After taking clones how long to wait to switch mother to flower?

[Lil Neutrino]

Tried searching the forums and google for this but I kept getting results describing when you can switch the clones to flower, not the mother. I realize this is a bit bass-ackwards as usually you take clones from the mother, keep her in veg, and flower the clones. I plan on using one of the clones as the new mother and again I realize that this isn't how people normally do it but from what I've read it can be done.

My question is once I take the clones (would like to do them today) how long should I give the mother to recover before switching her to a 12/12 cycle? I'm going to put the clones in a separate veg area until they root and if I have more than one survive I am going to let them veg for 2-3 weeks and then drop them in to flower.

Thanks!

 

[Bandit420]

I run my farm in that exact way you described so I think I can help you.
My Mothers are special. Their old growth produces the most potent buds in my garden so I take great care of them.
You can flower her at any point after you harvest the clones. She will rebound from the cut areas with new vegative growth during preflower.
My method is I take clones and wait three days for her new shoots to have vigor. I then trim all lower branches and alot of the small shoot and branches inside the bush. I leave her with four to six main branches that will take all the energy that was to go to the branches I cut off and turn those branches into huge fat colas instead of hundreds of little nuggets if I leave those branches on.

This was my last Mother plant. She is 4th generation WW and yielded 60 clones and 3 oz of dried herb

 

[The Butcher]

great advice coming from OrangeBlood. Dont give them any less then 3 days. I try to wait a week. Along w/ a good flushing. That way she's ready to take inher new nute program.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

Thanks guys! I have my lights on an 18/6 schedule right now (chandelier pic in the CFL thread in the "cabinet" subforum) and was wondering if I put them under a translucent cover kind of like a tupperware/rubbermaid opaque plastic would the lights be too strong for some clones? I'd estimate distance from then nearest light to where the top of the clones would be is around 18", maybe more. Is that too close even with the diffused lighting from the cover and fluorescent bulbs? Should they have a few days of nothing but dark before putting light on them? I tried searching for that one but didn't have much luck and when I did it wasn't on this forum and the answers varied a lot.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

I was just thinking...if hormones are more concentrated towards the bottom of the plant and are thus better for cloning, on a plant that has been LST'd is it correct to say that it's less important where you take clones from???

 

[Bandit420]

Hey Neut,
Some of my advice for this may go against alot of spoken cloning techniques but I'll float it out here anyways.
There's alot of advice that says clone lights should not be very intense and kept at a distance but check this out...
I had clones that were refusing to take root under a 15 watt cfl. They just sat there for two weeks and did nothing but look green. When I took the tray and put it along the edge of a garden in veg under a 400 watt MH, every clone exploded with roots over the next 3 days. I've since ditched that cfl and now I run a big 120 watt cfl 8 inches above the cuttings and I have a 90% success rate with them taking root in 5-12 days.
Often I will take clones and fill my machine. I take another few branches and set them aside in a cup full of water with the cut end submerged. If any of the cuttings in the machine fail, I'll get it's replacement from that cup. Sometimes those replacements sit in that cup for 10 days before I use them but they're still good and take root just as if I had cut it from the Mother hours earlier. They dont have light or anything on them in that cup. They just sit in a sort of suspended animation.
In a few weeks I'm going to post a step by step on how I do my clones with loads of pics in my journal. My method is different than what alot of people do. There's a whole lot of superstition and karma involved with why I do it the way I do it. It's a very spiritual thing for me but the results speak for themselves.
Now you certainly cannot be successul with every strain doing this but if you have a nice hardy strain that's easy to grow, it works.

 

[Lil Neutrino]

Thanks orange...I'll let you know how successful I am, my gf has cloned before and she left me to do it myself but she didn't complain about the end result so... *fingers crossed*