How to grow a clone from the dispensary: the first two weeks

Here is how to grow a clone from the dispensary in two weeks of steady care. Check that it has real roots before you pay, set it under gentle 18-hour light in a humid spot for a few days, move it into a bigger pot once white roots reach the edge of its plug, and water by the weight of the pot instead of the calendar. A clone has already done the hard part, rooting, so your job is to avoid stressing it while it adjusts to your room.

Before you buy, count. Health and Safety Code section 11362.2(a)(3) allows adults 21 and over not more than six living plants per private residence in California, kept in a locked space out of public view, and the Department of Cannabis Control notes cities can add rules. This is general information, not legal advice. If you are starting from scratch, our guide to how to grow cannabis at home covers the whole grow, and our page on seeds covers the other way to start.

Last reviewed: November 2026.

What to check at the counter

A licensed store can only sell you a clone that meets the DCC regulations. Section 15408 says it must come from a licensed nursery or microbusiness, must not be flowering, and must be shorter and narrower than 18 inches. Section 15409 caps an adult-use customer at six immature plants a day. Section 15408 also bars the retailer from applying pesticides to live plants, or having anyone else do it, so the store itself can’t have sprayed your clone.

Then look at the plant itself. Roots should show at the sides or bottom of the plug; DCC’s cultivation definitions treat a cutting as an immature plant once its root mass is more than half an inch wide. Leaves should be evenly green. Turn a few over: fine webbing or speckled, pale leaves can mean spider mites, which UC IPM lists among the common sap-sucking indoor pests. Ask what light schedule and medium the clone was grown in, so you can start close to that.

How to grow a clone from the dispensary, day by day

Step 1, day 0: set the clone in your space with the light on an 18-hour schedule, the vegetative standard in the University of Saskatchewan grow guide. Hang an LED higher than you would for a big plant; USask starts small seedlings around 30 cm under an LED and lowers it to 20 to 30 cm as plants grow.

Step 2, days 1 to 3: keep the air humid while the roots catch up. USask’s seedling guide recommends 21 to 27°C and 60 to 70% humidity for very small plants because it cuts water loss through the leaves, then lowering humidity as the plant adds leaves. A clone is a small plant with a small root system, so the same logic applies. A humidity dome or a tent with the fan on low does the job.

Step 3, when roots reach the edge of the plug: transplant. Dig a hole the size of the plug, set it in at the same depth, firm the mix around it and water lightly right around the stem. USask waters young plants in a small circle and widens it as roots spread, because a big pot of wet mix around a tiny root ball stays soggy.

Step 4, days 4 to 14: lower the humidity toward the 50 to 60% USask recommends for vegetative growth, bring the light down gradually, and start watering by weight. Lift the pot after a thorough watering, then water again when it feels about half as heavy. Follow the nursery’s feeding note; USask starts young plants on half or quarter strength fertilizer.

Step 5, end of week two: new leaves at the top tell you the roots have taken. From here the clone is in ordinary vegetative growth, and the rest of the grow follows our main guide.

Pot size, medium and the move to a final container

Use containers with drainage holes and a commercial potting mix, and read whether the mix already contains fertilizer. In a Cornell hemp propagation trial, cuttings rooted in rockwool, coco coir and potting soil all worked; coco dried out fastest, and soil grew the most roots but could leave plants root-bound before transplant. That is a good reason not to leave a clone in its plug for long.

You can step up through one middle pot or go straight to the final container. Either way, finish transplanting during vegetative growth. USask says a plant should already be in a container big enough to finish in before it flowers, because transplanting in flower stresses it.

When your clone droops: what it usually means

A drooping clone in its first days is common, and the fix depends on the pot. Lift it. If it feels heavy and the mix is wet, the roots probably have too much water; USask warns that soaked roots can drown and rot. Let it dry back before watering again. If it feels light and dry, water it slowly until a little runs out the bottom.

Small dark flies around the soil are usually fungus gnats. UC IPM says overwatering and poor drainage help them multiply and recommends letting the soil dry as much as possible between waterings. A clone that roots poorly, stays stunted or shows yellowing and brittle growth may be carrying hop latent viroid; OSU Extension notes that cuttings from infected mothers often root badly and that visual diagnosis is unreliable, so ask the store about the nursery’s testing.

Growing a dispensary clone outdoors

Check your city first. Under Health and Safety Code section 11362.2(b), California cities and counties cannot ban indoor home grows but can ban outdoor ones, and any outdoor plant still has to sit in a locked space that is not visible from a public place.

If outdoor growing is allowed where you live, treat the clone like a garden seedling. The USask seedling guide suggests growing young plants indoors in small pots first and moving them to the garden once they are larger and hardened off, the way you would with tomatoes or peppers, and warns that cutworms and birds go after young cannabis plants. Timing matters too: USask notes that outdoor photoperiod plants keep growing vegetatively until the days shorten to less than about 13 hours. A clone can behave differently, though. It may have come from a room on a different light schedule, and the cultivar and its maturity play a part, so watch for early flowers after you move it outside rather than counting on a full summer of growth.

After week two: topping, flowering and cloning your clone

Once the clone is growing well you can shape it. Our guide to LST versus topping explains when bending beats cutting. USask says many indoor growers give photoperiod plants three to four weeks of vegetative growth before switching to 12 hours of light and 12 of uninterrupted darkness to flower.

You can also keep the clone growing as a mother and take cuttings from it. The short version from Cornell’s propagation guidance: cut a healthy, non-flowering tip with two to three nodes, dip it in rooting hormone, and keep it warm and humid until it roots. The home limit is six living plants, and rooted cuttings are living plants, so plan the tray around it. Our guide to growing clones from dispensaries indoors and cloning them yourself walks through it step by step, and our quick clone-care tips cover the basics in a few minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• California Health and Safety Code section 11362.2
• DCC: What's legal
• DCC: Text of regulations (sections 15408 and 15409, definitions)
• USask: Vegetative growth
• USask: Seedlings
• Cornell Hemp: Clonal propagation of TJ's CBD in different media
• Cornell Hemp webinar: Propagation of hemp (Bridgen, 2023)
• UC IPM: Houseplant problems
• OSU Extension: Hop latent viroid in hemp

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