My Seedlings!

[italian_gardener]

When do I know when my seedlings are good to clone from?

Inorder to send clones to 12/12 and find out if i'm having a girl or boy?

This is to keep the seedlings veging and not slowing them down or switching them to 12/12 themselves...

 

I heard somthing about when the shoot splits into 2 then there mature?

 

I am not to sure!

[TopNotch]

In order to take clones from seedlings let the seedlings mature to 2 months old first then you can clone for sex.

[Luke Skywalker]

At about 2 months the plants would usually be sexually mature, yes, ready to flower. This is when you want to take clones for optimum response in shortest time, as they'll have the biological age of the motherplant printed within them.

 

So, how do you tell if a plant is sexually mature? It's usually deliniated by a mixture of 3 signals. Firstly, time. It's unlikely that a plant will show maturity before a month of age. They are usually ready between 6 weeks from seed to 3 months from seed, depending on the cultivar. But the usual result is somewhere around 2 months.

 

Second is node structure. The nodes are the little bumps on the stem where a leaf and axilliary branch, or flowering branch, will appear. When the plants are young, and sexually immature, they'll tend to produce nodes which are opposing. In other words, there are two leaves and shoots on opposite sides of the stem, at the same point of the stem. When a plant approaches maturity, it starts to produce alternating nodes. This means the nodes appear first on one side of the stem, then the stem grows a little further, and the next node faces a different direction a little away. So alternating left, then right, then left, etc...

 

Third is preflowers. These are small flowers that can appear along the node sites, and will usually reliably deliniate the sex of the plant. these flowers are usually alone and singular, and will appear anything from 6 weeks of age from seed, although there are differences. The preflowers will usually show the sex of the plant, although one can't entirely rely on them. A female hermaphrodite plant with only a small amount of male flowers spattered through the buds, could show all female preflowers at the nodes, then only show it's true nature later in the flowering phase... So whilst a male flower at a node shows you you've got a male or a hermie, a female doesn't necessarily show that you've only got a female. You could still have a hermie plant, and the only way to guard against it is to regularly check em.

 

Anyway, once the plants are around 2 months old, they should be showing all or most of these traits. You can then clone, and these clones will be able to be flowered immediately after rooting, or grown to desired size. The clones are always the same biological age as the parent, and if you take clones too early, you'll have to still grow them through the maturing phase before you can get the best flowering response from them.

 

Hope this helps italian gardener.

[italian_gardener]

Perfect!