Foliar feeding mother plants a mixture of fulvic acid and seaweed 2-3 times per week for a couple of weeks prior to taking cuttings also makes for stronger clones.
How do you care for mother plants for clones?
The following tips will help you provide top-of-the-line mother plant care for amazing clones. Cuttings and clones being grown indoors in a marijuana grow tent. Source: mikeledray/Shutterstock To ensure your mother plant provides vigorous cuttings, you must customize the fertilization schedule.
How do I grow clones and cuttings indoors?
Cuttings and clones being grown indoors in a marijuana grow tent. Source: mikeledray/Shutterstock To ensure your mother plant provides vigorous cuttings, you must customize the fertilization schedule. Many growers feed mother plants a standard vegetative fertilizer, which is not ideal for a donor plant.
What is the mother plant for clones?
Mother plants are raised solely to provide cuttings. Since cuttings take time to develop roots, the clones must use stored carbohydrates and water to provide the nutrition necessary to grow a new root system. Consequently, the health of the mother plant is critical in ensuring the most healthy and vigorous clones.
How can I Make my clones stronger?
Foliar feeding mother plants a mixture of fulvic acid and seaweed 2-3 times per week for a couple of weeks prior to taking cuttings also makes for stronger clones.
How do you prepare a mother plant for cloning?
Water your mother plant a few hours before you plan to take cuttings. This ensures that the cuttings will be well nourished and hydrated, preparing them for successful cloning. Spray Clonex Mist on the chosen donor sights a few days before taking clones. This will help to stimulate root development in your cuttings.
What nutrients are needed for cloning?
There are four main ingredients in cloning solutions: gel/water/dry base, vitamins/minerals, the active ingredient, and antibacterial/antifungal elements. The three substances that stimulate root growth include napthalenaecetic acid (NAA), indolebutyric acid (IBA), and 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4 DPA).
How old should a mother plant be before cloning?
Take clones from mother plants that are at least two months old and in the vegetative growth stage. Clones from mother plants that are less than two months old may develop unevenly and grow slowly. Clones taken from flowering plants root quickly but require several weeks to revert to vegetative growth.
Should you water before taking clones?
Make sure you water your stock plant the day before you take cuttings and it is best to take your cuttings during the first hours of light . It is also wise to make sure that the stock plant has been in a stable growth routine and has not dried out in the preceding two weeks.
Should I use nutrients when cloning?
Freshly cut clones have no roots with which to take up nutrients, so feeding is not required until the first young roots have formed and then nutrients should be first applied at quarter strength, increasing to half vegetative strength as the clones become more developed.
Should I foliar feed my clones?
Clones and plants in the vegetative stage will greatly benefit from foliar feeding. Since clones have no roots, they will extremely benefit from foliar sprays as it will aid the rooting process.
How do you feed a mother plant?
It is better to feed a mother plant minimal nitrate nitrogen, and then if you notice a general yellowing of the leaves, feed the plant a little nitrogen boost fertilizer. Another essential element in a mother plant's fertilizer regimen is calcium.
What is mother plant fertilizer?
MotherPlant nutrients are a two-part nutrient line that provides the ideal diet for mother, or stock plants. Mother plants do not need excess nitrates, and MotherPlant nutrients account for this. They contain the nutritional needs of mother plants without excess nitrates.
How long can you veg a mother plant?
You can keep a mother plant for anything between 6 months and 3 years before the plant starts to break down and lose its vigour, yield, smell or other characteristics. At this point you need to find fresh, new, vigourous stock from seed and start the process all over again.
Do clones need a dark period?
Clones need plenty of light to root and grow, but that light needs to be less intense than what you'll use once it's transplanted. T5 and CFL grow lights can offer your clones the vegging (blue) spectrum they need without the intensity that could take it out.
Should I mist my clones?
Because you create a clone, the new plant will have all the good traits -- and any bad ones -- from the parent plant. It's important to provide cuttings with the right care to improve the chances of rooting. Misting is just one of the aspects of caring for cuttings.
Do clones need air flow?
Mist frequently, and keep air flow moving lightly. Clones root best when the media or water is around 75 – 80 degrees, and the humidity is close to 100%. A humidity dome can be used instead of the misting, but leave the vents open and provide good air flow.
