Besides cloning, what do you like to do to keep them small while still seeing their characteristics well as breeders?
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I gotta assume for an auto, a small cup would force flowering early and stunt it. I know I stunted autos with some excess P/K in week 4, but ya probably dont wanna do that.
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For a photo I’d say pretty much the same, put it in a smaller pot or solo cup and flip it quickly
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That’s one of my strategies, I’ll be running 3 plants in 1 gallon bubblers as one test method. I also am switching to aeroponics for many plants this grow, especially when young.
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Is there a good rule of thumb for stretch on a photo that’s flipped early?
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I will say, the auto clones I still have going in my aeroponic cloner are all displaying the characteristics of their donors, but are still going strong at 110+ days. All I have to do it smell a trimmed leaf and it’s indiscernible from the long departed moms. This will help with limited space and working with too many plants
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Totally dependent on the strain and even pheno sometimes. When some folks run long flowering sativas they’ll put em in flower from seed cause they stretch so much that they’d be unmanageable otherwise. But some indicas would need a bit more veg time cause they hardly stretch at all
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Thanks, that’s helpful! I must be nuts attempting this run I’m doing. I figured even if I crash and burn, I’ll learn a lot! I now have 200+ beans popped to widdle down into less than 50 plants, many of which will have to be kept small once I decide the early winners.
Selfing has been popular. Take 2 or more cuttings off your gal . Reverse 1 pollinate the other with tha feminized pollen. Result is feminized seeds s1’s cultivar dependant the seeds could be identical to mom or you might have to sort threw a bunch . The genetics are locked in those seeds
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@Waxman420 Is this my best strategy if I get an outstanding girl from a pretty well worked line? Or do I want to find a great boy to pair with her ideally? Both? 
In my experience it will keep plant size down, but not necessarily cause it to flower early. In fact, it’s my experience that they will run longer if you stunt them and flower later. The same goes for auto clones ime, they seem roughly 2 -4 weeks behind their mom.
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To back up a strain selfing would be the way to go . If you wanted to modify her you would introduce different genetics
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But the only way to 100% keep a favorite around would be clones .
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I’m running GDP from @SamwellBB by way of @Swe-can I’d assume this is a pretty worked line, that said, I popped all I had.
The plan was to self the best girl to have hopefully stable beans, and take the best boy and cross him with the best girl, so that would then be a BX1, correct? The resulting selfed girls will be S1, and if I did an open pollination of the best girls with the best boy they’d still be BX1, or would they be more F1?
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Hey I was gonna post in the thread but realized it was way to much to post so I sent some info via PM you can ignore if you wish 
But I got started typing and didn’t realize how much it was.
I think, if I understand your plan correctly, that you want to Self a female. Then cross the S1s to the best male from the original beans you chose the Female to S1 from. Is that right ?
If so I do believe those offspring would just be F1s as you didn’t use the male as a parent to start.
To make a Bx1 you would have needed to use either parent from an original cross and make baby’s with the next generation.
I honestly think you should just choose the best of the best and make F1s. If you want keep the parents, run the line using the best parents you can find and then use an original parent to cross with your F3 or F4 beans to make the Bx1.
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those GDPs from me are f2s therefore if you cross 2 or more of them the resulting seeds/plants would be f3s.
BX means a back cross
selfed/S1 means turning a girl into a boy usually using a chemical and then pollinating itself/the original female - you need 2 plants obviously
lots of info on Overgrow if you search for it
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Flip them early. You can grow monsters in small pots, it’s just a challenge to keep them fed.
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Bonsai trees
Oops I read this wrong lol
If you have to keep them small you could just throw them in flower after a super short veg. You should still get a good idea of everything.
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Thanks, I’d already read that in one of the FAQs, but clearly needed a reminder…
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The smallest way to hold genetics I’m aware of is tissue culture. Buy a PC, agar bottle, and some petris and you’re in business 
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