Keeping mothers?

Go go n chill

Well-Known Member
I was contemplating keeping a mother of my King Tut. I need to keep it in the house without it looking like a Picasso in the corner. Can you guys give me advice on light, smell and whatever. Prohibition state
 

Go go n chill

Well-Known Member
Have you considered the way some do perpetual growing?

Simply use the off fall or trims, from the lollypopping to root for clones.... No need to keep mothers then...
I have, just not sure what I’m going to do. I know what I should do is to just let it go and not worry about it. At least in the situation that I’m in ya know? I said I would never get over a particular plant count well you know how that goes
 

tyke1973

Well-Known Member
Small unit like the one I use, did not cost a lot to make ,t5,light a.Once you have one good mother, you can get away with just the one plant,i used to graft my other strains onto my main Exodus mother, till I made a bigger unit ,that took 2 biggish plants ,or a few smaller.you would get away with a bathroom fan ,with a 4" filter going to it.this will be fine for the smell.
 

tyke1973

Well-Known Member
Pyramid seeds king tut, is a very nice strain grew it years ago ,along with a few of there strains
 

MonkeyGrinder

Well-Known Member
https://www.hydrofarm.com/p/FLP28
Grab one of these. You can find them on Amazon etc for cheaper if you want. I've seen them in grow shops as well.
Grab the 2x2 8 bulb fixture. For keeping a mom going you can easily just slap 4 bulbs in it. Have them staggered. Bulb-empty slot - bulb - empty slot.
4x24 watt bulbs means very little power usage. And you can find bulbs at Ace Hardware if you're in a pinch (always have extra bulbs).
Even with 8 bulbs it's power usage is so low you can use just about any small timers with it. No need for buying high power expensive ones.
It's a small enough fixture that you can slap it in a broom closet or a wardrobe armoire no problem. It pushes off little heat so cooling is a non issue.
There's an added bonus of it having a separate outlet on the light itself so you can daisy chain it no problem or hook a small fan to it, charge your cell phone, whatever.
It's also small enough to where you can hang it vertically in a smaller space. The hanging cables are strong as can be. My cat's jumped on it to piss me off plenty of times. They're built sturdy.

As far as keeping your plant count down and taking clones. Look up air layering. You're not taking cuttings and having a lot of them rooting so you can easily argue that it's one static plant in the case that you do get popped. Small plastic Easter Eggs work wonderfully for it. Snap em together. Drill a hole (carefully and use tape to hold em together during drilling) pop a hole in the seams big enough to go around the stem. Works really well filled with promix or even seedling starter. Set it and just chop clones 2 weeks later. Works like a charm for outdoor moms as well and keeping just one plant.
With mom upkeep just trim her down as needed. You can butcher her back down to a small plant with a few nodes no problem. If it's a strong plant you won't have to be gentle. If she has a good root mass she'll bounce right back to spite you.

I personally like using organics to take care of moms. Keep it mild enough so they keep on trucking.
If you wanna go real bare bones with it just slap 2 bulbs in it. And have it hanging horizontally. Put a single cola plant in a 2 foot rectangle pot. Top it so it shoots out 2 branches (trim everything else off) LTS it like a T. As it grows the nodes on it will shoot up making nice branches for cuttings. If you want larger cuttings (for putting outdoors etc) Just hang your light vertically against a wall. Use said training method and just add bulbs to your hearts content as they get taller. It's nice timing it to spring and you've got over a dozen clones rooted already that are a foot tall. Works well for late summer too if you wanna throw out some small clones in numbers.
There's so many uses for it that it isn't even funny if you get creative with it.
 

GroErr

Well-Known Member
You can just keep them perpetually in party cups. I do that for the majority of my keeper cuts, the odd time I'll put them into a 1gal then eventually cut clones but 99% of the time I grow them in a cup, super-crop them to generate enough branches, then clone-the-clone. I have about 20 cuts/strains going that way right now including males.

Clone-the-clones1.jpg
 

Go go n chill

Well-Known Member
You can just keep them perpetually in party cups. I do that for the majority of my keeper cuts, the odd time I'll put them into a 1gal then eventually cut clones but 99% of the time I grow them in a cup, super-crop them to generate enough branches, then clone-the-clone. I have about 20 cuts/strains going that way right now including males.

