Interested in hearing how some members go from seed in hand, to mother plant. Say you order some seeds and you plan to maintain this strain. If you take the best 1 or 2, and get rid of the rest, you run the chance of one of them being male. If you turn them all into mothers from seed its a slower, more space-consuming process. Does a plant from seed make a better mother due to its symmetry? So whats your method? Whats the quickest way to go from seed to clonemother?
My 2 cents ... I'm still sorting out a seed grow that was started late march/ early april. I started 18 beans figuring on 50-60% fems and ended up going 15 for 18. While no one in their right mind would complain, it has made the testing, culling and establishing clone mothers kinda drawn out . I prefer to grow everything until pre-flowers show, ditch the males and take cuttings from every female. At this point all females are clear to flower. I start testing nuggs within a week of projected harvest and begin the culling process. I'm still culling, but a couple of winners have emerged and my first clone of a keeper just threw 107 gr. under a 600 ... // I'm grooming her clone sister as a beachball mom NOW
Here's what I'm doing.... Order seeds from attitude... germinate seed in tupperware / paper towel. Place seed in rockwool cube inside of dome, keep under CFL's till I see roots. Place cube into netpot bucket lid and surround with prepped hydroton. Cover with netpot cover to no light hits the roots / hydroton. Use CFL lighting until first big leaf sets start, then turn on the 600w MH. Grow it up big enough to take clones from, and keep it under CFL's thereafter. The reason I'm doing the bubble bucket is because the growth rate is higher than any other method I've seen, and its really easy to maintain / keep alive.
Thats not a bad idea, have a bubble bucket for a couple mums. I might think about that. For now Ive thought about just topping and tying down the best of the bunch, but then I run the risk of winding up with no females. If I can see preflowers while vegging this will be much easier This is a process ive tried several times in different methods and they all seem so long and drawn out. THanks for the replies, hope we pull a few more in!
The biggest and baddest off the starting line are OFTEN males. I would not EVER select on that criteria alone. The quickdraw method (which I don't worry with) is to take a cutting off of your young vegging plant, put it in a cup of water under 12/12 and it'll show soon enough. sinc. SlackerBee
Would like to hear some more methods for sure. These are all pretty good but there hasnt been one that sounds quite what im looking for!
bump... im interested as i too am looking for a mum.. i have three plants in flowering and am waiting for first signs of flowers, once i find them i'll take a cutting or two and throw in a bubble cloner and hopeuflly have a mom
One can grow all of them out and mark out the ones that have the best growth and what ever pheno you are looking to get and then take a few cuttings from each and mark what plant they came from then flower all of them once the males start to show kill them off and their cuttings. Keep track of the remaining females and take good notes on how each grows and flowers out for your situation. After they finish their stretching then mark out the ones and their cuttings, on the ones that did the less amount of streching and have the most flower spots. Then flower them all out taking notes each week on them and then one should pick the females that flower the best yeild and the best quality. cure and smoke it and choose from the yeilds and the finish product, then flower all the other cuttings that are not going to remain as mothers and then start cutting from the best phenos that you have on hand from the remaing cuttings and then you should have what ever you chose everytime you flower.