Choosing Mothers

take2hikes

New member
Hi everyone. I read a thread "Choosing a Mother" posted by oldmac but the thread was dated almost 3 years ago, so I figured I would post my questions in a separate thread.

About 45 days ago I planted 6 (out of 10) Feminized Liberty Haze seeds from Barney's Coffee Shop. About 2 weeks later I planted another 6 (out of 18) Regular Critical Mass (Mr. Nice) seeds.

I had organized the LH's in order originally from which of the seeds had stronger tap roots (mostly as an experiment). I continued labeling them in order of best size/fastest growing and kept 2 labeled for the strongest (1 and 2, respectively). The one that was doing the best is still far better than the others. It's got a very thick stem, short internode spacing, and generally just 'bushier'. It is also a tad taller than the others, but much more full. My runner up, however, has a nice thick stem and SUPER close internode spacing (damn near one on top of the other). But, it is no longer one of the largest - it is probably 25% shorter than #1. Some of this could be due to me having a deficiency on them at first, and then later burning them a tad bit (I've only done hydro up until now, so it was a learning curve) - but my #1 handled even that smoothly. My question is, given the choice between my #2 with the shortest internode spacing and another that is a bit taller but not as bushy with not as good of spacing - what would people pick? How important is the internode spacing?

As far as the CM's go, they are all gorgeous so far. No deficiency or burning, all relatively the same size so far but very bushy and thick foliage. Quite a bit different than the LH's, as they are all very neck-in-neck with each other. I only planted 6 of the 18 seeds because of space in my room and available light. I was hoping to spot some of the males by some growing taller, more spindly, etc - but so far the best guess is that I lucked out and they are all female (I will pull my hair out if they are all males). Only time will tell. With both strains, I picked the best looking seeds based off of size, hardness, and color. With the LH's, at least my one selected mother so far and my tentative runner up, I can see the pistils and know they are females. I'm hoping to be able to tell on the CM's soon.

My method for these is going to be not quite as thorough as I'd like, based off of time and my grow setup. I currently have 45 in veg and 40 in flower (Legal Medical Grower in my state). I select the the best 40 of veg to go into flower in case there are some runts, etc. Because of this, I was going to base the genetics almost solely off of veg growth and appearance. I have planned to keep 2 from each strain as a prospective mother. I will take approximately 10 clones from each, mark them, and run a cycle with them. Then I can see which mother of each strain is 'better'. I am somewhat hoping to have 2 good mothers of both just to make cloning very simple and able to keep the mothers fairly small.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. Tips for selecting mothers would be awesome. In my experience, the height of a plant does not necessarily mean anything in regards to yield - especially because some strains can be flowered at 12" and more than triple in height. But I have noticed throughout the 2 years I've done this is that the stem thickness does seem to be a good overall quality indicator.

Thanks again, and sorry for the rambling!


.t2h
 
Hi, its Not over till the fat Lady sings.i cant tell a good mother till ive test smoked them as some look good and are shit and vice versa.some of the ones id chucked ,after a months cure i wish id kept because of flav, smells and potency which you cant tell when its a new crop, im on my second Run with mango and still cant make my mind up which mother to use in production of suitcases fill.peace t
 
That's what I'm gathering as well.

My current plan is to do about 8 clones from 5 different mothers, and judge that way. I'll test them, and average the amount that I get off of each set of 8.

As far as yield is concerned, there has to be some distinguishing factors you can tell from the mother. Such as, general health, height, bushy-ness, distance of internode spacing, smell, etc. I am betting that if you had 20 mothers you could eliminate half of them just based off of those characteristics and then compare those 10 against the finished product. That is what I'm looking to find out.


.t2h
 
i thinks it's different for each person.

for me, choosing for yield is Not the way.

I order/number them in the manner they seeds sprout (what i call: vigor) - and there could be any number of reasons that one seed sprouts and starts growing faster than another.

I have decided over the years that if i make the soil (i have almost exclusively grown in soil - hoping one day to change that) it can/will be different each run. so, even though its not 'the best' i use a commercial soil and feed only pH adjusted water to judge plants. this changes once i get things up and running.

then there is the type/kind of plant. some plants can handle the above listed method better than others (complete understatement, however i think you understand the gist). even tho its not 'the best' - it's a Fair method to help judge.

