How to select a mother and can I take cuttings already?

I have choosen two strains I would take mothers from. I have taken all the small plants of these strains to my mother room and keep them at a 18/6 light cycle.

One of the two strains is feminized and another is regular.

I want to quickly cull out the males and with the other plants I want to grow clones already for my next grow. Later I will only keep the best mothers.

So I want quickly to determine the sex of the plants.

  • Can I take a cutting of such a plant already? (see picture)

  • Also i wonder if there might be some nice plants of the strain which I have in flower now. Could I also take a cutting from a flowering plant and reveg that one or wouldn’t that work?

  • I want to try to produce already as many clones as possible. But could you tell me how to trim the mother plants so they grow in the way that they produce as many clones as possible? Is it just always chopping of the head so there will be growing two?

  • Can you tell me how to find the mothers to keep, are there some things that I could miss to see beside yield, and health? Maybe resistance to pests, heat, overwatering? How important is leaf growth and size?
    Should I cull out small mothers already? Maybe some which are weakly looking comparing to the others?

  • Do I need to put my mothers in a bigger rockwool block already? What size?

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Yes, you could cut the top off that and clone it. The. The plant will branch out more and in a week or so you should be able to take 2-4 more.

You can take cuttings in flower, most people don’t do it past week 3, but before then they seem to root and reveg ok. Look up ‘monster cropping’, some people do this on purpose.

Not much you can do besides topping and waiting for more branches. When you take those branches the plant will get more bushy and you’ll have more potential cuttings in the future.

Choosing a mother is pretty subjective, but yes overall vigour is what youd want to look for. I personally don’t cull anything until I’ve flowered it because sometimes runts can turn out to be something really nice.

I think you’re ok in that size block for now, once it starts drying out every day it’s probably time to bump it up to something bigger.

Hope that helps!

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It might be better if you create a grow diary thread, and put all your questions in one place, otherwise its going to get confusing when questions and answers start to overlap each other, for you and the people who are answering :wink:

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If Im in your position:

(I dunno how many plants you are running all together?) Id take at least 2 cuttings off of each plant.
Then as I am rooting the cuttings, I would flip mothers to flower. Obviously have all the cuttings WELL marked according to which plant it came off of.
Id flower out and veg out at the same time. Cull the males as they come. Go into your cuttings(veg space) and remove all of the same progeny.

AND If you want a large amount of cuttings the fastest?
In my opinion, harvest all but the bottom 10-12 inches of your female plants. Keep bottom branches and inner leaves all on the plant.
Then REVEG those plants. Put em on 20 to 24 hours of light. Strain depending, some will reveg quickly, and some may not at all.
I found by revegging plants personally, I can have a 2 foot plant with 40+ cuttings within 2 months of cutting and flipping that plant. Not even seed plants can do that.
I have a reveg thread here on OG. (Blueberry Cookies reveg(?))Check it out, May help out.
Good luck.

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How to select a mother? That’s easy but it depends what you’re selecting for. Are you after yields or are you after quality? Are you after raw potency or are you after unique effects? Clone everything and label everything. Bring females to harvest and sample everything multiple times. Depending on growth qualities and/or effects,terps andpotency you can then decide which plants you want to keep and which ones to discard. easy peazy lemon squeezy

Some people take clones from tops but really you can take a clone from any sidebranch or node. To get the most possible clones simply veg your plant out for months, there’s no other way.

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Great advice @paintedfire420 .
Let the flower sit a while before discarding any cuttings. Some of your cannabis characteristics’ may change with a cure. The one you thought right at harvest “is the bomb” may not be turn out to be the favorite.
Choose with your head. Smoke it all. Narrow it down and smoke brother. You will know which 1 or 2 you want to keep after a while.
Then you can flower out the ones you are not keeping, giving you plants to run and giving the mums a chance to get some structure on them for future cloning.
Good luck

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So I need a rooting hormone? Can you recommend me one?

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You don’t need it, but it definitely helps. I prefer powder as it sticks better, but alot of people prefer gel. You can also use both, dip them into gel then powder for a double coating.

As far as what kind I’ve never really noticed a big difference between brands, I’m using a cheapo brand from the hardware store lately and it works fine.

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I use the gel , I have found clonex to be one of the better options, that and a gel from my local shop, called rooting compound lol tried it once when they didn’t have the clonex and it almost worked just as good :slight_smile:

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If you’re hurting for cash you can also soak willow branches in water and use that. They have some of the same growth hormones as rooting compounds.

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Aloe Vera juice works well also.

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Can you tell me how to find out when I should water the rockwool cube? I am scared if I wait to long the plant will droop and lost leaves (happened one time already with small cubes). But I think sometimes they are drooping becauese I overwatered a bit :-D. Sometimes the surface of the cube feels wet a bit, but the cube feels much lighter than right after watering. Then I am not sure when is the right moment to water. How can I find out how long I can wait with the watering?

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Usually the best way is just picking it up and feeling the weight. If you can weigh a fully dry cube and a fully soaked one on a scale, then water when you’re at say 20% of full weight.

Ie if it weighed 10 grams dry and 110 grams wet I’d water at like 30grams (ish)

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what would be the minimum size for cuttings? I have already some side shoots which I could take. But I am wondering if the are still too small.

I have some unwanted side shoots of plants which are in flower. So it is early flower which means, I could take these shoots as cuttings wihtout problems?

Not sure about the size, but I know I read that you can take clones a couple weeks into flower. Maybe week 2, 3 weeks max. I’m new to cloning too, just going off what I read so far, not experience.

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Minimum size for clones is probably 2-3 inches, a bit bigger is better. You can take clones in flower up to about 3 weeks.

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Many of the clones that I take, get an issue with the stem like that. The part where the stem come out of earth just shrinks and doesn’t hold the plant anymore. What is that??? Does the cutting have some deficiency of some nutrient? Was the mother maybe already weak/deficient? Did I not cut properly? Did the cutting get an embolia? Or maybe I was holding the cutting to firmly while cutting it with the razor?

It is really weird. I guess a third of the cuttings pretty immediately die like that…

Other question:
How can I make my mother to continue to grow from these lower nodes? After I took cuttings to the stem, it takes ages to see some new growth there. It seems like only the top of the plant grows… :frowning:

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How moist are you keeping the soil? Could be damping off.

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Looks like damping off to me as well.

Dont take so many cuttings from the same plant, the more leaves it has, the faster it recovers.

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The times this has happened to me, the Clone Cab temperature dropped a lot, as my heater malfunctioned. I dont think they handle rapid temp loss well in a already humid climate condition pushing up the VPN. You have to keep the climate stable, more than at any specific temp or humidity I think. Fluctuations use up their valuable energy and they cant cope with it…

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