Do clones need nitrogen?
Clones need sturdy, carbohydrate-rich fuel. When a plant is fed nitrogen, it will use up to 25 to 30% of its energy to convert those nitrates into a form of nitrogen that plants can use for vegetative growth. Using the plant's energy for growth results in fewer sugars, or carbohydrates, in the stems and leaves.
How do you keep clones healthy?
The first step in getting healthy clones is to start with a healthy stock plant (the plant you will cut from). Your plant should have strong genes, should be free of pests or diseases, and should not be displaying any symptoms of deficiencies or stress. This plant should also be large enough to support cutting from.
What pH do clones need?
Clones do best in both coir and the plastic cubes at a pH of 6.3. Many people use Rockwool starter cubes for cloning.
What are the best additives for mother plants?
Other beneficial additives for mother plants include amino acids, humic and fulvic acids, and bio-stimulants like kelp or seaweed extracts . Amino acids can open absorption pathways in roots, allowing for increased absorption of elements such as calcium, which can increase absorption a thousand fold.
How to ensure mother plant provides vigorous cuttings?
Customize the Feeding Schedule of a Mother Plant. To ensure your mother plant provides vigorous cuttings, you must customize the fertilization schedule. Many growers feed mother plants a standard vegetative fertilizer, which is not ideal for a donor plant. Mother plants should be on a nutrient program that minimizes the use of nitrogen, ...
How are cuttings treated?
The cuttings are treated with a mixture of hormones via cloning gels or powders to promote root growth and then they are planted in a suitable growing media, where they take root and become genetic copies of the mother plant. Mother plants are raised solely to provide cuttings.
Why do annuals need to be kept as mother plants?
Keeping annuals as mother plants for extended periods of time can result in less robust cuttings that are more susceptible to diseases. As plants grow, they keep track of their cellular age with an internal clock based on their circadian rhythms.
How to preserve a plant's genetics?
There are several ways to preserve your plant’s particular genetics, but the best way is to clone it. To give your clones the best start possible, you’ll want to ensure your mother plant, or the plant you are taking cuttings from, is healthy and happy. Here are some tips to help you maintain your mother plants. Source: Marcio Eugenio/Dreamstime.com.
Why are mother plants raised?
Mother plants are raised solely to provide cuttings. Since cuttings take time to develop roots, the clones must use stored carbohydrates and water to provide the nutrition necessary to grow a new root system. Consequently, the health of the mother plant is critical in ensuring the most healthy and vigorous clones.
What happens if a plant is fed too much nitrogen?
If a mother plant is fed excessive nitrogen, then it will grow quickly , but the growths will be soft and leggy with little carbohydrates, leading to cuttings with soft stems and a greater susceptibility to diseases.
Why do I need a mother plant?
Once you have learnt the basics of cannabis cultivation the next step is to get yourself a mother plant and start cloning. There are three main reasons for this.
How to select a mother plant
When you receive your new batch of seeds [start them off as you usually would]. Once they have established themselves and are growing well, take cuttings from each plant. This will normally be during the third or fourth week of vegetative growth. It is important to take cuttings before the appearance of pre-flowers.
Just in time cloning
This method allows you to reproduce plants without the need to buy new seeds each time, but it avoids the mother selection process, or the need for keeping a mother plant at all. Simply put, if you have a single plant you can take a cutting from it just before you switch it to flower.
Keeping a marijuana mother plant
Now you have your mother plant. She is still in her early stages. If you have had to take more than one generation of clones whilst waiting for flowering, make sure that your chosen mother has had at least three weeks of veg before taking cuttings from her.
How to create and maintain a bonsai cannabis plant
With a little care and maintenance you can create a Bonsai mother that takes up very little space. The first thing to do is to pot up your chosen clone into a 2 ½ inch pot. It will make sense to use a square pot as there will be some root trimming involved later on and this process is made easier with a square pot.
Root trimming a cannabis mother plant
Root trimming your mother plant is simple. Slip the plant out of its pot. The root ball will be an almost solid, square sided mat of tangled roots. Remove the loose compost from the top of the ball. Take a sharp clean knife and cut between a half inch and an inch from each side and from the bottom.
