How long can you keep a mother plant going?

I switched to perpetual from mother grows in DWC. Yes, if you keep a mother in DWC the roots will continue to grow into a res shaped block. The constant cutting back leaves you with leafy logs for stems. The more you prune, the more it branches, the more you have to cut back, the more it branches.... That battle is too much work. Especially for a sativa that just wants to be a tree.

I now grow plants 2 foot tall in veg then take clone cuttings when pruning. When the clones are established in there own DWC I decide the fate of there mother. I can move her into flower until harvest. I can flower for a few weeks then take a clone cutting that will root and reveg before it starts growing bigger. If the flower room is full I can throw plants into compost without loosing genetics.

My longest run was around 5 years. Roughly 30 generations of clones. In my experience cloned plants produce better than those grown from seeds and clones with flowering/reveg ancestors are even better. It may be, that repetition of growing the same strain back to back, has dialed in my grow over time causing that improvement. No empirical evidence. Just an observation.
 
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