How cloning your crops can speed up Crop Cycles

Want to get more done with hydroponics in a given time frame? Cloning can help. No, cloning plants isn't like cloning Dolly the sheep - in fact, rather than being some type of intensive labor-driven research, it's actually a way to expedite fully matured plants.

The Philosophy of Cloning

The difference between cloning plants, including other things, involves the different biological makeup of plants. The plant has basic parts -- leaves, stems, roots. With plants, it's easy to cut a piece of the plant off and still have a stem and leaves. Then, later, through the natural biological regeneration process common in the plant world, that cutting will develop its own roots. That's what's known as a clone.

Getting Around Germination

One of the biggest ways that clones speed up crop cycles is that they eliminate the germination time.

Any grower who has grown plants from seed knows that it's one of the most trying times of crop cycles. You put the seed in the ground, or in a wet paper towel or other environment, and you don't see anything from it for several days. When you do you see something, it's extremely small and it grows very slowly.

It's not uncommon for plant seedlings grown from seeds in small pots or trays to still be less than an inch tall a month after they were planted -- for some growers, this is simply unacceptable, which is why they may buy seedlings, clone plants or try other measures to get around germination problem.

Lower Cost

Cloning plants can also save some costs, again, because of less need for seeds and other related materials. It can be easy way to create more abundance with hydroponics, without putting in a lot more resources. But clones do need their own particular care, and they need their own growing environments because they're so sensitive and lack existing root systems.

Multi-Tenancy Processes

A lot of growers who are doing clones buy two or three different types of tray environments. They keep the clones in the first one, the semi-developed plants in the next, and the fully developed plants in the third. This helps shepherd the clones to where they need to be as mature plants, and also helps to expedite a grow process, because you have various plants in various trays at any one time.

To figure out more about cloning and everything else involved in hydroponics, check out the Dealzer web site, and take a look at what we offer for a worldwide community of growers. Through our forums, social media resources and informative web pages, we teach you how to grow, so that your project is successful and you are satisfied with the final results.