Lingering question about Mother Plants

I'm new at growing marijuana. And i bought really expensive seeds. I have 1 female which i want to use as my mother plant, but i have a question:

how long can a mother plant live?

For example; i let it grow, find out its a fem, make a couple clones and want to keep the mother for more clones. But the mother starts to flower. And the 8-9 weeks go by and its ready to harvest. Can i let it just go on living without harvesting? Or harvest a few buds over time. Will it keep budding? OR does it go back to vegg state?
Does it die after the buds ripe?

Please help mee! Thanks in advance!

Mothers live for Years, mine is only 8 months =P

as long as you keep the lighting constantly 18 hours on, 6 off, it will never flower, see?

the mother will stay in veg as long as you keep the light cycle at 24/0 or 18/6. if you change to 12/12 lighting then the plant will flower. or you can let the plant flower and then cut off the top half of the flowered plant and then go back to 24/0 lighting. it will take awhile to recover.

Veg you seedling, cut some clones and flower them to detumine plant sex

Mother Plants
(I've never kept one, so all my reading is book learnin)

If you put your mother in 12/12 to sex her, as soon as you determine sex put her back into 18/6 light cycle you don't want to allow her to flower.

Flowering is the end of the plants life cycle. Like when a bee stings, it will die, when a pot plant flowers, it will die. (There are probably chances where someone has been able to reveg a flowered plant, but it would have to be put in the 18/6 or 24/0 light cycle and babied)

You want your mother to be a plant that grows constantly in veg so you can clip 4-8 clones from it per clipping once per month more or less. Then you get your smoking bud from the clones you raise.

Good Luck!

you can always make a new mother from one of the clones if mom goes weird, gets too big or tries to flower not many will flower under 20/4 or even 18/6 but it does sometimes happen then I bud the mother and as I said use a clone for a new mom good luck

Thanks for the awesome feedback everyone! I was thinking about using a clone as a new mother plant but i have read that after a few generations of clones, the plant's genes aren't as potent as it was orignally. Oh well, i will cross that bridge when i get to it.

milanusa said:

Thanks for the awesome feedback everyone! I was thinking about using a clone as a new mother plant but i have read that after a few generations of clones, the plant's genes aren't as potent as it was orignally. Oh well, i will cross that bridge when i get to it.

Click to expand...

That statement has fueled debate on both sides with no definative answer in sight.

I have decided to clone my clones as i move toward perpetual harvest.

Also, your better off learning how to grow using bagseed.