How to train a Cannabis mother plant

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Mother Plant Guide – What is it? How to make one? thumbnail

What is a mother plant? What’s the advantage? How to train one?

Hi there! It’s been a little while since we wrote an article, a lot has been going on 🙂
Today we’re going to cover Marijuana Mother Plants. First we will give a definition of what a mother plants is, then show you how to “make” one and take care of her!

Cannabis Mother Plants - Table of content

What is a Mother Plant?

Training a Mother Plant

Advantages of Mother Plants

What is a Mother Plant?

Basically all a mother plant is, is a plant kept in the vegetative stage. Growers then cut off branches from this plant in order to make cuttings that will then go through the vegetative and flowering stages.

Basically it’s a bit like a bonzaing your plant, you keep it small but with many auxiliary branches and always with a 18-6 photoperiod schedule.
When you want to go for a round of flowering, cut couple branches off and make some cuttings out of them 🙂

Training your own Mother Plant

How to make a mother plant you ask? Why the answer is simple, don’t start the flowering stage 🙂 meaning always keep the light schedule at 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness.

Now there are things that differ during the vegetative stage since your objective is different, here’s a quick checklist on things you’ll want to do:

How to train a Mother Plant

Don’t get too big of pots.
Except if you’re going to go for sessions with a large number of clones, you’re not really going to be doing that many cuttings. Meaning that you don’t need her to be huge, and the bigger the pot, the bigger the plant.
Aim for bushiness and auxiliary branches, not height.
Since the target here is to be able to regularly prune some branches in order to make some clones, you want you’re mother plant to have as many auxiliary branches as possible.
One of the ways to do so is by pinching the main stem often, to push her to grow more auxiliary branches;
Don’t hesitate to top and prune the plant early on in its life. You want her to get used to producing many branches
No need for a very powerful light, except if you’re doing very regular or large grows.
If you’re using plastic pots, don’t forget to regularly prune your roots. If you don’t do so, in time they won’t have enough room and choke.
We really recommend using fabric or air pots for your mother plants, it avoids one big headache and a major stress to the plant.

What are the Advantages and Disadvantages?

MOTHER PLANTS	ADVANTAGE/DISADVANTAGE
Advantages	Ability to grow plants with the same genetic code, meaning they’ll have the same stretch, need in nutrients, etc. This is especially useful (necessary) if you’re going for a Sea of Green Keep strains without needing to buy new seeds. You have a strain you love? With a mother plant all you need to do is make some cuttings from her to make a new grow Reduce the length of grow cycles. Your mother tent can serve, in essence, as a vegetation tent, allowing you dedicate the other tent to flowering. In sum, you can go for constant flowering if you wish to do so. Tests : When you have mother plants you’ll be much less hesitant to test out different training techniques. Mother plants generally don’t need much light intensity. Ours are under a 75W LED light and they’re chillin just fine
Disadvantages	You will need a specific tent. Since the concept is for the plant to constantly be in the vegetation stage you will need a dedicated space for them. No time-outs: Mother plants are around for the long term, meaning that you can’t disappear for 2 weeks without preparing a watering system or for someone to come check them out.

MOTHER PLANTS

ADVANTAGE/DISADVANTAGE

Advantages

Ability to grow plants with the same genetic code, meaning they’ll have the same stretch, need in nutrients, etc.
This is especially useful (necessary) if you’re going for a Sea of Green
Keep strains without needing to buy new seeds.
You have a strain you love? With a mother plant all you need to do is make some cuttings from her to make a new grow
Reduce the length of grow cycles.
Your mother tent can serve, in essence, as a vegetation tent, allowing you dedicate the other tent to flowering.
In sum, you can go for constant flowering if you wish to do so.
Tests : When you have mother plants you’ll be much less hesitant to test out different training techniques.
Mother plants generally don’t need much light intensity. Ours are under a 75W LED light and they’re chillin just fine

Disadvantages

You will need a specific tent.
Since the concept is for the plant to constantly be in the vegetation stage you will need a dedicated space for them.
No time-outs: Mother plants are around for the long term, meaning that you can’t disappear for 2 weeks without preparing a watering system or for someone to come check them out.

With all that said, honestly we’ve just started our own mother plants and it’s pretty exiting. A friend of our gave us one of his BBC mothers that’s over a year old and we started a Critical and Blue Kush mother. Can’t wait to start testing things ouuut!

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Alright folks that it for now, we’ll update the page once our mothers have developed a bit more and we can get the first round of cuttings;

Until then,
Be safe and grow easy

About the author

plant-lover

Plant Lover is Free the Tree's founder and a passionate grower of plants. Mostly from the city, I work on my computer all day so about 4 years ago, on my off time, I started growing to have some more green in my life. I never imagined I would fall in love with botany and discover so much about this plant. Since then I keep learning everyday, meeting new awesome people of our community and which keeps me growing constantly You can always get in touch with me on our Instagram!