Clones have several advantages for the home grower. They will speed up your growing cycles. They will predetermine sex of the plant, they will preserve the exact strain and they will save you money. Let’s look at each of these advantages of medical marijuana clones individually.

SPEEDING UP GROWING CYCLES

In nature, marijuana often takes four or five months, or even more to mature. Add another couple of weeks for harvesting, drying and curing and you could find yourself limited to two crops per year. Through horticultural improvement of the strains, and with the use of hydroponics, growing cycles can be reduced to three months or less producing up to four crops a year (or six or more if you alternate two grow areas.) Not only does this produce more medical marijuana (and good rule of thumb is between two and four ounces per plant), but your expenses for electricity and nutrients are less per crop.

PREDETERMINING THE SEX OF THE MARIJUANA PLANT

The only guaranteed way of having female plants is to start with clones. In nature, starting from seeds, you’ll get a 50/50 mix of male and female plants. Some medical marijuana strains are available as feminized seeds which are claimed to produce 70% females. Remember, not only will male marijuana plants have considerably less medical effect for the patient, but if left in place will weaken the medical potency of the female plants through pollination (because the female plant turns its energy into producing seeds rather than flowers (buds)). We recommend starting with medical marijuana clones. It’s a foolproof and guaranteed way to have 100% females.

PRESERVING THE EXACT STRAIN

Clones, which are basically a small cutting of a marijuana plant that is placed in a block of rock wool, are as the name clone implies, an exact replica of the original plant. In theory, once you find a strain of marijuana you like, and locate a clone for this strain, you can grow the same plant over and over again forever. The real advantage here is that there are many times when your pharmacy is out of stock of your favorite strain. Instead of relying on the pharmacy flowering cycle, you can guarantee yourself a steady supply of your favorite medicine.

SAVING MONEY BY GROWING YOUR OWN MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Complete Hydroponic Starter Kits are recommended for medical marijuana clones, including grow tent start around $400 from Stealth Hydroponics. (We recommend this hydroponic growing system because it includes everything, is easy to setup, simple to use, and works.) While these kits usually have “space” for six plants in their reservoir setup, our advice is to grow three plants. Even at a low growing rate of three crops per year, with each plant yielding two ounces of medicine, you’ll end up growing around $4000 worth of medicine, at pharmacy prices, per year. Add in electrical and nutrient costs and you’ll raise the total cost of your annual harvest to between $600 and $750 while still enjoying at least $4000 worth of buds.