Give Your Mom a Little Love This Mother’s Day
Here's wishing a happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there, both human and plant alike. It's never a bad time to show a little appreciation to our mothers, and there's never a better time than Mother's Day. So while our team here at TSRgrow wants to recognize our moms today, let's also take a second to appreciate all of those mother plants that have given so freely of themselves to produce countless marijuana offspring around the world.
Mother Plants
Growing from a mother can be a rewarding experience. The beauty of growing and keeping a robust and vibrant mother plant in your arsenal is that, like so many mothers out there, a good mom will give and give so long as she's treated well. A healthy mother plant is capable of producing a nearly limitless supply of viable clones, which can be grown into fully mature cannabis plants. In this way, many growers and marijuana geneticists have turned a single seed into a lifetime's supply of their favorite plant.
While the prospect of unlimited marijuana plants may seem too good to be true, we're not joking; many growers have kept mothers alive for years and years, using cuttings from the same plant for many runs. However, it's important to note that many factors can influence the success or failure of a clone, such as the process implemented when taking the cuttings, the rooting hormones used, and the environment in which the cuttings are propagated.
In addition, maintaining a mother plant requires space to nurture her. Typically, growers will maintain a separate room just for their moms..
Advantages of Growing From a Mother Plant
Aside from the obvious advantage of not having to buy seeds all the time, there are several other great reasons to source your garden from a mother plant. For starters, there will be no differentiation between clones taken from the same mom; that is to say, even in a batch of seeds from the same plant, you may still encounter some minor genetic differences.
When working with clones, all of your plants will have the exact same genetic profile, leading to consistent plants producing consistent harvests. Speaking of harvests, another significant advantage of growing from clones is that your plants will remain uniform in size as they develop, making cloning the natural choice for growers hoping to achieve an even, consistent canopy in a sea-of-green fashion.
Still, another good reason to grow from a mother is the fact that a single mother plant can produce enough clones to ensure that you will be able to harvest year-round. By the time you're chopping down, your new clones will be all ready to go into the grow room.
No more hunting for males! When taking clones from a mother, you will always have daughters. This eliminates the need to identify and remove the male plants, before they can cause damage to the rest of the plants in the room.
Maintaining Your Mother for Longevity and Productivity
There are some important factors for your mother to have a nice, long life (and who doesn't want that?). The first is the genetics of your plant. When it comes to picking which plant ought to be designated your mother plant, the key is to pick the strongest of the crop. This means watching for speedy germination, strong root structure, dense foliage and sturdy stalks.
Once a strong lady has been selected, she should be placed in an area that will give the plant room to develop laterally or "bush out" Mother plants require 18-24 hours of sunlight per day in order to ensure that they remain in the vegetative stage of growth.
Additionally, most growers tend to top their mothers multiple times in order to direct energy to lower shoots, which possess the greatest concentration of growth hormones and thus root better, producing stronger and more viable clones.
Provided you have the room, it's not terribly difficult to maintain a strong and healthy mother plant (or five!). Keeping a mother on hand will provide you with a constant supply of fresh, homogenous clones that can be grown into potent, high-yielding crops. Our mothers do a lot for us. This Mother's Day, let's do a little in return.
Happy Mother's Day from TSRgrow. Be sure to show all of the moms in your life a little love today and every day!
