I know mother MJ plants are use for cloning season after season, but I have a question. Can a person grow and harvest the same plant season after season, or does the plant grow, produce seed, then die? I know of mother plants growing for years...but do mothers bloom?
Yes mothers bloom, the only thing that stops them from doing so is the day/night cycle, something greater than 12+/12-. You could always reveg a plant. You let it flower and take off all the main colas, leaving just a few shoots on the bottom left. Change the cycle back to 18/6 or something and eventually the female will start vegging again and can be flowered again. The only problem is your plant loses vigor after each time you do this, and of course it takes a few weeks for growth to resume. The other problem I foresee would be that the root mass, it would keep growing and growing and you would need a bigger and bigger container each time. In my opinion it would just be easier to keep a mother clone her and toss the clones into flowering.
Well, if you put them onto a 12/12 light cycle then they will flower as normal. The way most people keep mothers for years and years is to essentially keep them in the vegetative stage of growth at all times in a separate area dedicated to that purpose. Cuttings are taken from the mother and rooted, grown, and flowered. This way, you can have one plant that can continually provide clones (and smoke) for years to come. EDIT: Yes, what Green said ^^^