy to clone, should you care to try.

The reason most people don't clone annuals is because they're generally crop plants that are easily grown from cheap ceed. Sure, you CAN clone a tomato, but the ceeds are only a few cents and readily available, so there is little reason to try.

Drug cannabis is a specific exception here for a number of reasons, mostly having do with the way the plant is grown.

First of all, only female plants are generally desirable, the plants are typically grown seedlessly, and the legal status of the plant means that ceeds from drug strains are typically both expensive and somewhat hard to acquire. If you look at HEMP cannabis strains. . .nobody is growing those from cuttings; everyone starts from ceeds.

The next issue is specific to the technique of indoor cultivation, where people want the most rapid consistent turnover possible, and from a technical standpoint its simply faster to "crop" cannabis when starting from cuttings since unlike seedlings, cuttings are sexually mature and can be put right into flowering.

Lastly, many "strains" of cannabis are actually hybrid plants, where ceeds simply are not available and/or cannot even be created.

Although these plants actually are fertile, somewhat like seedless plants (that can ONLY be reproduced via cuttings), in practice the only way to get true genetic copies for repeated cropping or propagation is via cuttings.
 

Jogro

Well-Known Member
man i want to clone an orange tree or avocado tree, thats what i want to know has anyone tried these yet mabe i should look on you tube. but good question.
Haven't personally done it, but in fact, most commercial fruit trees are propagated by cuttings.

It definitely CAN be done with both oranges and avocados, though in general its tougher than doing it with simple vegetables:

http://www.gardenguides.com/92894-grow-orange-trees-branch-cuttings.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5900967_grow-avocado-trees-cuttings.html
 

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
You're confused about something that's really very simple.

"Cloning" is just a fancy way to refer to taking a "cutting".

This has nothing to do with photoperiod or vegetative growth. Just that virtually every plant's growth areas will be stimulated to put out roots if placed into a high humidity area.
Actually it has a lot to do with the plant being photo-periodic. That means that they don't simply produce flowers when they are "ready" to. That's why you can't just clone an autoflowering Cannabis plant, because it's going to start flowering when the mother plant does. Which doesn't do you any good of taking the cutting at all.

That's what I meant. I just left all that out. I'm quite familiar with the cloning process.
 

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
ive tried cloning tomatoes, mint and it worked... dont put it in water put it strait in watered soil
But did it actually save you any time? I wanna know what would happen if I took this Tomato clone indoors and put it under my grow lights. Would they stay producing fruit as long as I keep them alive? The frost is what normally ends their season. So if no frost, then what? Nawmeen?

In school, we tried propagating Rose of Sharon, Boxwood, and Ginkgo trees by cloning them. So I know all of those will work. But I'm more concerned with vegetables and fruits. Someone should make up a list :P

I often wonder what to set the timers to when I try to grow them under lights. So far, my Lettuce hasn't complained about the 18/6 I've been giving it. :)
 

ironcross360

Active Member
But did it actually save you any time? I wanna know what would happen if I took this Tomato clone indoors and put it under my grow lights. Would they stay producing fruit as long as I keep them alive? The frost is what normally ends their season. So if no frost, then what? Nawmeen?

In school, we tried propagating Rose of Sharon, Boxwood, and Ginkgo trees by cloning them. So I know all of those will work. But I'm more concerned with vegetables and fruits. Someone should make up a list :P

I often wonder what to set the timers to when I try to grow them under lights. So far, my Lettuce hasn't complained about the 18/6 I've been giving it. :)
they will keep growing and they produce fruit when cloned even under grow lights :) But its hard to make the flowers open idk lol
 

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
they will keep growing and they produce fruit when cloned even under grow lights :) But its hard to make the flowers open idk lol
I've heard the sound waves off of flying pollinators' wings are what makes the pollen fall down into the female part on tomato plants (since they are monecious plants). And that's why they don't produce as big of fruit indoors.
 

drolove

Well-Known Member
it being a photo-periodic plant doesnt even come into play with cloning unless you try putting the cutting in a flowering setting. some plants have specific ways but almost all plants from my knowledge can be cloned the same way as MJ. i myself have cloned a pretty good amount of different plants in the same way i clone my MJ.
 

