The ongoing debate of clones versus seeds has popped up many times for us here on Blessed Coast Farms. We would like to share our thoughts with you on this topic.
A cannabis clone is the cutting from a mature female cannabis plant that’s raised to become an exact genetic image of the mother plant that it came from. Being an identical genetic to a mother plant, the clone guarantees that it will grow up to be like the mother. This also means the clone probably will carry any health issues the mother plant had, so be sure to raise healthy mothers!
Cannabis clones can be difficult to root as this is the most stressful transition a plant can go through in its life. A plant grown from seed will have a hearty root structure. The tap root is the central part of a plant’s root system. A clone is incapable of growing a tap root and it’s debatable if a clone plant will ever be able to be as strong as a plant grown from seed. When using seeds you must watch the plant carefully and find out the sex before your males produce pollen sacs, which can affect all of your plants. Only female plants are desired when cultivating cannabis flowers. Seeds also take much longer to reach the flowering stage than clones. A first generation seed will need to be stabilized and breed back into itself to reach the farmer’s ultimate expectations. A handful of seeds, in some form, will be genetically different.
This brings us to scalability. Here on our farm, we use clones to fill our fields and this allows us to grow exactly the same product without much variation. We enjoy experimenting with seeds and genetics, but when it comes to producing the same product at a large scale, we stick with clones.
