Let’s Clone some Autos!

I’m happy to see so many more auto growers around. A little less trolling from the strictly photo guys is nice to see as well.

I’d say autos are still very misunderstood and far too often old misinformation about them is repeated and spread.

You may have heard autos can’t be or are very difficult to clone, or that there is no point. That depends on perspective and goals, but I can assure you they can be cloned, and can be useful in breeding and seed making. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but thought I’d document so people can see progress close to real time.

Project details: This is a mix of advanced F gens, my own hybrids, and some fems from
Known breeders. These were all stress tested young and then allow to bounce back. I’m now making my first cuts right around week 5. There were many other plants and strains, but these were the standouts. Some others have been reserved for making seeds only, some were killed in stress testing, other stunted, and finally, some culled.

3 x Marathon OG F5/6 (repop)
4 x Zkittlez x Blueberry (mine, temp name Zibba)
1 x Forbidden Runtz (FB)
3 x Amnesia Haze (Barney’s)
2 x Bananas Purple Punch (FB)
1 x Amnesia x Blueberry reg (mine)

Marathon OG: some beans from some F5 and F6 I made. Wild looking leaves, very OG structure, one smelled like loud stereotypical OG in veg, another looks very OG and is OG but different, and the other is like a mix of the two. Internode spacing on this is kinda comical, very lanky and wide open.

Zibba: These are the most uniform, have the best smells, and are perfect little hardy bushes. I know both of these strains very well, I’ve held and grown a lot of blueberry, same with Z. These are cool because they’re so perfectly what I thought might be but better so far.

This is work I did years ago and mom was one of the more interesting and cloneable autos I’ve ever grown. I was cloning several other autos that were outpacing the Z autos I was running, they were lovely plants but kept getting shaded and outpaced. Little did I know, three or the plants around them would all yield over an elbow and be absolute monsters. It led to me ignoring the slower vegging and flowering Z. I randomly cloned the Z mom in flower and most rooted, pollinated with a few strains of pollen, and here we are. I would have popped these years ago had I known they’d be like this.

Forbidden Runtz: This and Skywalker were early standouts and were uppotted together. Both did well for a while but the Skywalker has really struggled, but this is a nice plant all around, vigorous, nice structure, great early smells.

Amnesia Haze: these are all really different, two are variegated and large, one is a monster and not variegated and one variegated plant os simply gorgeous. Two other plants reserved for seeds. Hazy notes showing up with a mix of citrus, and cotton candy. These are slow into flower, which I kinda like.

BPP: Two of these are insane plants. Beautiful structure with lots of branches, towering over most other strains and plants, and one smells like a purple candy shop, whether that smells like. One of these will be reversed to make more and other hybrids.

Amnesia Blueberry: had three really nice plants, but as time goes on there’s one standout female. Not quite berry or haze and have high hopes for this one, but likely she’ll only receive pollen and not be reversed. I really want to several girls, but not enough space. One boy I kept showed a couple stigmas, one girl is finicky like a blueberry parent, so taken as a whole, this one girl will likely be a mom in a new hybrid I’ll test.

Here we go, this was from Thursday and will update later

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I’ll stick around to see where this goes.
:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Look forward to seeing your progress. I’ve got my first autos going atm and from all I’ve read, like you say, I’ve not given much thought to keeping the snips. It would be nice to be able to take a cutting, spray with STS and collect pollen.

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I’m interested in the process. Would love to get a preview/summary of what this entails from start to finish if you don’t mind jumping the gun some, otherwise I’ll just grab some popcorn and wait for my updates :popcorn: :blush: :+1:t4:

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Nice to see someone else spreading the Auto love… your so right on the misinformation regarding Autos…
The only thing about cloning an Auto is, they continue the growth cycle they were in, no revenging… one could do a Sea of Green :green_heart: grow…
Lowryder 2 took Autos in a different direction then dutch/Spain balcony weed by adding Santa Maria to LR1…

Anybody want to try Auto

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They will reveg, at least some will. In general they will stunt, then pick up where they left off. If they still have growomg to do, they will do it. There are also varrying autoflowerer traits depending on the genetics. I’m documenting some of it now. But there is no “timer” as people speak of it. Thanks for coming along for the ride :green_heart:

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It’s possible to do, and don’t expect to be able to do it with all of them. The trait isn’t as common as I thought and I think more than anything it’s key to find good vigorous plants to clone. I’ve taken clones from clones as well and kept white stigma and growth happening in branches that are over half a year old. You can figure out the possibilities from there. But, most notably, if timed right can then grow the beans the pollen creates and BX to the mom.

There’s a chance I will fail now that I’m actually documenting it, but outside of the cloner going dry, I’m confident I’ll get some to take and grow. We should be seeing roots on some around 10 days.

