I keep bonsai mothers. I can fit up to 15 in a 2x2x2 space under a 4-bulb 2’ T5.
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Do you have a thread or grow log for this? How long does a bonsai keep going before you have to replace it with a new one?
I’m probably just envious and wish I had all LEDs. 
COBs and QBs have done right by me. I´ve been hesitant to look into suplemental UVA/UVB (nasty dangerous stuff, at least in my mind) and red/blue diodes though. QB 120s and in general PCBs with LESS better spread diodes seem like a good way to go, as they keep cost “low” (in diodes and cooling) and give better spread. If I had more space I´d make a flowering tent using those, and if I had more money and space I´d go crazy and make a sort of cube of light with PCBs on the top and sides.
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Yeah man, check out my Workshop
I have a couple that are a little over a year old and need to be replaced. I keep them in fabric pots I made using the tutorial @Mr.Sparkle has on ICMag. It automatically root prunes. I feed them Dr.BudGreenGenes recipe (Shultz 10-15-15, Superthrive, and Fish Hydrolyslate).
If I were you, I would get a 2x3 wire frame rack and make levels with the quantum boards. Open design, maybe a few clip on fans.
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My gripes with an open design are a cat who loves to eat cannabis plants, that I´d rather be able to have this in the kitchen or somewhere other than my growroom, and that humidity here is a bit too low for seedlings and clones (about 45-50%). A wire frame rack within a tent seems like a good way to go. Do you have a good source for parts, or just HD?
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Like @ReikoX i use to keep Bonsai Mothers in 500ml fabric pots, which btw my inspiration for them came from an article on the original Overgrow a decade plus ago, but those bonsai mothers take up next to no space, and would provided 3-6+ clones per plant every two weeks which was more than enough for me.
But since going over to autos i just keep seeds only now for obvious reasons, but saying that making your own feminized seeds is super easy, and an excellent way to keep your genetics around if you don’t want to maintain mothers for the long haul.
Sure you get a little variation when making those seeds, but its relatively easy to find a nice mother again.
All you need is some pure silver, distilled water, a wall wort “dc power transformer with around a 5-20v output” and some alligator clips to hold onto your silver, for me takes a couple hours to make some colloidal silver, which i then spray on my plant of choice one to two times a day from week 2-2.5 till it starts producing pollen which is around week 5-6, and you pollinate your mother of choice with that ideally allowing around 3.5-4 weeks for seeds to develop.
Then you have some seeds of your chosen favorites.
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Yeah the cat eating plants would be a problem. You could wrap it in panda plastic, but I bet you could find a tent online that would work. It would look nicer too. 45-50% humidity sounds like a sauna to me 
But I live in the high desert. 
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It is quite easy to make more fem auto seeds. In fact, I just finished a run in my PC, thanks to your input. I got something like 50 seeds of mixed varieties. I am even doing a second round. For micro grows, the autos just seem to produce better. For the bigger cabs, I still like clones and photos.
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Thanks @Mr.Sparkle! Do you have a thread about your bonsai mothers? I´ll look for your DIY grow bags post, that sounds very interesting. It never occured to me to make fem seeds, but you make a good case. I´m a bit swamped with projects now, but took note of this post.
Did you make the switch to autos because of being a micro grower? I´d always preferred to be able to veg my plants to a desired size, train them with no rush. Hearing that Ruderalis reduces potency does not help as well.
@ReikoX I live almost 9,000 ft closer to the stars, in the Andes! So its a year round 70f - 50% humidity “sauna”… pretty pretty nice climate (although with frequent thunderstorms).
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No i don’t have a thread on the bonsai mothers, but if you do a search for “all about bonsai moms” on google you will find the re-posted thread over on icmag, it was one of those old threads “circa 2000-2003” that got saved from the original Overgrow by a member named Oldtimer1, i wasn’t around then or even years after it was posted on icmag, but the info is all still relevant today.
And yeah i could make up a new grow bag tutorial for here, don’t need any extra bags though… actually i might anyways we will see.
As for the switch to Autos, i made the switch just because of a couple of factors, but i wouldn’t say it was because i was a micro grower, i was originally a photoperiod grower only and prefered only standard seeds, running mothers and clones for the plant’s i liked and seeds when doing crosses and or hunting for genetics i liked, now were talking quite a few years ago but there was a lot of talk about how feminized seeds are bad, and how all auto’s lack potency and are just runts and so forth, which at the time was pretty true, now fast forward a good chunk of time with me wanting to re-approach everything with an open unbiased mind, so i picked up some new age autos to run in my Veg/Mother box to help fill in the space as it was only running about half full for the most part and i felt that it was a waste so i decided to run a couple of autos to see what they were all about.
Well some of those plant were just blah in general and definitely compared to my photoperiods i was running at the time, but then a one or two of them blew my expectations and thoughts on autos out of the water.
Results were that i was getting plants finishing in 8-9.5weeks from popping soil vs 10.5-13 for the photoperiods due to the veg time, comparable and even higher on yields when comparing lights on time over the length of the grow " 8.5weeks at 18/6 vs 2.5weeks of 18/6 then 8.5weeks of 12/12" which works out to be roughly the same amount of light hours, but some of the autos were yielding no joke 25-35% more in that time, and the potency for me was no different that my photoperiods.
So with that it kinda smacked me upside the head, with the whole hey there onto something here and couple that to the fact that it allowed me to run more seeds due to the quicker turn around time which allows me to hunt for genetics i like and want to cross, need less to say i was sold at that point.
Disadvantages of course are you can’t keep mothers, and you have to have your grow go pretty smooth as you don’t have that buffer time like photoperiods that if something goes wrong you can just veg longer, but if your making your own seeds and starting from them anyways, and don’t mind a little bit of variability in end products there awesome, and as far as potency goes that’s a false point now a days for sure.
Saying that there are a bunch of junk autos out there but then there are a lot of good ones too “Mephisto Genetics, Sweet Seeds, and some Dutch Passion”
They are definitely worth a try now adays for sure.
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Thanks! Very good post brother. Please write down the grow bag tutorial in your to-do list! And autos now go into my bucket list.
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For the folks that have been continuously cloning the same strain for years, have you noticed any degredation at all? Any loss of vigor? Smell? My oldtimers swear by keeping moms vs continual cloning to avoid strain degrading, but would love to hear other people’s experiences here. I’ve done both, but I’ve not continuously cloned a keeper long enough to say from my own experience. Will start to do so this year, so just curious about the best approach to take.
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A clone is a complete and non-degraded copy of the genetic material of the donor plant. Degradation is not possible. Poor crosses will cause degradation from the original genetic material. Darwin in motion.
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I hear ya, that’s where I was leaning, but I respect my oldtimers. Never hurts to ask!
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i imagine if you take a clone from an unhealthy or sick mother it could cause some degradation maybe but i do not know from personal experience. i would only take cuttings from plants when they’re happiest though
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I’ve had the G13 cut for 20 years, some people here for much longer I’m sure.
I do find it takes a few more days to root cuttings than everything else I have tried. I assumed it was from a loss of vigor due to age, but it could also be a natural trait of this plant.
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impressive… skills acknowledged… I’ve got some that will root in 7 days and others like to sit around for a month or more… I did improve my times with a heating pad… but getting them to root fast isn’t always the goal…
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