since1991
Well-Known Member
Not too many posts or threads on mother plant maintenance. And alot of people dont keep mother plants for cloning stock. Just take cuts off the preflowering plants before or soon after the flip. These are big plant growers that can handle plants vegging for 2 or more months while the others flower. I kinda do it both ways. But I still like to keep solid mothers for all my stable of keepers. Years ago I thought a self contained individual hydroponic system for each mother was ideal. It sure was...too ideal really. Mother plants always in veg in a dwc or bucket drip system grows WAY too big and fast for my setup, style, and methods. Taking over the dedicated veg areas in short time. I found slow and low for mothers was the ticket. What i do now..and have been for quite sometime...is to pot up a new mother clone...which is always a healthy bushy small plant...into at least a 7 gallon fabric pot of straight Promix. Under dedicated T5's on 18-6. Any other lighting or plant medium is too fast. Only fertilizing once in awhile. A low nitrogen/high carbohydrate base (1.0 to 1.3 EC )about every 2 weeks being ideal. More frequent feeds - they just get out of hand. Straight water mostly. I try to keep the root zone cool as possible to really slow her down as well. And topping and training for a low wide bush with potential cutting branches all over. Spraying a kelp foliar every 10 days or so keeps em from growing vertical as well. With foliar sprays of kelp...they stay short compact and wide. None of my mothers are over 24 inches or so. Nice and manageable. I actually have about 12 different mother plants of varieties all over the indica/sativa spectrum at another house with all t5's. Some of them are slightly more than a year old. I dont let em get much older than this though. These older milfs I will take cuts for new moms and if the timing is right alot of these older broads get put outside to pasture in the spring planting season. I get big yields from these faithful ladies in October. Anyways...i dont use the cuts from all of them at once. Some of my mother stock branches havent seen a 12 -12 room in awhile. But when I want to change it up... I just go to my mother house and with a cup of water...take cuts as I need. Come back to the main spot and in the fridge they go until iam ready to strike them. With my methods the mothers are slow and low. Lots of canopy management for my motherplants. I figured out the hard way...if you want to keep mothers of your favorite cultivars...you have to employ methods and techniques to maintain them...or else they will definitely out grow your grow. So how about it? If you keep mother plant stock...how do you keep them in check?
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