Perpetual grow without a dedicated mother plant?

[MichaelasDouglasas]

Greetings,

I'm fairly new to this, I've read a couple of books, browsed the internet, did my first grow from seed last year, first clones this year, and I'm running into a bit of a problem, if I can call it a problem.

I thought I would keep a single mother plant and take clones from it, but unlike my first grow, which I mistakenly used as a size reference to build the grow boxes, I'm doing things more properly this time, and probably due to using coco coir, fabric pots, good nutrients, pH and EC measuring, strong LED lights and plenty of airflow, the mother plant is becoming a complete monster, and it's not even two months yet. I imagine I'd need to do a lot of unnecessary pruning to keep the width and height under control.

I can understand how this would be useful on a large scale, taking many clones from a large plant, but I don't have much conditioned free space indoors and harvesting a single medium-sized plant every two months would be more than enough for me.

The first time I topped the mother plant was also the first clone. It was slow to root at first, but after a month it's quite a bush and growing fast.

Which made me think, can I get away without a mother plant, combining the topping and cloning? The timing isn't perfect, but if I top and clone the first plant a week or two before flowering, I should have a healthy clone by then, which gets topped and cloned as the first plant is nearing harvest, and so on. I will try manifolding, which seems to make sense and should also stretch the vegetative stage to better match the two months of flowering, so if something happens to the first clone, I have at least two more, and if something disastrous happens, I can always try cloning the flowering plant, or germinating another seed.

Can this work in real life, or what are some of the potential problems I'm not seeing right now? I've seen it barely mentioned in the forums.

The seeds are feminized photoperiod White Widow from Dutch Passion, if that changes anything.

 

[ArtfulCodger]

It can work. Just take clones near the end of veg. You're right that the timing is something that takes some tweaking. You can play with plant count (and therefore veg target size) to get the timing dialed in.

 

[JohnnySunfish]

I did that about 8 generations with a Blueberry strain and it was going fine. I should have never stopped but wanted to try a different strain. I just cut clones right before moving to flower. It took enough time for the clones to root and the bush to grow that I could just repeat.

 

[Newty]

Any chance of setting up another grow tent/space? Could always have something in 1 space ready to fill the other and if timing is ever off, you still have a space for them.

 

[dextr0]

Greetings,

I'm fairly new to this, I've read a couple of books, browsed the internet, did my first grow from seed last year, first clones this year, and I'm running into a bit of a problem, if I can call it a problem.

I thought I would keep a single mother plant and take clones from it, but unlike my first grow, which I mistakenly used as a size reference to build the grow boxes, I'm doing things more properly this time, and probably due to using coco coir, fabric pots, good nutrients, pH and EC measuring, strong LED lights and plenty of airflow, the mother plant is becoming a complete monster, and it's not even two months yet. I imagine I'd need to do a lot of unnecessary pruning to keep the width and height under control.

I can understand how this would be useful on a large scale, taking many clones from a large plant, but I don't have much conditioned free space indoors and harvesting a single medium-sized plant every two months would be more than enough for me.

The first time I topped the mother plant was also the first clone. It was slow to root at first, but after a month it's quite a bush and growing fast.

Which made me think, can I get away without a mother plant, combining the topping and cloning? The timing isn't perfect, but if I top and clone the first plant a week or two before flowering, I should have a healthy clone by then, which gets topped and cloned as the first plant is nearing harvest, and so on. I will try manifolding, which seems to make sense and should also stretch the vegetative stage to better match the two months of flowering, so if something happens to the first clone, I have at least two more, and if something disastrous happens, I can always try cloning the flowering plant, or germinating another seed.

Can this work in real life, or what are some of the potential problems I'm not seeing right now? I've seen it barely mentioned in the forums.

The seeds are feminized photoperiod White Widow from Dutch Passion, if that changes anything.

That’s basically the whole process I do. I’ve sort of tried to share that aspect in my posts but I’m super bad at posting a lot. My plants are grown, cloned before they go to flower, flowered…then repeat until I get tired of growing said strain/strains or something better comes along. I do have a veg tent that’s 4x2 (flowering room is 5x5) because I’m vegging for like 70 days lol…but it’s perpetual and I do alright I think.

Just make sure you clone before you put in flower and they root. I’ve had plants that don’t like to root and lost the strain because I fucked around and waited too long (taking cuts in flower). You want rooted clones before you put it in flower. Life can get hectic and shit happens so don’t let it.