i was wondering what one has to do when dealing with a mother plant? i know you keep her in 18/6 permenantly, but how do you go about keeping her small and mainting the root size, so that it doesnt autoflower if stressed? is keeping her under shop lights a better idea tha keeping her under a hps?
Im gonna give you a recipe for success Toecup. The most easiest and maintainance free way to keep a mom like you'd like to is to keepem in 3" pots with grow rocks in a 5 gallon bukkit. It dont mater what you wanna do bout the germ root and veg stages. Once you got a properly suited mom germed and growin good ya need to cut some off her and root the cuttings directly into the net pots with the rocks around it with a li'l scarification and root hormoan on the stems. It would prolly serve your purpose well if ya germed into rockwool cubes, that way when ya see roots commin threw the 1" cube you can stick it in a 3" net pot with the rocks around it. This will start ya off. Then ya can bubble your mom with FFGB 3-2-6 at the rate of 2 tsp per gallon at a ph of 6.4. A 3' plant will easily give ya 8 cuttings every other week. She'l stay at an easily managable hight for a fyew months, then ya gotta just use one of her cuttings to replace her. Youl never wory bout keepin her managable because you can always just throw her out whenever ya want and replace her with a new cutting. Its easy! There used to be someKinda genious out here on the boards called LuMpYtRiChOmEy. Il see if I can bump up some of his mother keepin threads. If ya do just like he says youl be in with the perpetual mom. Blessins !
There ya go! I bumped a coupala threads in the growin tekneeks section. Im not to sure if anybody elce detailed a tek in the forums like LuMp. I bumped up his Veg Growth thread and his Flower room fun thread. Theyr both prety detailed. He's smokin Elvis !
However you choose to grow keeping Moms can present problems due to size and old roots. It tends to keep getting bigger and people fear losing their good genetics. For many small growers the main concern that changing moms with clones often can cause trouble and that is a myth. You can either keep a mom as long as you want or replace her with a new clone often. The only thing that matters is that new clone moms be hardy individual clones. Poor clone selection can cause clone degradation. People have seen their clones weaken with repeated cloning of clones but it isn't because of anything else other than clone selection of the best ones for moms. If yields are declining from your clones perhaps you selected poorly but normally this doesn't have to occur. When making the choice consider the size of your operation. When taking 50 clones a week more big moms need to be kept. This presents different circumstances for each size grower with their sets also as variables. I say keep a clone mom for 3 sets of clones. Maybe just 6 the first time and then 12 and then 24 perhaps at last clipping. Then I veg the mom another week and flower the big girl out in a big pot for a nice yield. Keeping a few clones back as new moms makes it easy to have fresh healthy clones available at all times. Selecting new clone moms is fun if you lose one anyways so make the best of whatever happens. BOG
Having witnessed the operation of a "factory" in Europe that produced over a thousand clones a week, and reading BOG's info, I would have to agree that most growers over there are replacing the Mothers regularly with new ones from cloned stock...the used MOther will produce an awesome yeild! Maybe we can call this the "Euro Method?" I only knew one grower proud of his "ancient" mother... and it was over 20 years old when I tried it... Orange Bud, the Dutch National Favorite of old times... Methinks they should have replaced that mother a long time ago, this strain was very low THC yeild and the buds were kinda tiny and fluffy - but that could be from other growing problems. Happy Growing!
Yes, we had that debate a while back and I agree with Soma that clones retain their genetics very well when taken care of properly and properly selected. My sour bubble clone mom has been kept but replaced. Never with another strain though you see we always have plenty growing at all stages of growth. Nothing has changes in 5 years doing it the euro way you speak of. I just do it my way and speak from my own experience but many others have found this concept to hold true. 3 cutting groups and then move that mom on. The more times you do cuttings the more you get and the bigger the mom gets. Why try to keep a monster plant around forever? BOG
