re: QT's Second Grow - 1st Journal
Cool, how tall can they be? Cause if she stays in veg, won't she just get taller?*
You bet she'll get taller! One of the clones I am going to use for a mother is 14 weeks old! She's going to need a walker by the time she gets to the flowering room.
What you should do to a plant that is going to be around for a while to be used as a mother, is to top it several times. That will keep it smaller and also give you more shoots to use as clones.
Mine has four colas and is getting to be a monster. What I intend to do when I clone her is to cut off each cola just above a node. I will take a fairly long cutting, so that the mother plant will be of a manageable size when I am done.
The clones will be very big, so after they root, they will almost be ready to go into the flowering room.
If the mother you plan to use hasn't been topped and she's getting too big to handle, cut off the main cola just above one of it's nodes. Usually when you top a plant, you cut the leaves just above the top node. There is no reason why you couldn't cut at a lower node. As long as there are at least three nodes left on the main stem, you can make the "topping" anywhere you like.
So you get the best of both worlds:
1) You get to top the plant to a reasonable size, and
2) You get a large sized clone to root.
So depending on how many clones you want from your mother plant, top her enough times to get them:
No topping (one cola) ===> one clone
One topping (two colas) ===> two clones
If you top each of the toppings after they have grown out, you will have four colas. If you top
only one of the toppings, you will have three colas.
So basically, it's one cola per clone.
Of course, you don't have to use a cola to make a clone; it's just a convenient way to keep a mother plant to a reasonable size
AND get large clones in the process.
If the clones are large enough, you can pop them into the flowering room, right after they root. (Although it's probably better to let them veg for a week or two to build up a stronger root system.)