Hello,
My friend and I have had a dispute that I was hoping you could settle. He suggests that marijuana plants can survive indoors for up to five years or longer. I don’t agree. Isn’t cannabis an annual plant (producing seeds and dying at the end of the season)? Where I am, it’s too difficult to tell, but even tropical plants die after they flower, right? My friend also says that marijuana plants will die off in autumn, then grow back from the roots by next spring.
Who can help me out?
You can grow and harvest, and re-veg, and grow to harvest, over and over. I have done this for approximately 2 years. I believe “Spider mites” did that plant in. in the end.
You can leave a marijuana plant in the perpetualveg photo period of light, 18/6, and plant will not flower. This is how many growers keep “Mom’s” for years. Taking cuttings to clone a plant over and over. Ever hear of “Clone only” strains?
Your friend is closer to right than you are. Yes; You plant veg, then flower. and most of the time is stripped down for harvest. This kills the plant!
In order to keep a plant alive after harvest; You must carefully remove buds and NOT “leaves”. Leave the foliage. If you take all the Kolas off and trim back plant to at least 2 nodes with leaves per stem left on plant, You can re-vegetate that plant. You need the foliage to allow the roots to put out new growth.
Outside. I believe it is possible to allow a plant to die, over winter, and it will regenerate in the spring. My Habanero peppers do; As do most cultivars that fruit in the greenhouse.
Imho, Peace.lw
What about autos? I heard people r having problems even cloning them…heard when the season is up so is that plant. I have kept mamma plants around for up to two years. I can only grow 12 at a time as a medical marijuana patient and I like variety.
Sure it can live for 5 years. Maybe longer. Annual plants are told when to die either by a photoperiod or by freezing. Also a monsoon or yearly dry season, depending on location, could signal end times. Annuals are a subcategory of seasonal plants but not all seasonal plants die yearly. For example bulbs that flower back seasonally every year. Tomato plants(who knows how far from their origins we’ve bred them. But I’m sure there were no wild “Beef Master Madders” growing in northern Europe 200 years ago). Anyway, you can get both annual and seasonal tomato plants. Read the tag. Annual 
will all suddenly die together. The seasonal variety will produce until the last tomato is frozen in the snow. Cannabis can be tricked into a good second flowering. It will flower again on its own if buds are just clipped off as you would any other flower or fruit. You don’t have to thin the leaves. The plant has already stored up enough energy in the fiber of the stalk to “power the flower”. However, you will need to harvest all at once for each individual plant. Even if you have a couple tarded underdeveloped flowers that you have high hopes for…take em. Hopefully you have stopped DNJYP at this point. Just lots of water right after first harvest. NOW, this is outdoors of course. Annual
outdoor plants are doomed. Give the leaves to those dirt heads down the street. Be proud of yourself. After all you may have dropped out of college this year but by God you grew pot. Indoors, as we know, you can power run your lights 24/7. A sudden switch to 12 on/12 off triggers flowering. It is best to keep it as dark and close to pitch as possible. After first flowering. Repeat the same as with outside plants. Harvest each plant pretty much around the same period by clipping. No food. Just water. Talk to them and play you’re plants favorite music. Whatever Gen-wussy does now to complicate growing a weed. Come on. You’ve been taught to use your words. Gen X laid under our plants and shot cars with our pellet guns or looked at our stash of hand-me-down Hustler magazines origin unknown. For Christs sake y’all can’t even scramble eggs. Sorry. Kidding-ish. So you manged a second flowering. Probably about 1/4 or < the weight of the first but worth it. So can the plant live 5 more years? Or more?.. Yep. It won’t flower again. It will look like it has contracted CIV and developed weed AIDS. Greenish brown tree-like dry pathetic shell of its former self. Couple leaves that look nothing like the Bob Marley t-shirts we love. After year 3 you’ll be amazed to see it still there. It’s still alive because your Mammaw waters it every 3 months or so thinking its an old Poinsettias plant she brought back from the nursing home when her cousin Ava Meredith died during the holidays a few years back. Yes they can live years. BUTT WHY? Trash your plants after they bud and be done. If you find yourself wanting a second harvest it just means you didn’t plant enough in the first place. Cannabis is a “Woke” plant you know. In nature the plant itself is highly hermaphroditic. The reason why years back nomatter how careful we were to destroy all males prior to flowering we still had seeds. Oh no. I guess I shouldn’t have told you kids that. Now y’all will worry about what pronouns your plants prefer. Yep. Male flowers on female plants. Is it sex or gender? Little tiny hidden yellow male flowers develop on the female as an insurance policy from the bird who eats the seed and flies 30 miles away to poop. Ensuring continuation species through cannabis self love. It truley is an amazing plant. I grew 2 females once both 17 feet tall. I swear. My friends have the male stocks we killed. Look like fishing poles. I will never forget when Task Force leaned them against their monster truck. They towered so high they flipped over the other side. I hid the plants well. I just never thought about the one little power line cutting its way through the forest. A TXU electrical line repair worker called it in. So. Grown outside in during a hot Texas summer you can water your plants every single watering with double strength Miracle-Gro every single watering. They can grow the size of a downtown Xmas tree. Like weeds on a dairy farm. Smell like skunk fart for a 40 yard radius. The MG and the fact I planted in an Oak tree forest with a Mustang grape canopy
caused the 2 remaining female plants to shoot up in competition for sunlight. Ok damn. Night night peoples. That wore me out. PS-I hate weed now. Unless I’m going to the movies. You know what I mean. I am not even gonna check for typos. I have a brand new, unopened, 14 year old, still in the box, still store taped, with an extra light bulb, adjustable light tower with timer, includes food tabs, grow cups, and instructions. Aluminum foul the inside of a box and throw over it. Maybe gas it with some BB pistal CO2 cartridges for that added love. An Areogrow Garden. They probably still make them but this is vintage. If everyone is nice about my ramble I’ll send it somebody. So the seeds of today produce flowering female plants only and these females are seedless? Or still you get a 3:7 ratio but males are sterile? As an Angiosperm grown from fertile seeds producing female only plants and no accidents? One male flower could ruin the bunch. My friend who still smokes says all he gets now is seedless. I thought you had to clone from cuttings to do that. Like fruitless mulberry trees. To do that in mammals you would have to manipulate maternal mRNA like with vaccines. Someone catch me up on that.
You can clone autos but here is the thing… It won’t do you any good. Autos are born ( germinated ) with a automatic timer. Usually 3-5 weeks after the seed emerges from the soil this thing is going to flower, regardless of light schedule.
You clone photos to grow copies of the original plant, keeping them in a vegetative state to grow them out just like a new plant flipping whenever you want.
Autos have that timer so no extended veg time. It is going to flower so you will just have a limb that flowers like it would on the plant. It isn’t going to make another plant just the limb you chopped off. If that makes sense.
So cloning an auto is just a waste of effort and time. Just let the lil auto do what it does, you cannot re-veg an auto nor keep it alive as a mother, due to the ruderalis gene traits it will automatically flower and die within it’s time frame you can’t extend that…unfortunately.