Feeding your mother plant
Do not over feed your cannabis mother plant. She will require a good quality, nitrogen rich food. Look for something about the 8-2-4 or 6-2-4 mark and feed her with half the recommended dosage. Always use your own observations over what you read. Watch your mother plant. If she shows signs of over feeding or under feeding, act accordingly.
How many clones of a plant can you take from a mother plant?
This depends on the size, health, and age of your plant. We recommend taking only 2–3 clones at a time from small, young mother plants. Large, bushy mother plants, on the other hand, can easily tolerate having 6–8 clones taken from them at a time.
What is the benefit of cloning mother plants?
The Benefits of Using Mother Plants. When timed right, cloning mother plants can mean harvesting one day and having more plants ready to go the next . With overlapping growing schedules, you can always have plants in flower—with more ready at a moment’s notice.
What to look for in a cannabis plant?
Vigour: Pick plants that germinate quickly and show vigorous, healthy growth during both their seedling and vegetative stages. Root health: A healthy root network is the heart of a healthy plant.
How much light does a plant need to grow in a permanent vegetative cycle?
Mother plants need to be kept in the vegetative phase of growth indefinitely. This means they need to receive more than 12 hours of light every 24 hours. If they are in a vegetation chamber, they will be getting the standard 18/6 day/night vegetation cycle.
How to grow a mother plant?
Topping is essential for managing the size of your mother plants. Top your mothers early on, roughly two weeks into their vegetative phase. As its new branches grow up towards the light, use pinching and LST to bring them down towards the soil and create an even canopy. Continue topping the plant regularly to train it to grow within the confines of your grow room/tent.
What is a mother plant?
Mother plants are ideal sources for infant plants when using the sea of green (SOG) technique. Similar-sized clones will create a homogeneous canopy with no tall or short phenotypes to consider, thus optimising light exposure and yield potential. Mother plants can be as big as you need them to be.
What to look for when choosing a mother plant from seed?
Here are a few things to look for when choosing a mother plant from seed: Stress threshold: After taking cuttings from your plants, keep tabs on which were the best or worst at dealing with the stress of pruning. Rooting potential: Check to see which of your cuttings rooted the quickest.
The Setback
One setback with the process, though, is that you cannot decipher the quality of your seeds until it has been flowered. By that time, it will be too late to transform the seeds into mother plants without reverting back to the vegetative phase and this can cause the plants to be stressed. What do you do in this situation?
Selecting Mother Plants For Marijuana Cloning
Let's say you get a new batch of cannabis seeds. Once you start cultivating them and you notice that they are growing in the way you want them, start by taking the cuttings from individual cannabis plants. When will you do this? It will usually occur during a month of the vegetative growth. Take those cuttings prior to the pre-flowering phase.
The Cuttings
Now, label all the cuttings that you made so that it corresponds with each of the donor mother plants. You could keep your cuttings in one room as you would the donors and do so under 18 hours of lighting. Once your marijuana clones have been established, you can then separate them from your donor plants.
The Flowering Phase
If your cannabis strain has a lengthy flowering period, then your marijuana clones might turn out to be too large and unmanageable and they will forcefully try to get into the flowering phase. If you find this happening, just take your clones from those clones and continue in the vegetative phase for the second generation of clones.
How long does it take for a clone to grow?
My clones take about 3 weeks from cutting to grow to that state and it gets easier and quicker everytime.
What is a flowering clone?
The truth is, a flowering clone is a fully mature plant. It is ready and willing to root quickly to continue its flowering process. The cambium layer is mature at this point making the formation of roots easier. The cambium layer is a celluar layer just below the bark from where the roots come from. So, truth is.
When do mother plants reach maximum potency?
A mother plant or clone of said mother (because they are the same age) plant will reach maximum potency at 6 months of age. They don't peak at 6 months, they just reach their max.
Is keeping the number of plants down a good idea?
Keeping the numbers of plants down is a good idea for alot of growers out there. Medical growers often will have limits. If your out there and you have a medical card. It cant be stressed enough that you follow the guidelines. You guys are the bright future for mj reform in many countries.
Do unserated leaves emerge?
Not to worry though. Right behind the unserated leaves will emerge the normal leaf sets. Once they start to come around you will see the branching ability of these clones. Sometimes its best to at least tie down some main branches to promote a wider plant.
