Monster Cropping And Re Veg
I thought id do a write-up on monster cropping and re vegging plants. It's something I do with every new strain I grow.
What is monster cropping?
Monster cropping is a growing technique in which a grower takes a cut/clone from a flowering plant. It's handy for a number of reasons which I will go into. Firstly it allows growers to grow the same strain/phenotype over and over again but without keeping a mother. You can take a cut/clone from anywhere on your plant and root it. Rooting clones can be done in many different ways, I use an aero propagator, ill do a write-up on this separately. When growing a new strain from seed you never know if you are going to find something very special. Even the same strain will have variations called phenotypes, these will be different, sometimes a specific phenotype is highly sought after and rare from a specific strain. How upsetting would it be to harvest a plant, dry, and cure to find out you had some amazing buds and the chances of finding it again are slim... By taking a clone from a special-looking plant you have a chance to root it and keep that strain. Growing from clones will produce an identical plant to the one you just harvested. If you dry and cure your bud and it's not that special, you just get rid of the clone you took.
The old-school way of getting the same result is to take a clone much earlier and create a mother plant. From this mother plant, you can take as many clones as you want once she is ready but not everyone can have a separate setup for a mother as that needs to be on a vegetative lighting schedule and its own space.
What is Re Veg
Re veg is what comes after you have rooted your clone and have it in your chosen media/system. I use coco as I grow in coco normally and always have a feed sat around that will suit these young plants. You can do this in any media or system. In order to get your plant back into a veg state, you will need to reintroduce it to a veg lighting schedule. Once your monster-cropped clone is rooted it will begin to revert back to a vegetative state. Your bud on a stick will start to grow leaves and stems, they go mental in this faze, mutant-looking mini bushes. You can expect some strange leaves in this period, single-bladed are not uncommon. Many growers will prefer to grow from a re vegged plant given they are very bushy and normally tight structure from the beginning.
The downsides to monster cropping are that it takes much longer to root a flowering clone and the success rate is not as good as taking clones from a plant in veg. Once rooted they take some time to complete the re veg process.
I recently came across a very pretty phenotype of Dutch Passions, Mokums Tulip. I rooted this using my cloning method. To see my cloning guide please click here..
This plant was in very late flower and unfortunately, didn't make it. It produced roots but that was as far as it got. The later you take a clone in flower the less the chance of it rooting and the linger the re veg process will take.
Below is an Agent Orange clone that was taken in mid flower and you can see its progress through the re veg stage.
In the first 2 pictures, you can see the bottom of the clone is still in the formation of a bud.
In the below pictures you can see the plant is now producing the main stem. You can also see the mutant growth, single-bladed leaves, and strange node structure are common for this stage.
And that sums up this write-up. Monster cropping has its benefits. If you are restricted for room you are able to grow from clone without a mother plant. The clones will turn into bushy mini-monsters during re veg. The downside to monster cropping is that the success rate for rooting clones in flower, especially later in the flowering period, is lower than cloning in the veg stage of a plant's life. Rooting clones that are in flower also takes longer and your flowering clones will then need to re veg. This makes timing and planning a little more difficult if you are relying on monster cropping for your next crop.
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