How long can you keep a mother plant going?

[Saxplayer]

Hi guys. I guess I said it all in the thread title.
I'm thinking of setting up a 2x2 tent as a mother/clone plant station. I'm just curious however, how long can you keep one going for? Does it depend on the strain etc?
I have the tent, and i'm just pondering over a Infinity T4 fan and Infinity carbon filter too, as the tent will literally be in the same room as people I want to keep it secret from. I was hoping that smell wont be a huge deal with a plant kept in Veg, and on top of which will also have a good carbon filter setup.

As usual, thank you guys for the help I know I will receive. You rock!

 

[Roy Growin]

Indefinitely in theory
One of the guys [can't remember who] is running clones from clones from a Blue Dream mother that's 5 years old

 

[Saxplayer]

Hey Roy, thanks for that. Very encouraging to know.

 

[Azimuth]

If you keep them that long though, you have to maintain them by shaving the roots down every 6 months or so. Instead of that, I just make a recent clone the new mother for 6 months and then repeat.

 

[SmokingWings]

I'm thinking of setting up a 2x2 tent as a mother/clone plant station. I'm just curious however, how long can you keep one going for?

Forever if wanted. But, it takes maintenance. The occasional root pruning as @Azimuth brings up. This gets rid of old roots and encourages the plant to build a whole new root mass. Helps to have a machete and an ax in the tool box.

Does it depend on the strain etc?

Most of the time, no, not that I have seen. I have had a plant or two that would not produce viable cuttings that rooted and I would give up trying with them.

I'm thinking of setting up a 2x2 tent as a mother/clone plant station.

How tall? Since I switched from a cabinet to a tent I have grown 'mothers' that can end up being 3 to 4 foot tall plus the pot of soil (another foot) plus the lights at the ceiling (another foot) plus the 12 to 18 inched between canopy and lights. Plan ahead.

One of the guys [can't remember who] is running clones from clones from a Blue Dream mother that's 5 years old

Probably me since I mentioned my clone from clone adventure the other day. My Blue Dream clones from clones are on their 12th or 13th generation plus the seed plant. I would have to look up the records but no time right now. The seed was planted sometime in fall of 2017 and the first cutting on the records was Nov 11, '17. Records only show the history of plants that ended up making it to the flowering tent or cabinet.

I plan on taking cuttings from every seed I plant and often will harvest one or more of the clones before that "seed mother" is harvested. Plans are that all cuttings that root will eventually become mothers though that often does not need to happen. The most productive mothers will be the ones that are kept the longest.

In some ways it is easier to plan on taking cuttings for several months but I keep in mind that the mother will be harvested once there are successful rooted clones that are already have their own cuttings that have rooted.

A tip is to keep records. I know how old every plant is, when it was cut from its 'mother', when it successfully rooted and survived its first planting in soil and so on.

**Wanted to mention that I only put the records into the book if the plant (from seed or a clone) makes it to the flowering light schedule. If not then those records are tossed.

 

[Saxplayer]

Forever if wanted. But, it takes maintenance. The occasional root pruning as @Azimuth brings up. This gets rid of old roots and encourages the plant to build a whole new root mass. Helps to have a machete and an ax in the tool box.


Most of the time, no, not that I have seen. I have had a plant or two that would not produce viable cuttings that rooted and I would give up trying with them.


How tall? Since I switched from a cabinet to a tent I have grown 'mothers' that can end up being 3 to 4 foot tall plus the pot of soil (another foot) plus the lights at the ceiling (another foot) plus the 12 to 18 inched between canopy and lights. Plan ahead.


Probably me since I mentioned my clone from clone adventure the other day. My Blue Dream clones from clones are on their 12th or 13th generation plus the seed plant. I would have to look up the records but no time right now. The seed was planted sometime in fall of 2017 and the first cutting on the records was Nov 11, '17. Records only show the history of plants that ended up making it to the flowering tent or cabinet.

I plan on taking cuttings from every seed I plant and often will harvest one or more of the clones before that "seed mother" is harvested. Plans are that all cuttings that root will eventually become mothers though that often does not need to happen. The most productive mothers will be the ones that are kept the longest.

In some ways it is easier to plan on taking cuttings for several months but I keep in mind that the mother will be harvested once there are successful rooted clones that are already have their own cuttings that have rooted.