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
The fact that it's photo-periodic is what makes the cloning propagation method the fastest method. Because you can keep it vegging as long as you want. Which is the best time to clone a plant. If it wasn't photo-periodic, you couldn't control its veg period. This is the reason why you don't clone an auto-flowering cannabis plant. I didn't say that you can't clone plants that aren't photo-periodic, but in the case of Cannabis, this is why you would even want to. So yes, it DOES come into play with it.
 

ltecato

Well-Known Member
I've been told that a tomato plant can stay alive for a couple of years if you keep it watered and warm, but apparently they only produce fruit in the first year. It would probably grow into a giant-ass vine if you let it.

Cannabis has got to be one of the easiest plant in the world to propagate by cuttings. Believe me, I've tried with a lot of other plants that are much harder than weed. In fact one of them was the local version of jimson weed. I have taken a dozen cuttings from a plant growing out of a sidewalk near my house, kept them in very favorable moist rooting medium, treated with root hormone, and not a single one rooted.

Coffee plants are a bitch, too. I can think of one carnivorous plant that's easier than cannabis to propagate. You just have to drop a leaf on some moist surface and keep it moist for a few days.
 

georgyboy

Active Member
Tomatoe plants are incredibly eager to create new roots from their stems. This year in my garden a portion of my tomato's stem was lying on the ground before I got around to trellising it. One day I went out there to tie the plant up, and when I lifted the stem off the ground a massive mass of roots came up out of the ground. I set that small portion of stem back on the ground and buried it. Also this year we had an incredibly wet period after our intense drought. There was a spot in my garden where my tomato plants were growing very densely, and one day after a straight week of wet weather, I was picking peppers and tomatoes and I realized that the tomato branches that were so crowded had all shot out roots. The stems were about a foot off the ground, but they had thick root nubs sticking out from everywhere on the stem. I was really impressed, and a little freaked out.
 

georgyboy

Active Member
And to answer your question as many other people already have, you can clone almost any plant. It is ideal to clone marijuana to get uniform crops with consistent product. This is ideal for keeping all of the plants the same height and close to the light. No one needs this from their tomato and other veggie plants. However, at the end of the season you can bring in a tomato cutting and get fresh tomatoes through to next spring. If one season you have a particular hot pepper plant making especially large or hot peppers, take a cutting and keep it alive through the winter, then come spring you can take several cuttings of the little pepper mother you kept inside, and have several plants that will make the exact same peppers. For the most part though, taking cuttings isn't as practical for outdoor vegetable gardening as it is for the indoor cultivation of an expensive and illegal plant under lights. The fact that a 10 pack of seeds can cost upwards of $80.00 and that even if you pollinate a male and a female from that pack you are likely to stray from the original genetics you were looking for is reason enough to keep a mom and take cuttings.
 

pacificarage

Well-Known Member
I've been told that a tomato plant can stay alive for a couple of years if you keep it watered and warm, but apparently they only produce fruit in the first year. It would probably grow into a giant-ass vine if you let it.
Good to know! Thanks!

You would think this kind of information would be easily found all over the internet, but it's not. I guess most people just don't mind not knowing stuff like this. Gotta love RIU.
 

cues

Well-Known Member
Basil is incredibly easy. A 4" stem in a glass of water will produce roots in aout 2 weeks.
Some plants (i.e. willow) prefer to be cloned via hardwood cuttings in autumn.
Bending stems over and planting into the ground is called layering. A good way of propogating many trees.
Then there is 'air-layering' where a branch is 'nicked' then wrapped in a suitable medium and cling film. Good for rubber plants.
Commercial fruit trees are in fact generally grafted or budded onto another root-stock.
 
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