Led grown - plants too bushy - defoliating

Fevs.

Well-Known Member
Sweet skunk auto's. I just leave them for about a week sat in a dark ish room before harvest. Harvested 2 others, but need to get motivated and do the other 2. Will chop the next one soon. Flushing them and leaving them on that bench for a week - 10 days without light has become a habit. The buds do get more solid. I aim a hurricane fan at them to stop bud rot starting. 10 litres of straight tap water every 2 days for these 2 old girls.

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Veg tent. Just got the clones in riot cubes. 100w led + 90w T5 (which isn't on much)

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Fevs.

Well-Known Member
A kandy kush that I got fucked off with and slaughtered today. A constant mag battle that I no longer am fighting. lol This plant is dead. I still have clones of it, if they root I may try her in soil. Just don't see how it can be grower error when all the other plants are fine.

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Got an empty tent coz of that plant.

My favourite plant. Blimburn seeds Cindy. Same as plant in tent 2. Pineapple x grapefruit. 7 week sativa.

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White Siberian. ak47 x white widow.

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Tops look a bit light. The light has been off for approx 24 hours. I had to change my dark period coz of the lockdown. Chose to give them extra sleep, instead of 9 hour dark period. They look like it has helped them decide to flower.

Now it's 7pm - 7pm, so can get there. I got pulled by the old bill 2 nights ago, so had to change it.

Grow room 1

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Don't monitor temps, humidity. I do monitor ph and tds ppm and ec. They get cold straight tap water mixed with nutes ph'd to 5.8-6.1.

So people, look the shade... Do I defoliate???
 

TreeFarmerCharlie

Well-Known Member
Vegging for ages is how long you veg for. A mother plant is a plant that is just kept healthy and alive for the pure purpose of cloning it. I will root prune it and repot it every so often.
You said you didn’t want to veg for ages. I was asking how you plan to keep a mother plant without vegging her for ages. I think I just misunderstood what you said.
 

PadawanWarrior

Well-Known Member
I was under the impression that the more you clone them and use the clones as the new mother, the weaker the plant gets. I wanted to keep the 1st clone as a mother plant to avoid this.
It is my belief that the amount of stress from cloning (or really any stress) causes drop in potency, if you have a solid cloning technique and the plants don't stress, this drop should be negligible over a year to a year and a half.

When I grew years ago, my cloning technique (after many, many failures) was to flush the plant for a couple days before taking cuttings, then cut the clone off with scissors, then trim with a sterilized exacto blade to a 45 degree angle, and scrape the bottom inch or so of the stem, with only 2 leaves left, and then soak in water for 1/2 day or so, then place directly into my home-built bubble cloner, I did this with and without rooting hormone with great results. I always had root bumps within a week and the clones were ready to transplant into vegetative lighting about a week later. The bubble cloner had a fairly big dome to keep humidity naturally high and the leaves never drooped (the first sign of stress). I would start the clones big distance from the veg light for a couple days, slowly moving them closer until they start to grow faster. Two days or so after flushing and taking cuttings, the mother plant would be ready to go into flowering regimen.

However, I have friends that swear by keeping the one mother plants and cloning only from the original. What works for you is what's important. If you have the room to keep the one mother plant, it is a safe option as long as you can keep the mother from getting too big too fast.
That's a myth guys. The clones won't lose potency over time. Have you ever heard of clone only strains? I have clone only Green Crack and Chem 91 that have been cloned for about 30 years now. I've only had mine for a year and a half though so far.
 

PadawanWarrior

Well-Known Member
When is it too late to trim please?
I think it's better to take a few off at a time, doing it little by little. Putting the plants through less stress. But these plants are hardy. It's more important not to stress them out much during flowering. When they're vegging it's not as important. So a quick answer to your question is it's never too late, just don't overdue it.
 

Fevs.

Well-Known Member
I think it's better to take a few off at a time, doing it little by little. Putting the plants through less stress. But these plants are hardy. It's more important not to stress them out much during flowering. When they're vegging it's not as important. So a quick answer to your question is it's never too late, just don't overdue it.
Ok thanks. I have the before pics already yesterday. I'll take a few shaders off later and take some pics. If they hermie, then I will learn something about the plants. If they don't hermie, it will just increase the chances of the genetics being kept as a mother knowing they can take a bit of stress.
 

