I use bubble buckets to grow with. I have been growing from seed, and I want to try out mother plants and cloning. What is the best way for me to keep a mother plant? I really dont want to have to purchase soil, since im all hydro. Is it ok to do mother plants all hydro?
people will always suggest to do soil mothers because of slower growth, especially people that have been growing for a while... its also cheaper to rock a plant in soil...less maintence but with that being said, yes you can rock a mother plant in a DWC...
DWC is perfect for mother plants. To keep your plant healthy over really long periods, you have to maintain its roots. DWC is perfect for this, you can trim down your roots to keep your mothers nice and stocky... It's a lot easier than pulling a root ball out of a pot once it gets root bound... I run about 200ppm on my nutes, pH stays very stable... I can go weeks just adding back in RO. When I see the water level getting low, I'll check the ppm, if its less than 200ppm, I'll add a litre of water out of my RDWC res and then top off with RO. If the ppm is 200 or greater, I'll just top it off with RO. -Loki
I have special nuets just for mother plants. I'm assuming this Would just keep my ppm really low? How often do roots need to be trimmed?
Yep, 200ppm will keep your plant happy and growing slowly... I usually prune back my mothers after taking clones and then trim the roots to match the amount taken off the top... helps avoid nute burn on the remaining branches if you take a lot off the top. But you can wait until the roots are starting to fill your bucket... there's no specific time that you HAVE to trim your roots with DWC because it's hard to get root bound. But once your roots get to a place where they aren't getting enough oxygen because they're getting too thick, that's when you need to trim... -Loki
Man myGF was looking on YouTube the other day and there was a guy doing indoor tomatoes with a folgers can, and an air pump. I was thinking of how perfect something small like this would be pefecg for a hydro bonsai mom. The roots aren't going to get to big as youre going to be clipping them. And one good air pump could feed a couple of small buckets for a mom.
I was thinking of doing bonsai mums. Just in 5 gallon buckets with air stones. Here are those mother plant nutrients I have, and am going to try.