Need help with a cloning strategy

[Output]

I have a question for experienced growers and those doing cloning.

I have a 4' x 4' tent that I will be using for vegging. I have a separate area for flowering.

My thought is that I will use the veg tent for my 36 place little cloning machine. Then transplant my little plants into bigger pots and let them veg until ready to put into the flowering area.

My flowering area has two lights and my intention is to use approximately 10 plants per light in a SOG or SCOG style.

So I will be needing approximately 20 little plants each cycle.

My thought is to find mothers for four strains that I want to grow - and to maintain those mothers in my veg tent at all times - never letting them bloom.

Here are my questions:

Having not done this before myself, does that sound like a sound strategy?

Should there be enough room in my 4 x 4 tent to maintain 4 mothers and the new plants vegging until I move them to the main grow area? I realize this depends in part on the size of the pot. I'm thinking possibly 1 gallon — even less if I had to until I move them to the grow area.

In general, would one mother provide me with 10 clones every three or four months? I guess what I'm asking is, can a mother being developed so that I could take 10 clones from her at one time so that all of my clones would be the same age when moving to the grow area?

Thanks for any help.

 

[shottafire]

Yes you can take ten clones off of a plant when it has developed enough structure and growing tips to do so. If you wanted to do four strains you might want to figure a tent per strain possibly a tent per two strains. The reason being is that to evenly distribute the light over all plants in your tent would be very hard with clones in a cloning machine vegging plants in small pots and housing mothers to take cuts from.

I suggest you start with your four strains you want to try. veg and clone everything. run em all thru flower and keep the clones of the one or ones you like the most. Unless your getting elite cuts and you already know they are the business.

Hope that helps

 

[Output]

Yes you can take ten clones off of a plant when it has developed enough structure and growing tips to do so. If you wanted to do four strains you might want to figure a tent per strain possibly a tent per two strains. The reason being is that to evenly distribute the light over all plants in your tent would be very hard with clones in a cloning machine vegging plants in small pots and housing mothers to take cuts from.

I suggest you start with your four strains you want to try. veg and clone everything. run em all thru flower and keep the clones of the one or ones you like the most. Unless your getting elite cuts and you already know they are the business.

Hope that helps

That is really helpful. Thank you.

On average, with a sativa strain, how long do you figure it would take to get a plant with enough structure to be able to take 10 clones?

If I kept it in the veg tent, I'm thinking I could manage the size of the plant and keep it basically the state ready to clone. At least that's what I'm hoping.

And your thought of a tent per strain – wow. I would need way more space than I've got. But I think that would be a very cool way to go in the future.

Lastly, you suggest that I start off with my four strains and veg and clone everything. If I run them all through flower, how will I be able to keep any clones? I think I'm missing something in your suggestion.

Thanks for the education and the help.

 

[shottafire]

I am thinking you will want to make a small cloning rooting area. The light you would need would be a small cfl bulb just enough to get some roots on them. The reason I say start your four and choose the best is because out of four started only one might be what you are looking for.

If you ever do multiple strains just set up a grow room instead of a bunch of tents.

 

[Output]

I have a 36 place routing container. It's reasonably small. It'll fit nicely in the tent and not take up much room.

For veg, I have a new four-part LED COB light coming from TopLED. It will very easily fill the entire tent say those that have been using it here on this site. I'm hoping I have almost overkill for the light so that it will easily handle what is needed.

I have three strains of real good genetics coming. I have five feminized seeds of each. I was thinking I would start three seeds of each so that in case I do something wrong, I still have two more seeds to try of each strain.

Does that sound like a pretty effective strategy?

I would love to have a much bigger grow room. Just need to get a little bigger house and I will have one. This will be good practice to get me started.

 

[shottafire]

your strategy sounds good. I would set up a separate cloning station though. you dont need much but just a cfl bulb in the 6500k range.


This will give you much needed room.

 

[Output]

That sounds like a good idea.

I could keep the clothing station out of the tent that way and the light can stay on 24 hours a day. There will only be about four cycles per year with the clothing station, so that should work out just fine.

