Questions about cultivating my first four mother plants.

Hi,
I was planning to keep 4 mother plants. 2 strains. So it is two plants per strain. I want maybe 70 to 100 clones of each strain every two months. So that would be 150 to 200 clones every two months. Do you think two motherplants per strain will give me these results? Never had a mother plant before.

I am thinking, about the way to feed nutes to the mother plants. Can I just use a 6" high 4x4 ebb and flow table? I would just put a mother in each corner of the table. Do you think this will be enough space for the motherplants or do I need a bigger table? (I was planning to put the motherplants in rockwool cubes, nothing else).

I am really tempted to connect the table for the moms to the main reservoir with the nutes for the flowering plants. I am planning to do lucas formula and no veg phase. Will it give bad results in clone rooting when I just feed my moms out of the nute reservoir for the flowering plants with lucas formula? So far I did read, that the moms need a special feeding composition because the clones won't have enough carbohydrates stored when fed to much nitrates/nitrogen. But I am not sure if this will be the case in flowering phase of lucas formula.

Finally I need to know which light I should choose. I saw there are all kind of reflector casings for T5 bulbs. Some cost several hundred bucks. Somehow I have the feeling, that in the case with mother plants I don't need to choose the high end reflectors or ballasts or whatever.... How much T5 bulbs should I choose for my mother plants and what reflector or bulb fitting do you suggest?

I would suggest putting the Veg plants on a different feeding mainly because they are necessary to your production and if they were to get sick or not produce, your whole operation could be halted.

As for the light, veg plants don't need much to do good. I would suggest getting a cheap LED light (mars hydro, viparspectra etc) for the simplicity, the low power and the cost(not expensive at all).

Sam&Max said:

Do you think two motherplants per strain will give me these results? Never had a mother plant before.

Click to expand...

Yes, but i think 10 gallon pots full of soilless would be best. 8 bulb T5 will do 2 10 gallon pots and get that number of cuttings. Some say the LED can do the same coverage with less watts, but i haven't seen a mother plant set up with LED yet. Also the 315's cmh will do 2 10 gallon pots side by side. Good luck, nothing better then raising mother plants and making cuttings on that level!!!! Vey exciting!!!!

I realized I still have a unused lightning kit of Lumii sitting around. It is a single ended HID 200/400/600 watt light fixture. So I also could use this thing I guess. I read that with t5 bulbs I need to keep the lights close to the plants. If my plants are different in size, I might run into problems? The HID might be better. Also more wattage means more growth? Could mean that I would be more flexible with the HID concerning the amount of production.

Why 10 gallons soilless? Do you think if I use an ebb and flow table with rockwool, I will not be able to maintain them properly, because the roots get too big?