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From yesterday, and some freak joined the party

To make things more interesting, I snuck in some papaya cuts (Harry Palms). Nothing looking distressed yet, but some stragglers just got put in root plugs rather than the cloner, and a couple them are slouching.

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I’ll be following along with interest @Acro. Great to see you aiming to dispell some of the myths around autos.

I like to dabble myself and have successfully cloned one with good results. But a lot of people here (Aus) are still willfully ignorant to how far autos have come and I tend to not talk about them much online as it is often met with criticism and name calling. People can be funny :man_shrugging:

Good to see there are few fellow auto growers here at OG that are willing to discuss our shameful secret in the interest of moving things forward. Just another reason (amongst many) to :heart: OG and the folk that inhabit it!

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Ideally…

1.) Cut lower branches between day 20-40, much later can work but it’ll depend on the plant and how it as an individual develops. Late developing branches can sometimes be cloned well into flower.

2.) I just used my fiskars for these, but ideally a razor.

3.) A cloner helps, a dome helps, but you can sometimes get them to root just jammed in a plug with no special treatment and placed on a tent floor.

4.) anywhere from 2-12”, and the size of your clone will greatly effect the size of your final clone. It’s possible to get a a good amount of beans from a single branch. Or you might get 5-10 from a really small clone.

5.) I hadn’t planned to do this, and the best plants for this are vigorously growing hydro plants, not stress tested and hunted plants that are crammed as much as 6 to a pot.

6.) I’ve been able to be smoking a dried and mostly cured mom while clones are still growing and throwing white stigmas. The cloning stunts them and they can be anywhere from 1-3 months behind the donor.

Finally, I have no horse in thls, I ordinarily grow and breed photos. What I’m seeing more and more is that autos are the most vigorous and resilient plants in any tent if you get the right genetics. I love the challenge of breeding them, the quick decisions and all the extra factors you don’t have to consider with photos.

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OG has gotten friendlier towards auto growers, but it’s taken time. It’s one of the reasons I was pulled away by discord, the righteous anti cookie, anti autos, anti fems get off my lawn types. That said, OG is probably the best online community, for anything, that I’ve ever been a part of.

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I have to agree, OG is the most friendly and accepting cannabis forum on the internet and seemingly has something to offer for everyone.

So glad I rediscovered this place, as my local forums are incredibly toxic (even without mentioning autos :joy:) with far too many undeserved egos vying for attention :slightly_frowning_face:

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@Acro I wonder if the reveging or rooting of autos is depending on type of auto, I was reading researchers have identified two locations in the genetics that trigger autoflower one was identified then only like 2 weeks later the other was identified, I’ll need to look it up again but they listed the genetic marker in the study

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@Carty if you are handing out autos, I want to be 1st :1st_place_medal: in line. I will grow any good auto! :wink::ok_hand::+1::facepunch::sunglasses::peace_symbol:

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"There’s a chance I will fail "
Still gonna do it…
My kinda guy

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If you ever want some with regs to hunt through or play around with, I make way more than I can test. Same with fast photo regs.

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I tried it outdoors in 2022 with stunted plants. This was the topping from each. One rooted like mad, it was one of mine and the same papas as much of my blueberry auto regs

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I recently made half a tray of diesel, having ugly clones of it here and there and after getting the sense it was not a quick rooter or grower early on, I figured many wouldn’t take. Like, it needed time to get cookin. Boy was I wrong, I think I’d just had too many cuts from a momma that wasn’t happy. So, 25 rooted and then quickly were outgrowing the cloner. All rooted quickly. All were roughly the same size +/- 3”.

I tossed 6 of them into 1 gallon pots…

Here are 4 of them, 3 in one pot, as they were the three smaller ones, and then the largest one.

What have we learned from this? I’ll start…

1.) Just because you’ve grown something once doesn’t mean you’ve learned all about it. You’ve begun to learn.

2.) Your clone will vary. Some plants and some beans get stunted along the way, sometimes when conditions all good (see #1).

3.) You really have to let any plant go through a couple cycles before judging it.

4.) Dayweecker is an absolute beast of a plant. I’m tempted to do a dwc bucket of a multi topped plant. I bet it’s incredible. I’ve run most of the chem and sour plants worth running and I’m of the opinion that this, D, and Chem are the three best.

5.) a reminder to myself on this wacky auto cloning thing, some of these will take and be meh, some will die, some will grow into something glorious.

:v:

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3 more clones of plant “B2” taken, it’s in the running for best plant. Attempting Kratky…

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Auto clones day 4

This is a tent with no humidity control, just a fan venting out. It’s used as veg for moms and various projects. Cloner water is 6ish ph and 300ish ppm, I’ll top off with water with nutes most days, no water changes, no cloning gel.

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