Chapter Sixteen

Regeneration

      When restarting a garden, marijuana growers often believe that they are limited to choosing between seeds or clones.
      Seeds present many disadvantages to the indoor gardener. Approximately half of the plants will be male, and the final results are uncertain. Using seeds gives growers more control over evolution and selection, but indoor growers often cannot devote time and space to plants that may have quite different habits in growth, flowering time, or yield.
      Clones offer the advantage of uniform genetics. They will grow in the same way, ripen at the same time and have the same taste and potency. The problems with clones are that they can be decidedly tedious to prepare and are subject to heavy failure rates. Taking clones from different varieties at the same time can be frustrating—they grow at different rates yet all must be closely monitored. Additionally, taking clones from clones from clones may cause the plants to suffer from ‘genetic drift,’ a result of mutations, which constantly occur in living organisms.

This is a garden of regenerates.

      There is a third way to restart your garden: regeneration. Regeneration is faster, easier and requires less labor than cloning or starting with seeds. Yields also tend to be greater since regenerated plants have much of their infrastructure intact, including the root system and part of the stem.
      Everyone has probably pruned a plant at some time. Within a few weeks, new leaves, stems and branches appear. Marijuana gardeners can do the same thing with their plants. Plants that have already been harvested and are known to be high-yield females can be forced back into the vegetative cycle and then into flowering.

A small leaf with growing tip was left on the lower stem of this plant after harvest.

      The regeneration process begins at harvest. There is no seed preparation or cutting required and no planting or repotting involved. Rather than cutting the whole plant down at the stem, you leave it intact with a few branches. Each of these branches will sprout many small branches with leaves. As a result, regenerated plants tend to be bushier, with more, smaller buds than clones or seed plants.
      Remove the other branches at the stem. Leaves should be left on the branches you choose to keep. Leaves will grow more quickly, dramatically increasing the plants’ chance of survival. Gardeners who wish to grow single-stem plants should remove all but one branch or leaf site on the stem and remove other leaf sites. All of the plants’ energy will focus on this remaining growth sites.

This close-up shows new growth on a cut stem. In order to regenerate, some vegetation and growing tips must be left on the plant.

      Once the plants are pruned, the lights should be left on continuously. The plants will switch to the vegetative cycle and start to grow in about 10 days. They can be forced to flower when they reach the desired size.

Left unpruned, dozens of branches grow from an old stalk at the regenration point.

      Most people practice regeneration only once or twice and then start again with new plants. One popular method is to harvest an indoor plant and then place it outdoors in the spring. The plant regenerates and produces a fall harvest. In wanner climates you can place plants outdoors for a winter or spring harvest and then let them regenerate.
      One woman who wrote me claimed to have a four-year-old plant that had flowered and regenerated a number of times both outdoors and indoors. One spring she said she cut it back to make clones and left it on the porch. When she returned from a month-long trip, the plant had grown into a 3 foot wide bush.
      I do have some concern about growth rate when the roots are pot-bound or make up a very large mass in a hydroponic system. It might be better to trim them as well to encourage new growth. If this were helpful, it would only be done following the second or third harvest.

After harvesting, the light is left on continuously to force the plants back into vegetative growth.

      There are other advantages to regeneration. Federal sentencing guidelines are determined by the total number of plants seized. Using sea-of-green methods, which produce short, dense plants and colas, seed and clone growers usually grow between one plant every two square feet and four plants per square foot, although a few growers space the plants as densely as nine per square foot. Regenerated plants already have complete infrastructures, so they can be fairly sizeable, without taking up a lot of time in vegetative growth. Fewer plants, regardless of size, will usually result in lighter sentences if you’re unfortunate enough to be arrested after the second or third harvest.