Raising a Mom

Hello Everyone,

I have a few questions about properly raising a mother plant. I have raised a few mothers in the past, but they were clones of a clone. This time around, I will be raising them from seed. The goal here is to start growing the moms so that they will be ready to clone for the beginning of outdoor season. The idea is to have first generation clones for the best genetics.

I would like to be able to cut 20-25 clones from each plant. This is where most of my questions stem from.

What Is the best way to top the plant?
I know how to top, Im just wondering how many nodes I should go before doing the initial topping on the main stem. Also, should the same topping technique be deployed for each branch?(number of nodes.

Mother plant will be growing indoor with 24 hrs of light.

How long do you think it will take to get the plant to where it will give me 20-25 clones per plant?

Is the idea to grow it as tall as possible or make it more bushy?

dont bother to top it . when its a few months old cut your clones off it . you will be able to get 10 big clones from each plant with out cutting her down then when it regrows it will have many nodes perfect mommy . then next time you can get your 16 or so clones. my point is why waste time waiting topping when you can get your clones now.

First off, 20-25 cuts/plant is not realistic. At least not in the time you have. Figure more like 10-12 and plan accordingly.

Have you planted the seeds yet? Time is short for all this, for next season. Like 8-10 weeks to start taking cuts and then another 4-6 weeks to root, xplant and then harden off.

Anyway, for seedlings, I top at the 5th node with the plant in a 1gal square pot. I'll upcan at least a week or 2 before topping. After topping, let the new shoots get 3-5" long and LST to the square sides or corners (one of the reasons for the square pot). Make a collar out of zip ties to fit under the lip at the top and twisty ties to hold the limbs down. A few days later, top the LST'd limbs and you will get a good amount of verticle shoots for clones out of the near horizontal limbs.

Good luck with the plan!

Wet

Wetdog said:

First off, 20-25 cuts/plant is not realistic. At least not in the time you have. Figure more like 10-12 and plan accordingly.

Have you planted the seeds yet? Time is short for all this, for next season. Like 8-10 weeks to start taking cuts and then another 4-6 weeks to root, xplant and then harden off.

Anyway, for seedlings, I top at the 5th node with the plant in a 1gal square pot. I'll upcan at least a week or 2 before topping. After topping, let the new shoots get 3-5" long and LST to the square sides or corners (one of the reasons for the square pot). Make a collar out of zip ties to fit under the lip at the top and twisty ties to hold the limbs down. A few days later, top the LST'd limbs and you will get a good amount of verticle shoots for clones out of the near horizontal limbs.

Good luck with the plan!

Wet

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Thank you for the advise. I just started germinating the seeds and hope to get 4 or 5 plants from the 6 seeds that I have. This will be a new experience as I have never grown from seed before. All I have dealt with is clones. I started some white widow seeds last week for practice and got 5 plants out of 6 seeds.

I dont get why they are saying you cant get 25 clones from a plant, you can, you can get 100+ if it is vegged long enough

I would top the plant only once, when it is 5 nodes tall and growing healthy cut down to the 3rd node but dont clear anything below the 3rd, let it all grow. If you veg it under a decent light for 2 months you are going to have a truck load of possibly clones

Morriston55 said:

I dont get why they are saying you cant get 25 clones from a plant, you can, you can get 100+ if it is vegged long enough

I would top the plant only once, when it is 5 nodes tall and growing healthy cut down to the 3rd node but dont clear anything below the 3rd, let it all grow. If you veg it under a decent light for 2 months you are going to have a truck load of possibly clones

Click to expand...

True, but in his timeframe it may be difficult. Already(basically) the first of the year. So if he is JUST starting his mother seed..

7-10 days for germ followed by 2 months of veg. Then start taking clones. 7-10 days to root, 1 week of indoor veg and some hardening.. gonna be very difficult to accomplish by last frost (depending on your latitude)

I would agree with others saying to expect around a dozen clones per mother if you intend on having your hardened clones ready for first of the season. You could very well do better than this but I would keep my expectations a little lower as to not be disappointed if I overestimated.

Best of luck to you!!

Depends alot where OP lives I suppose. Last frost is 120 days away for me, and if I started a mother seed now the plant could be 6' tall by the time it came to cut and root clones 2 weeks before I anticipated planting them and would have alot more than a dozen growth tips for cloning

Yeah, you definitely are correct. Dunno why but I just assumed around early to mid march but you are absolutely right. It really will all depend on ops outdoor seasons.

I live in Northern California. My goal is to have them in the ground at the beginning of May. That gives me about 4 months to maximize the growth. Do you guys also use LST when sculpting a mother?

I would most likely use lst.. horizontal branches pop vertical shoots which allows them to (mostly) all be viable clones with similar sizing. I also really enjoy spending time in my room and perfecting the canopy. Guess it's not necessary and you definitely have the time to make it happen with or without serious training with several good tops and not much more I would say. Good Luck bud