Finally, I test the freshly dried material for overall desirability. then i keep some and test it periodically to see what ones i go to most often.

IF the the plant clones easily enough and survives - eventually the weakest ones are culled. for example, i did not find a single white russian i liked.

so, to shorten this diatribe, i pick what i like to smoke - regardless of yield. I seem to be able to generate enough material for me, without having to work very hard. plus, if i am not doing this for a living - the work involved tends to get tedious and I generally like to slow way down about once a year.
 
Fated, thanks for the response. I actually did the same thing. Once I planted the germinated seeds I put them in order of size of taproot. And then kept an eye on growth. In most circumstances that was actually a good indicator. I've also noticed that in the first 2-3 weeks it's pretty easy to pick out the 'strong' ones.

One of the Liberty Haze's was strong from the beginning, and I've selected to test as a mother. My runner up since has been a short squat very bushy plant, but it doesn't seem to be growing as much past the point that it's already at. Internodes are literally right on top of each other, but it doesn't quite have the overall bushy circumference as the others - or height. I'm not too concerned about height though, as they have the same amount of internodes, it's just shorter.
 
what tazmcd said is spot on.

Dont choose your mother before seeing the final product dried and cured for atleast a week. Cant tell you how many times I selected my mothers based on smell and appearance on chop day, and regretted it deeply. Trying to do so even sooner can be even more risky. Sometimes plants will dry with much more pungent aroma, taste, high and just overall quality than when they were on the plant. Remember its not about how it looks on the plant, its how it looks in the jar and how it smokes that counts. If you dont want to take clones of every plant and keep it alive that way, this is what I do. I like to harvest the tops of plants during a seed selection grow and let them dry for a week or so while allowing the lower buds to mature normally in the flower room. Once I get a feel for how each plant ends up dry you can harvest the rest of the lower buds on all the plants you dont like as keepers. The ones you want to keep, take the plant and stick it under a veg light for 24 hours to reveg and make a mother out of this plant.

edit: be sure to label well, dont want to mix dried buds and the plant that they came from up
 
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Unless you are in a rush, you should not make a decision until you try the cured buds of the clones of your seed plants. Plants from seed often pale in comparison to their clones.
 
definitely let them mature.

HHHG is correct.

I'm a top cloner (when/if i am able). so i try to let them get to at least the 7th node before i top clone.

Ideally they would be expressing some signs of being more mature at this point, like alternating nodes.

but letting the plant mature is a good idea. also, i often dont think i get my timing correct the first time around - i tend to let them go longer and finish more fully the more times i've grown each cut.
 
what tazmcd said is spot on.

Dont choose your mother before seeing the final product dried and cured for atleast a week. Cant tell you how many times I selected my mothers based on smell and appearance on chop day, and regretted it deeply. Trying to do so even sooner can be even more risky. Sometimes plants will dry with much more pungent aroma, taste, high and just overall quality than when they were on the plant. Remember its not about how it looks on the plant, its how it looks in the jar and how it smokes that counts. If you dont want to take clones of every plant and keep it alive that way, this is what I do. I like to harvest the tops of plants during a seed selection grow and let them dry for a week or so while allowing the lower buds to mature normally in the flower room. Once I get a feel for how each plant ends up dry you can harvest the rest of the lower buds on all the plants you dont like as keepers. The ones you want to keep, take the plant and stick it under a veg light for 24 hours to reveg and make a mother out of this plant.

edit: be sure to label well, dont want to mix dried buds and the plant that they came from up

This is the truth. The part about judging based on smoke, not veg traits that is (for the rest, I never bother with reveg'ing and all that stuff .... way too much fussing around from me. Find keepers, clone keepers).

But the part about guessing keepers in veg or mid flower is spot on.

Taking a bunch of clones and growing them out, from a plant that you have no idea (and you don't .... even if it has nice tap roots and grew pretty, it says nothing about the quality of the smoke you'll get from it) is a good way to waste a ton of time and resources manufacturing crap.