View attachment 4123564
How long do you keep them in solo cups don’t think it root bound pretty quickly
 

GroErr

Well-Known Member
How long do you keep them in solo cups don’t think it root bound pretty quickly
Several weeks if I don't have space to flower them. The trick is keeping them healthy, I find feeding them low ppm's every watering works when they get to a certain size. I have a couple right now that have been in cups for 8+ weeks. I clone them in an aero cloner which helps too as I have 36 slots per cloner and two cloners, 2 - 3 weeks in the cloner, 6-10 weeks in the cup, start again. I did this because I'd need a ridiculous amount of space to keep 20+ strains going otherwise, I have ~6 males on average for breeding that need to be kept for as long as I'm working the line, double that for females and that's just the breeding stock.

People grow out and flower plants in party cups, they don't get root bound, they get crammed with roots and because there's little medium they need feeding or they'll die off and it'll be chalked up to being root bound.
 

Go go n chill

Well-Known Member
Several weeks if I don't have space to flower them. The trick is keeping them healthy, I find feeding them low ppm's every watering works when they get to a certain size. I have a couple right now that have been in cups for 8+ weeks. I clone them in an aero cloner which helps too as I have 36 slots per cloner and two cloners, 2 - 3 weeks in the cloner, 6-10 weeks in the cup, start again. I did this because I'd need a ridiculous amount of space to keep 20+ strains going otherwise, I have ~6 males on average for breeding that need to be kept for as long as I'm working the line, double that for females and that's just the breeding stock.

People grow out and flower plants in party cups, they don't get root bound, they get crammed with roots and because there's little medium they need feeding or they'll die off and it'll be chalked up to being root bound.
Gotcha on the root bound statement,that makes sense
 

Randomestguy

Well-Known Member
Mainlining might be an option? It's pretty much topping over a couple weeks, first cut gets you 2 main colas, then top those 2 after recovery time, now you got 4, and once more for 8 after recovery(you can go as high as 32 but it's not worth past that plus indoors 8 is your best bet) so aside from keeping the mother in check each topping gives you a clone. After you finish that you could start a clone as a new mom and throw the mainlined one into flower, the process gives you 8 main colas, is better than lollipopping while still no popcorn buds and a very nice even canopy. Idk your setup or if this is ideal but just food for thought, and munchies.
 

Go go n chill

Well-Known Member
Mainlining might be an option? It's pretty much topping over a couple weeks, first cut gets you 2 main colas, then top those 2 after recovery time, now you got 4, and once more for 8 after recovery(you can go as high as 32 but it's not worth past that plus indoors 8 is your best bet) so aside from keeping the mother in check each topping gives you a clone. After you finish that you could start a clone as a new mom and throw the mainlined one into flower, the process gives you 8 main colas, is better than lollipopping while still no popcorn buds and a very nice even canopy. Idk your setup or if this is ideal but just food for thought, and munchies.
I basically have 2, 2x3 closets.
 

Sour Wreck

Well-Known Member
Several weeks if I don't have space to flower them. The trick is keeping them healthy, I find feeding them low ppm's every watering works when they get to a certain size. I have a couple right now that have been in cups for 8+ weeks. I clone them in an aero cloner which helps too as I have 36 slots per cloner and two cloners, 2 - 3 weeks in the cloner, 6-10 weeks in the cup, start again. I did this because I'd need a ridiculous amount of space to keep 20+ strains going otherwise, I have ~6 males on average for breeding that need to be kept for as long as I'm working the line, double that for females and that's just the breeding stock.

People grow out and flower plants in party cups, they don't get root bound, they get crammed with roots and because there's little medium they need feeding or they'll die off and it'll be chalked up to being root bound.

this is the exact approach i have chose to use. i am up to about 15 strains myself. i will be pheno hunting on several different strains, so i got a lot of llittle solo cups right now. but once they become clones of keepers, i do a rotation similar to yours. re-cloning when plant becomes too large or start to look unhealthy.
 
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