Taking Care of Our Precious Plant Friends + Questioning Plant Cloning

Recently I have started tuning in more as to how we raise plants affects them and thus us in response. I have realized in eating plants that I can tell how happy they are, how much their breeding reflects their original prototype, the nutrient density of the soil, and sometimes also the happiness and wellbeing of their caretakers. In ingesting plants that are able to more dramatically share their consciousness with me, I learn even more, and these experiences have especially made me empathetically involved with realizing how important the caretaker is to the plant--the plant is often, in modern environments, entirely dependent on its human caretaker for all its needs, and generally the human does not view the plant that way, but only is invested in it for his or her personal profit. This is a very sad state of affairs, causing plants to be wrecked through genetic modification, or fed toxic fertilizers, grown indoors away from the light of the sun and beat of the earth, or watered with chlorinated or pharmaceutical water, etc.

I believe that plants have spirits, often extremely wise, and I feel that it is best to be very cautious and conscious when caretaking them. Though many people believe in person-to-person karma (i.e., if I kill you, you or a karmic stand-in may kill me in another lifetime), I also believe in plant karma, wherein if you mistreat plants you may someday find yourself being mistreated in a similar fashion. Not that this is bad per se, as karma is a deep and profound consciousness learning tool, but I have gone through enough blind suffering to strive for the grace over karma approach. And I think that this karma can be much more than just neglecting plants, I think it can have to do with not respecting the plant and just raping it for profits, or restricting it from individuals who need it, etc.

I have also been contemplating whether or not marijuana cloning is appropriate. I use "cloning" to mean when a female marijuana plant's arms are cut to be planted to produce another separate plant. In the medical marijuana industry, cloning is the norm, and it makes sense because the shorter the yield the more profit, and it takes a lot of resources to invest in seeds and then sort out the males from the females. But I wonder if cloning breaks the integrity of the plant and weakens it, though it seems that people would not clone if this were evident in the yields. Perhaps this is just a superstition of mine, but it has been knocking around my head for a few days now and I wanted to put it out to the community to see if anyone had any opinions as to what you think the marijuana plant, or other plants that are able to be cloned in such a fashion, think of this practice. I have similar inquiries as to what plants such as the rose or peyote think of grafting.

Image courtesy of brewbrooks and Creative Commons.