Ideally, we recommend feeding mother plants with organic fertilisers (like vermicompost or compost teas) to promote healthy microbial life in the soil, which in turn will help clean the plant’s medium and prevent salt buildup in the root zone. You can feed your mother plant like you would any normal vegging plant.
What should I Feed my mother plant?
Ideally, we recommend feeding mother plants with organic fertilisers (like vermicompost or compost teas) to promote healthy microbial life in the soil, which in turn will help clean the plant’s medium and prevent salt buildup in the root zone.
How do I take care of my mother plant?
Ideally, we recommend feeding mother plants with organic fertilisers (like vermicompost or compost teas) to promote healthy microbial life in the soil, which in turn will help clean the plant’s medium and prevent salt buildup in the root zone. You can feed your mother plant like you would any normal vegging plant.
What micronutrients do mother plants need to survive?
Because mother plants are kept in constant vegetation, you’ll want to ensure they have access to nitrogen and other vegging micronutrients.
When should I start feeding my mother plants?
If you have selected your mothers from clones, feed them nothing but water until they have clearly begun to sprout new growth. From seed, wait until the first true leaves have sprouted before giving your plants nutrients (although this not necessary, and may not be for some weeks).
What Should I Feed My 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 nutrients do mother plants need?
Nutrients for your mature mother plants Plenty of nitrogen is essential for vegetative growth. Other important nutrients include calcium, which is important in maintaining hormonal balance, and magnesium, which facilitates photosynthesis and production of sugars vital for growth.
How do I keep my mother plant healthy?
You can keep it manageable by keeping your mother plant small. Pruning branches regularly will encourage new branches to grow. The more branches your mother plant sprouts, the more clones you have to replant in your garden. Pruning the top will also keep the plant from growing too large.
When should I top my 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.
What is the best light for a mother plant?
Mother Plant Lighting Long light periods are recommended, for many species an 18/6 (on/off) lighting schedule maintains vegetative growth. Although you can use LEDs or HIDs (HPS/CMH), it's far more cost-effective to use CFLs or fluorescent lighting.
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.
How many hours of light do mother plants need?
18-24 hoursThe quality of light is also an important aspect to remember. It is more important to provide a full-spectrum light than a very intense light. The goal is to maintain health, not make the mother plants vegetate vigorously. The duration of light for mother plants should be 18-24 hours of light.
How long can you keep a mother plant in veg?
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.
How do you take care of a mother of thousands plant?
Caring for a Mother of Thousands This plant does need good drainage and is best potted in a commercial cactus soil mix. If using standard potting soil, sand can be added for sharper drainage. When learning how to grow Kalanchoe indoors, locate the plant in bright, but indirect light for several hours per day.
How do you trim a mother plant?
Grab your chosen clone or clones and top them, which is essentially pruning the top of the plant. Once they grow out their branches you'll need to cut the tips off the branches just once, leaving two other sprouts underneath wherever you prune to make sure that two more branches can grow from where you've cut.
Can you use feminized seeds for a mother plant?
Just remember that feminized seeds are produced for the purpose of growing out once, not for making mother plants.
Do mother plants need CO2?
Healthy plants need a supply of carbon dioxide (CO2) just as they need nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, or any other required nutrient.
How many hours of light does a mother plant need?
18-24 hoursIt is more important to provide a full-spectrum light than a very intense light. The goal is to maintain health, not make the mother plants vegetate vigorously. The duration of light for mother plants should be 18-24 hours of light.
How do you make 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.
How small can you keep a mother plant?
Remember, the larger the plant, the more clones you can harvest. A typical mother plant is happy within a 2.5' by 2.5' space, but this is flexible. While it is possible to keep a mother plant for several years running and harvest clones for dozens of new grows, the older the plant gets, the lower her capacity.
Feed and Protect Soil
Feeding the soil helps nourish plants and even helps plants resist pests and diseases. Healthy soil retains water well and is alive with microorganisms. To feed soil, make a habit of adding organic matter every season.
Feed Plants
Healthy soil provides basic nutrients to plants but you may also boost nutrition with natural plant foods. To supplement this diet, gardeners who encourage a living soil rely on plant foods (fertilizers) that are low in salts and originate from natural sources, including:
by Mike Murray
We all have to eat. In a forest, leaves fall and enrich the undisturbed soil. Bacteria and fungi decompose the litter and provide nutrients to the trees. In a residential garden bed that has been turned over, dug up and may not have such good soil to begin with; things might not be so rosy.
Our Special Sauce
To add more nutrients where they are most accessible to the plants we have designed a soil drench program that provides a nutritious banquet for perennials, vegetable gardens and shrubs. With the help of Fred Newcombe of PJC Organic, we have come up with formulas that adapt to the seasons and the needs of the plants.