Fevs.

Well-Known Member
G13 Pineapple express#2 before, during and after...

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Blimburn Cindy

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Barneys farm blue cheese

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These plants have their own tents, so have left the leaves around the edges as they ain't blocking any light to other plants. Went quite heavy on the tops and middle on each plant.
 

Fevs.

Well-Known Member
G13 C99

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Other Blimburn Cindy

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Last plant. White Siberian

Hardly even stretches at all this ak47 x white widow. Still gave her a good plucking. lol

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So really thinned them out. Air flow will be much better, but will be interesting to see how they all 6 plants react. I hope for lush growth, more bud sites and I'm not even bothered if they don't stretch much more. They probably will though.

I will post some pics of them in time, show you what happened to them n all.
 

spek9

Well-Known Member
I was under the impression that the more you clone them and use the clones as the new mother, the weaker the plant gets.
Not at all. A clone is an exact copy of the genetics of the plant the clone was taken from. You can clone a clone repeatedly with no changes.

I don't keep mother plants anymore. In my perpetual, I cut clones from the plants that are three weeks from going into flower. These clones eventually go into veg, then they are cloned three weeks before flower. I'm on my ninth round of this procedure and the plants look just as good now as they did when I started.

I'm only doing a small number of plants each cycle, so doing it this way saves quite a bit of space in my veg tent as opposed to housing mother plants.
 

Fevs.

Well-Known Member
Not at all. A clone is an exact copy of the genetics of the plant the clone was taken from. You can clone a clone repeatedly with no changes.

I don't keep mother plants anymore. In my perpetual, I cut clones from the plants that are three weeks from going into flower. These clones eventually go into veg, then they are cloned three weeks before flower. I'm on my ninth round of this procedure and the plants look just as good now as they did when I started.

I'm only doing a small number of plants each cycle, so doing it this way saves quite a bit of space in my veg tent as opposed to housing mother plants.
That's a good idea cloning them then. It's funny coz this person that doesn't even grow was telling me all about how they get weaker over time. There's quite a bit of info on the internet. It's been mentioned many times and I just assumed that was the crack.

In the winter it will be so cold that I will grow autoflowers. I will keep the mothers alive over winter, ready for the summer months.
 

TreeFarmerCharlie

Well-Known Member
That's a good idea cloning them then. It's funny coz this person that doesn't even grow was telling me all about how they get weaker over time. There's quite a bit of info on the internet. It's been mentioned many times and I just assumed that was the crack.

In the winter it will be so cold that I will grow autoflowers. I will keep the mothers alive over winter, ready for the summer months.
The problem with cloning a clone of a clone, without having a dedicated mother plant, is that of the clones become diseased you now have no mother to go back to.
 

spek9

Well-Known Member
The problem with cloning a clone of a clone, without having a dedicated mother plant, is that of the clones become diseased you now have no mother to go back to.
Well, I'm not in the habit of only cutting a single clone.

- Cut 8-16 clones from four veg plants, put into aerocloner
- Take the best six clones, pot them and put into veg
- Five weeks later, take 8-16 clones from the veg plants
- Take six best clones, pot and veg
- Rinse, repeat

Even though I only put two plants into flower at a time (harvesting two plants every five weeks), my veg room always has six to eight plants at all times, to provide me with a selection of what goes into flower. I trash the extras from the generation who's time it is to flower, so essentially, I've got two generations of plants to clone from at all times. I just do it on a very tight schedule.
 

TreeFarmerCharlie

Well-Known Member
Same could be said of the mother
True. I suck at cloning...I was just passing on what a local guy who I got clones from told me when I asked him if it was better to keep a mother or to keep cloning clones. The way he put it to me made me think that issues may start in one cloned plant, be passed on to the next, and then snowball from there. I don’t have enough cloning experience to know how common that issue would be, though.
 

spek9

Well-Known Member
True. I suck at cloning...I was just passing on what a local guy who I got clones from told me when I asked him if it was better to keep a mother or to keep cloning clones. The way he put it to me made me think that issues may start in one cloned plant, be passed on to the next, and then snowball from there. I don’t have enough cloning experience to know how common that issue would be, though.
I've been cloning from clones for years. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, quite literally. I've not run into an issue such as this.

Could happen I suppose, but that's a risk of all grows if you've only got one source for all plants (including a single mother).
 
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