A tip is to keep records. I know how old every plant is, when it was cut from its 'mother', when it successfully rooted and survived its first planting in soil and so on.

**Wanted to mention that I only put the records into the book if the plant (from seed or a clone) makes it to the flowering light schedule. If not then those records are tossed.

Thank you for that SW.

Oh, the 2x2 is a 5 foot+ height.
I'm thinking of using a bubble pot DWC also, so would this make the root pruning easier?

 

[JiggiLotus]

I am trying to find the article. I might have my date wrong an the strain name wrong, however I recall reading the original white widow(?) has been kept in the vegetation stage since 1997(?) ...don't take my word for it..let me track down the article.

 

[seaofgreen18]

I kept a Northern light mother for many years like 10 years back in the 90's it grew under my basement stairs I flowered it once inside to slow it down (you can flower a photoperiod plant up to 3 times it slows considerably after the second flower) and transplanted quite a few times and a Shishkaberry mother for 4 or 5 years.
I should have kept both going it was old school type The strains I get today from beans dont grow the same and don't taste the same! Those mothers were for outside in the summer we really didn't have the lighting technology back then, hell I don't think they had switchable ballasts back then , it was either a sodium ballast and if you wanted to run metal halide you needed a different ballast i had a old factory light with the ballast on top of the light, expensive to operate,noisy, heavy and a hot fucker it was but it worked and
t-12's for clones or the window sill with rooting powder no gel or acid! Makes me think ,Boy things have came a long way in technology

 

[Saxplayer]

I kept a Northern light mother for many years like 10 years back in the 90's it grew under my basement stairs I flowered it once inside to slow it down (you can flower a photoperiod plant up to 3 times it slows considerably after the second flower) and transplanted quite a few times and a Shishkaberry mother for 4 or 5 years.
I should have kept both going it was old school type The strains I get today from beans dont grow the same and don't taste the same! Those mothers were for outside in the summer we really didn't have the lighting technology back then, hell I don't think they had switchable ballasts back then , it was either a sodium ballast and if you wanted to run metal halide you needed a different ballast i had a old factory light with the ballast on top of the light, expensive to operate,noisy, heavy and a hot fucker it was but it worked and
t-12's for clones or the window sill with rooting powder no gel or acid! Makes me think ,Boy things have came a long way in technology

Wow.... I've just learned something new. I thought that when a plant goes to flower, it just browns up and dies off, as its job has "been done". I have so many questions...... like, do you harvest the bud or leave it alone? Do you then flip the light back to say 18-6? Does the plant stress? Why up to 3 times, and then what happens? etc etc etc

 

[seaofgreen18]

harvest just like reg but leave a bunch of lower branches on it to start to grow Put the light back up to 18/6 and just give it a few weeks or month to transplant i flushed at the end of bloom to get rid of the high phosphorus content and just trim off all the weird leaves that grow and feed veg food and eventually it'll be a regular plant again it takes awhile but its worth it as far as the 3 times i can't answer that but im sure you could find out

 

[013]

the idea with a clone mom is you are not trying to veg hard or achieve fast growth, you don’t want to push a lot of nutes or strong lighting…

in one manner of thinking doing a clone mom is kinda the opposite of veg… in that you just want to keep her alive….

I’m sure it can be done in dwc but soil would be so much easier…

what you are talking about is a reveg…. that’s not necessarily the same thing as a clone mother. Once you reveg a plant it is considered as monster cropped and the main stem becomes more woody. But if you do the reveg to create your clone mom then all the clones taken from her would be monster cropped as well

I’m sure one could reveg a plant and turn it into a clone mother but it’s not necessary to do it that way…

You harvest the bud… anything left behind bud wise will brown out and lose its potency over time. The old buds are done they won’t regrow… but the new growth will sprout from just below the old budsites..

Reveg only works on photoperiods since autoflowers are born with an impending toe tag of death…

 

[seaofgreen18]

the idea with a clone mom is you are not trying to veg hard or achieve fast growth, you don’t want to push a lot of nutes or strong lighting…

in one manner of thinking doing a clone mom is kinda the opposite of veg… in that you just want to keep her alive….