When I pop seeds, I'll take a clone or two from each plant (sometimes I'll wait until I've sexed them, but you can take them earlier and just throw out the males onces known if you don't intend to breed), once I know it's a female, and root them while the mother plants finish ... by the time the mother finishes, I can sample early buds, see what the finished plant looks like and sorry, with all due respect to a careful cure, you can easily spot the keepers, or likely "keeper contestants" at this point.

Some of the big pretty ones you were very excited about will have absolutely blah and boring smoke, while that smallish, not quite as big one you didn't think much of will produce a smokable bud that will stick in the memory of your friends and family forever. You simply can't even guess as to quality of smoke by "robustness, vigor, or internode spacing" .... sorry to say, but it influences yield and has nothing to do with quality of smoke.

When you find the ones worth keeping, and the reality is that you can work through entire packs of good genetics from good breeders and not find any great keepers, and this is common .... but when that one sweet lady appears, you have a couple of clones nicely rooted ... grow those out, clone the fuck out of them, and then keep growing that plant for as long as you like ...

Or, put more simply ... trying to judge keepers at the veg stage is a fools errand. Grow out plants, judge their quality based on real results, keep the clones of the winners, don't waste time growing out a bunch of crap.

You read advice for a large scale breeder .... its not actually the best path, necessarily for an individual grower looking to monocrop killer weed.

cheers
 
Regardless you are in for a treat. Critical mass will produce bubblegum, fruity skunk goodness:D that yields well. My favorite phenos produce more of a golfball type nug than the long colas.
 
I clone everything. Label everything. Keep records. Toss any unwanted males when determined. Send extra clones to trusted partners for insurance

DP
 
Choosing Fathers

Choosing Fathers is a bit more tricky. I kept all 6 males from my current outdoor run this year. They all looked good.
 
Hi All

Well choosing mothers is not as easy as saying that grows nicely lets keep it...more like a process of elimination once you are sure it is not a keeper.

What I do is work in numbers as selection from a few seeds is not really selection more take what is on offer...

With a typical F1 seed we flower and look for a cloner that has the good parts of both parents. Knowing the parents helps of course. So say you do a sample of 25 seeds and get 14 females and 11 males.

Without doing selection for males say we kill them all.

Now we cut a clone from the lower branches of each labelled female plant say A1....A14, root the clone and pot up to small pots and keep under fluoro, usually 2 or three of the same A1, A2...A14.

Flower out the mature base A1, A2....A14 and still keep the clone of each of them on 18hr...once the plants are flowered it is more easier to choose from the effect of the A1...A14 but keep in mind the other traits you feel are important to you like yield, bag appeal , stone, high....etc....

Once you narrowed down things to the best 3 females get rid of all other mothers and flower a square meter of each of the selected finalist. I do this twice at least since it takes 3 crops on a plant to understand how to grow it properly so keep the best three until you decided foresure....then give a clone to a mate to see how he does with them.

Usually if you have 3 bags of nice buds of 3 different sisters the bag you tend to gravitate to and the one finished first is the selection...all the best sb
 
Hi All

Well choosing mothers is not as easy as saying that grows nicely lets keep it...more like a process of elimination once you are sure it is not a keeper.

What I do is work in numbers as selection from a few seeds is not really selection more take what is on offer...

With a typical F1 seed we flower and look for a cloner that has the good parts of both parents. Knowing the parents helps of course. So say you do a sample of 25 seeds and get 14 females and 11 males.

Without doing selection for males say we kill them all.

Now we cut a clone from the lower branches of each labelled female plant say A1....A14, root the clone and pot up to small pots and keep under fluoro, usually 2 or three of the same A1, A2...A14.

Flower out the mature base A1, A2....A14 and still keep the clone of each of them on 18hr...once the plants are flowered it is more easier to choose from the effect of the A1...A14 but keep in mind the other traits you feel are important to you like yield, bag appeal , stone, high....etc....

Once you narrowed down things to the best 3 females get rid of all other mothers and flower a square meter of each of the selected finalist. I do this twice at least since it takes 3 crops on a plant to understand how to grow it properly so keep the best three until you decided foresure....then give a clone to a mate to see how he does with them.

Usually if you have 3 bags of nice buds of 3 different sisters the bag you tend to gravitate to and the one finished first is the selection...all the best sb

well that was an awesome post ... yes please!

thanks shanti
 
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