Keeping mothers forever?

SOGfarmer

Well-Known Member
That's it lol who has some tips for making your beautiful mothers last for a very long time while regularly taking cutting? Keeping 'em short and fat? cut after four nodes? root care? what's up?
 

hovering

Active Member
Sub'd.

I can keep mine in the 6-8 months range easily but I am looking to keep them longer before respawning.
 

Warlock1369

Well-Known Member
Keep her in last week of veg. Don't take clones at the first chance you get let her gro till you can take twice what you want. Top the shot out of her. I do weekly for about 6 weeks. Let her rest a week then supercrop. Let her grow out and lst her. Make short fat bush. Then when ready take your good stems back 4-6 nodes and cut. Just make sure it has 2 nodes below cut. Now the nodes will become 2. After awhile you can take clones that have already been toped and that will be less stress on them and a way to keep the mom's size in check. I don't like to keep a mom over a year or 2 she get crazy. S I will clone at that point and start a new mother. But keep the old one till new is ready to clone. Then in flower mom gose. Sometimes she won't flower good. I've already taken everything she had to give. This has no affect on the clones she puts out she's just over. But other times I get 50 colas. Not real big but still nice buds.
 

zo0t

New Member
mofo my mada plant iz a mada fakin bush i took about 12 clones and it turned into a bush i had 2 choices to flower or todo bonsai mom! cant do bonsai mom so i flowered it and took new clone to become mada. everytime u iz cut off one branch 2 will com out i kid u not br0

MADA FAKA!
 

rocknratm

Well-Known Member
my friend just rapes his mothers. Litterally just stem left, main stems and a few leaves. They bounce back but dang he takes so many and he takes them so small.... to each his own
 

Joedank

Well-Known Member
I too take about 30% off my mothers usually 20 cuts...I keep em about year or two then as mentioned shut get weird...;)
 

woodsmaneh!

Well-Known Member
Low Maintenance Mothering

Stasis & Selective Light Intensity

Using clones of a favorite plant is the best way to perpetuate the traits we like most about that plant. It also helps bring some uniformity to a garden so we can rest assured that all the plants grow in the same manner and at the same rate. For the Sinsemilla cultivator one of the best things about using clones is that it removes the anxiety ridden step of sexing plants, eventually culling the males, then growing whatever females Mother Nature has seen fit to leave us with.
Unlike seeds, using clones requires a living plant from which cuttings can be taken. While cuttings can be taken from a crop destined to be harvested, many people don't want to compromise their producers and will designate a separate plant to be the mother for their next generation of clones. Because a vegetative phase is more conducive to taking cuttings, and generally used for rooting them, a separate space is set up to isolate plants receiving a flowering photoperiod from those receiving a vegetative photoperiod. The vegetative space occupied by the mother plant(s) will need to be maintained separately. Timing the plant's growth in such a way as to deliver enough cuttings, at the right time, and of a good quality is of the essence.
The need for cuttings develops as a crop nears harvest. Advance time must be allowed for the cuttings to root well so their placement in the system will coincide with the timely harvesting of the flowering plants. This means that a mother plant will be growing for almost the entire duration of a crop before her services are ever needed again. Under the wrong conditions this length of time (e.g. 60-90 days) can produce a mother plant that will easily outgrow its allotted space, or demand your time in order to maintain the growth within the space limitations. This hands-on maintenance usually takes the form of removing or redirecting growth. What's described here are two methods of reducing growth so that the time spent using hands-on methods can be eliminated.

The Stasis Photoperiod
Vegetative photoperiods generally range from a constant 24 hours to 16 hours of light per day. Its goal is to prevent the plant from flowering, thus for mothers, providing good vegetative stock for cuttings. Needless to say 16 hours of light per day will produce less growth than more hours will, so for purposes of growth reduction fewer hours of light per day is preferable.
Because the flowering response of cannabis is triggered by the duration of the dark phase, it will flower when it receives 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness, but it will not flower with 12 hours of interrupted darkness. Manipulating light timer settings in such a way as to provide 12 hours of light over a 24 hour period, but not permitting 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness to occur, can reduce growth by 25% when compared to the traditional 16 hour vegetative photoperiod without triggering the flowering response. A timer capable of 4 on/off cycles per day, using the settings in the following table, will produce such results.

Timer settings for a 24 hour period
beginning at 7pm
ONOFF
7 pm6:00 am
9 am9:20 am
1 pm1:20 pm
4 pm4:20 pm (off til 7 pm)


As you can see from the below graphic, over a 24 hour period these timer settings will provide 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness, but will not trigger flowering because no single dark phase is long enough to do so.


Timer schedual.gif

The above are examples of one timer schedule that's known to work well, others are indeed possible.

Selective Light Intensity
Because a stasis photoperiod requires multiple on/off light cycles per day, it's best applied using fluorescent lighting, rather than stress HID lighting system components with so many daily on/off cycles. It also makes sense that if one wants to reduce growth that he would opt for lighting that provides fewer lumens. Unlike HID lighting, fluorescent lighting often uses multiple bulbs to distribute light over a given area. Configuring a multiple fluorescent lamp set-up so that each light can independently be turned on or off allows a grower to not only control the duration of the light per day with a stasis photoperiod, but to also control the light intensity.
Selective light intensity with fluorescents is nothing more than using as few tubes (less light) as needed to keep growth to a minimum during the times cuttings are not needed, and using more tubes (more light) just prior to taking cuttings so that shoots used for cuttings will be more robust and make for better clones. Turning off half of the available lamps during this time can reduce growth by 50%.
The combined growth reduction from using stasis and selective light intensity can approach 75%. The benefit is that the time spent on manual hands-on mother maintenance is replaced by the flick of a few switches.
http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/fourtwenty/articles/mothering.htm
 

TheDuder

Active Member
These are my mothers when they were getting chopped. they are in day 15 of flower right now and can be watched in my signature's link. As you can see from the below pics, I rape my mothers! I wait until the 5th node and then top. I then wait for the branches to catch up to the top. Once there is an even canopy, I top all the branches again. This will result in a ton of growth tips. Too many to allow light penetration. This is when i take almost all the branches as clones and leave only the strongest growth tips that are growthing in the direction and height that I want for future growth. I always allow the plant a month before redoing it.

I require many clones at once though. For those requiring less at a time, clones should be taken slower than I do and wont cause much damage.

The first pics were Feb 19th, 2012 and the chopped pics are from one week later. The recouped pictures were taken almost exactly a month after the savage raping of these fine sluts. They had 3 cycles like this and have vegged for almost 5 months. They stayed very short (3 ft)! I put them under a screen and the buds are starting to form nasty.

-Dude'r
 

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