I’m sure it can be done in dwc but soil would be so much easier…

what you are talking about is a reveg…. that’s not necessarily the same thing as a clone mother. Once you reveg a plant it is considered as monster cropped and the main stem becomes more woody. But if you do the reveg to create your clone mom then all the clones taken from her would be monster cropped as well

I’m sure one could reveg a plant and turn it into a clone mother but it’s not necessary to do it that way…

You harvest the bud… anything left behind bud wise will brown out and lose its potency over time. The old buds are done they won’t regrow… but the new growth will sprout from just below the old budsites..

Reveg only works on photoperiods since autoflowers are born with an impending toe tag of death…

Nope, its not necessary at all ,that's just what i did with the plant in the 10 years i had it and the idea of a mother is so you can keep the cultivator that you like and does good and so you don't need to buy seeds and they get bigger faster than a seed

 

[seaofgreen18]

Nope, its not necessary at all ,that's just what i did with the plant in the 10 years i had it and the idea of a mother is so you can keep the cultivator that you like and does good and so you don't need to buy seeds and they get bigger faster than a seed

It Keeps the genetics!

 

[Azimuth]

But if you do the reveg to create your clone mom then all the clones taken from her would be monster cropped as well

Is that true? I would have thought that clones taken after the plant had returned to putting out normal leaves that the growth on that limb would be normal as well.

Granted the mother has a ton more growth sites, hence the monster crop label, but is all that new growth bushier some how?

I've never done it as I don't have the space but now you have me curious.

 

[013]

Azi,

As always I could defs be wrong here but my line of thinking is whatever traits whether genetic or otherwise, whatever the mom is carrying would be passed down…

so once the plant is revegged it is in fact monster cropped can’t see why clones cut from her would be any different. Think the same would apply like in the case of Gee64’s seed programming hat trick.

If mom has it then her clones are same, same identical in every way. A clone is a living piece of the host it was cut from

Yep monster crops are bushy AF and good yielders cuz it’s not the first rodeo for the plant, she’s got an established frame and an existing rootball going to bat for 2nd pass.

Main difference would be clones don’t have the tap root like a plant from seed does…

I’d imagine someone has done more that 1 reveg on a plant but I can also see a point of diminishing return or loss of vigor but I’ve never played with more than 1 reveg on same plant or done root pruning on a reveg…

 

[seaofgreen18]

the idea with a clone mom is you are not trying to veg hard or achieve fast growth, you don’t want to push a lot of nutes or strong lighting…

in one manner of thinking doing a clone mom is kinda the opposite of veg… in that you just want to keep her alive….

I’m sure it can be done in dwc but soil would be so much easier…

what you are talking about is a reveg…. that’s not necessarily the same thing as a clone mother. Once you reveg a plant it is considered as monster cropped and the main stem becomes more woody. But if you do the reveg to create your clone mom then all the clones taken from her would be monster cropped as well

I’m sure one could reveg a plant and turn it into a clone mother but it’s not necessary to do it that way…

You harvest the bud… anything left behind bud wise will brown out and lose its potency over time. The old buds are done they won’t regrow… but the new growth will sprout from just below the old budsites..

Reveg only works on photoperiods since autoflowers are born with an impending toe tag of death…

Yes they grow just like a normal plant after you trim off all the weird single leaves nothing different about it

 

[Saxplayer]

As usual, some outstanding advice here guys, thank you all.

 

[SmokingWings]

Granted the mother has a ton more growth sites, hence the monster crop label, but is all that new growth bushier some how?

If you are talking about cloned cuttings taken from that mother then no, not that I have noticed. The clones grow more like a regular plant than something that has double the growth tips.

 

[SmokingWings]

Oh, the 2x2 is a 5 foot+ height.
I'm thinking of using a bubble pot DWC also, so would this make the root pruning easier?

Never did DWC and from what I have seen root pruning would not be the same. But, probably will be necessary so the root mass does not get compacted in the container it is in.

I brought up the height of the tent because it can get very important if the clone, or even a plant from seed, grows better than expected.

 

[Azimuth]

If you are talking about cloned cuttings taken from that mother then no, not that I have noticed. The clones grow more like a regular plant than something that has double the growth tips.

Ok, that's what I thought. If needed I would reveg a harvested plant, let it grow until normal leaves started and then clone it for a new plant for flower, though the now monster cropped mother would probably throw a ton of clones given how bushy it would be.