Thanks.

 

[GreatLife4All]

There is also another strategy - it is the one that I use. I only keep a "mother" if I am not planning on growing a particular strain at this point.

Just clone from the clones... and skip maintaining a mother.

Lets say you want to run twenty plants. Each plant takes eight weeks to mature. And just for giggles, let's assume that from the time of cutting till you are ready to flower the new cutting takes 6 weeks.

1.) You start off with twenty plants from seed.

2.) Germinate and veg all twenty.

3.) When the plant is ready for flowering - trim the bottom two branches off of each plant and use as a clone.

4.) You will end up with twice as many clones as you need on the next round - consider it insurance.

{EDITORIAL} But here is the issue - earlier we assumed that it would only take 6 weeks to get a clone ready to flower. So now we will have plants vegging for too long... growing too big... hard to manage. So instead of taking a clone before we place the plant into flowering - you wait two weeks. At the end of two weeks - take the clones from the bottom of the plant. Take two clones per plant.

5.) As they grow - select the ones that you want to flower. You have twice as many as needed and you can be quite selective. It is, in fact, OK to kill a few plants Have a burial if it bothers you

6.) The clones will now be ready for flower in 6 weeks - and the flowering plants will also finish in 6 weeks.

7.) Harvest the flowering batch... start flowering the clones... Go to Step 3 and start again.
​

Everything is in sync. You are only flowering the very best clones - and have room to kill a few either accidentally or purposefully. When you harvest, the next batch is ready to go in. You can continue this for years without ever breaking the cycle. People claim that you can "wear out" a plant... so just start a new "line" from seed occasionally.

It takes a little bit of experience with each variety to get the cycle down. Some plants may require 8 weeks before they are ready to veg... some may only require four. You have to get a feel for things through experience.

From experience, when I clone during the first two weeks - it takes no longer to clone than if I do it while in veg. At the end of week 3 there starts to be an impact which gets greater as the plant matures. Also, the later the clone is taken - the more bushy the resultant plant is.

No matter when you take it, after about a week for cloning and three weeks of vegging the plant will take off. Then it is just a matter of how large do you want it before flowering.

An advanced technique is to take more clones from the better progeny on round 2. Since you started with 20 seeds... you will get some different phenotypes. You can select the plants that you like - and favor their progeny in each round. Let's say that you notice half way thru flowering that one plant is lagging - though everything else is equal. You can destroy that plants progeny and thus eliminate it from your grows. Alternatively, lets say after harvest, one plant was particularly potent - you can favor this plants progeny in future rounds by taking more clones. Eventually you can narrow it down so that all the clones are coming from the very best of the original 20 mothers (some may yield more... some may be more potent... some may have larger buds... etc). Doing this, you will end up with great genetics that you really like - because you get to be the judge and executioner. You must track the original mothers and all progeny (and progeny of progeny) using tags or something - but this is not hard to do.

I used this strategy to narrow ten original seeds down to two clone lines - they both were potent and yielded great. No difference in looks. On one of the cloning rounds I got root rot in my cloning box. One line's plants nearly all died - it didn't affect the other. I thus made my final selection between the two lines based on the fact that one made my resultant clones more resistant to root rot. A real win since I still had enough plants to continue the next round...

No matter what you decide

 

[Output]

This is really incredible and helpful information. Thank you so much.

So I have 5 seeds of each strain coming. Three total strains. My thought is to grow these in a SOG or ScrOG with 10 plants under each light. I have two lights so will need about 20 plants.

Would you recommend the first go around I try and sprout all seeds and go with whatever I've got?

Or would you recommend I sprout say 3 of each strain, wait until they're big enough to clone and then do a full grow of 20 plants?

What fun this is going to be. I can't wait.

And thank you again for this incredible information.

 

[GreatLife4All]

Sprout them all.

Take clones from them all.

Be picky about who lives on the next round.

Every now and then, start a new set of seeds and introduce them into the cycle.

Have fun and enjoy the rewards my friend.