About the Author
Mike Murray owns and operates Organic Soil Solutions, an all-organic lawn care company based in Woburn, MA. The company uses a completely organic and proactive approach to plant and soil health care.
What is a mother plant?
A mother plant is a plant from which a grower cuts clones, which are new plants that are genetically identical to the mother plant. To create a clone, the grower cuts a branch from the mother plant and places it in a substrate, where it develops roots of its own.
What traits do you look for in a mother plant?
When you choose your mother plant, pick one that fits your preferences, as well as exhibiting universally positive traits, such as: Strong roots. A strong stem. Resistance to pests and fungi.
How to keep a mother plant from growing too tall?
The more branches your mother plant sprouts, the more clones you have to replant in your garden. Pruning the top will also keep the plant from growing too large. Keep in mind that when you cut a stem near its top, two new, divergent stems will grow from the point at which you cut.
How to grow clones?
As a grower, working with mother plants and clones can help you improve your crop. Even if you’re a beginner, you can make growing mother plants and trimming their clones part of your grow strategy. In this guide, you’ll learn: 1 The process of growing a mother plant for clones 2 How to trim a mother plant 3 How to keep a mother plant small 4 Mother plant care 5 The mother plant life cycle
How to keep plants in the vegetative stage?
To keep your plant in the vegetative stage, keep providing that amount of light. This is a lot easier to do if you’re growing your plants indoors, because you can control the exact amount of light it receives.
How long do plants live?
Mother plants can live much longer than plants that are permitted to progress through their natural life cycles. Some plants live for only one season, while others progress through their life cycle, year after year, with dormant periods between these cycles. A well-kept mother plant can potentially live for years, continually producing new branches that can be cut and grown into clones.
When to take cuttings from mother plant?
When your mother plant’s branches have matured to the point that they can survive on their own, it’s time to take your cuttings. There are a few different types of cutting you can take to make your clones. No matter which you choose, always work with sterile scissors.
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 Are the Requirements for Growing a Healthy Mother Plant?
While keeping a mother plant might sound like it requires a lot of space and gear , it is actually quite simple. Here’s a list of all the things you’ll need to grow a healthy mother plant:
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.
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.
How to keep mother plant roots healthy?
To keep your mother plant’s roots healthy, grow her in a fabric pot that will trim her roots naturally. These pots cauterise apically dominant root shoots with a thin film of air as they search their way through the growing medium. This prevents the roots from reaching the edge of the pot, and thus allows for more weeks in a single pot—rather than root-trimming once a month or so, as with regular pots.
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.
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.
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.
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 plants become less efficient as they age?
As plant cells age, they naturally become less efficient as their proteins and DNA break down. The breakdown of proteins and DNA is a slow process with little impacts early on, but the older the cells get, the greater the cumulative effect this degradation has.
How to keep plants alive for extended periods of time?
A second option is using tissue culture to keep plants alive for extended periods of time without the risk of attack by insects or diseases (when done correctly), although this process requires expensive equipment, a lot of time and some training.
What is the basis for selecting mother plants?
Selecting your mother plants. The basis for selecting your mothers should always be health, strength and vigour. Beyond that, you may have various considerations such as terpene and cannabinoid profile, flavour and aroma, yield, drought-resistance, and height and branching characteristics.
What is the best way to keep your mother healthy?
Generally, a typical vegetative growth solution, preferably organic, is sufficient to keep your mothers in a consistently healthy state. Microrhizomes and root stimulator can be used in soil from day one to give young roots a boost and improve soil microbiome.
Why is auxin important for plants?
As auxin and cytokinin are natural plant hormones, it is possible to supplement your plants’ baseline levels so that they produce stronger, healthier roots and achieve a greater degree of branching. Ideally, a higher ratio of cytokinin to auxin is desirable, as this encourages lateral branching, while a higher ratio of auxin to cytokinin restricts lateral branching and encourages upward growth.
How long can a mother plant live?
This means they must consistently receive more than 12 hours of light per 24 hours. If you would like your plants to vegetate quickly to maximize the number of clones, mother plants can be left in an 18/6 day/night regime.
What does it mean to have access to a mother plant?
Any grower who has stumbled upon great genetics must know how to maintain and utilise a mother plant. It means always having access to and a supply of fine cannabis. This removes the need for constant searching for the perfect seed or phenotype. Enjoy the many possibilities once you have found the perfect candidate for a mother plant!
Why is it important to prune your mother?
It is always important to prune your mothers regularly, and to be selective about how you approach the task so that the maximum number of healthy, vigorous new branches are produced.
Can you harvest mother plants all year long?
Benefits of cultivating mother plants. If you can get your timing right, you can be planting and harvesting all year long, especially if you are growing indoors. Essentially, by the time you harvest, it will be time to take new clones from your mother plant. Clones taken from mother plants are homogenous in terms of size, ...
