Bonsai moms - some pictures and results

[Maculele]

Hello there, just wanted to chime in with some success that I've been having with keeping bonsai mothers.
I got a hold of some POG clones a while ago, and have had 22 girls flowering for the last 5 weeks, so about half way through.
When I started those, I built an 25" Wide x 13" High x 16" Deep mother box from blueboard insulation and mylar reflective material. I have 96w of T-5 tubes over top, the T-5 lamp set up acts as the top of my box, so I have as even and full light distribution as I could want. 96w should be able to support the growth necessary to keep my moms producing at the volume that I need, which will eventually be 24 clones/month.
I've got 4 moms in there right now, all looking good, and a couple clones I took as clippings from my flowering girls. No roots yet, I just have the stems hangin in water as an experiment. It seems like it works, but I haven't seen results yet.
They're all in Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil, using a feeding regimen of fish meal, molasses, and liquid karma every two weeks. I used some bio bizz root juice for a while to encourage some root growth in the beginning.

Here are some pics of the best one, don't have much time so I'll get the others up soon and hopefully keep a running log of it so I can track their progress.
I topped, then bent it over 90 degrees when it had about 7 nodes, and have been training individual branches now with both copper wire and hemp twine.








This is pretty much what I've done with all of them, except for one which I've just turned on it's side, then rotated it pretty much daily to encourage growth of the side branches. Interesting results there, and I trained it with copper a bunch today, so we'll see.

 

[vhGhost]

Nice LST!!!they end up looking like this!!

 

[Maculele]

Hell yea, I hope they do, indeed. Let's watch em get bigger. Pics of the others tomorrow...

 

[Maculele]

Is that beer bottle buried in the pots with em? I don't get it, but maybe just for scale and it's not actually buried...

 

[jaykush]

what soil do you keep your bonsai moms in? do you re-pot eventually? root trimming?

 

[GhettoGrown]

Cool thread, pulling up a chair and some popcorn. I just cut my first clones ever today, the healthiest of which I plan on Bonsai'ing. Wish me luck, and I am looking forward to your progress! Good luck!



~ghetto

 

[Maculele]

You can check the first post for my soil info:

Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil, using a feeding regimen of fish meal, molasses, and liquid karma every two weeks. I used some bio bizz root juice for a while to encourage some root growth in the beginning.

I'll probably repot them as they begin to look root bound. I'll cut 1/4" - 1/2" from the sides and bottom of the root ball, then repot. This technique I got from bonsai tree books. There's also a GREAT THREAD that has lots of step-by-step info and pictures... Check that one out for some instant gratification, and check in here once in a while and keep me encouraged.

 

[jaykush]

ahh sorry for some reason i didnt see it, i even looked.

sounds good. when i re pot bonsai moms i like to cut the bottom half of the rootball off and replant into the same size pot just with fresh soil( usually compost based)

should be good seeing your method.

 

[Maculele]

Some other shots

Some other shots

Here are some shots of the rest of my moms and some other random shots...
I fed all my soil plants with a mix of fish emulsion, cal-mag, root juice, and liquid karma today, so we'll see how that affects their growth. These pics are from after the feeding It's almost clone-taking time for my flower room. I'll need to take about 40 to feel safe about my survival rate and being able to fit 24 in my 2x2 flower tray.
Enjoy!

Here's a shot of my whole mother/clone/lettuce(?) tray:


And the mom from the last post, after some training:


Mom #2:



Mom #3:


Mom #4:


A pic of a clone I took @ about week 3.5 flower (finally started to root just being submerged in water, and now it's in some soil):


Some lettuce I've got in there, lookin' tasty:



BUDSHOTS!!! This is about week 5.5, and they seem to be in slightly different stages of flower, but can be harvested in stages to make up for it, just a bitch...:




I'm pretty happy about all my endeavors right now, I hope you're diggin' it, too!
Love, peace, and fuck the po-lice!

 

[LL84]

looking good

 

[Danksta408]

So when you're doing LST and tying down your branches, do you leave them tied indefinately??.........If not, when do you remove the "restraints"???

 

[Maculele]

What I've done in the past is just leave them on (in the case of flowering plants, because they would be chopped before the constraint could have much if any effect) or remove them when the plant's branch reached the thickness of my knot. I always tie the knots about two times the thickness of the branch to give some growing room, this way, the branch is already trained by the time it reaches a size where the tie down would constrict it.
That's the plan. I've started removing some already, as a matter of fact. The larger one is really kicking the other's asses right now.
Also, the clones in water both "failed to thrive." I'll stick to clone plugs, but I won't say the water only technique doesn't work.

More pics tomorrow. Too much other shit going on right now. But...
some cool flowering pics, and a shot of one small one that I chopped early to give more light penetration to the others. They're getting crowded at 22 plants in a 2'x2' tray. Maybe I'll cut back to 18-19 plants next time to save on that crowding. I guess that means buying another 2'x2' and 600w bulb and doubling up the system. I bet I could effectively churn out plenty of smoke to enjoy. Growing it myselg sure takes care of having to deal with the black market to procure this amazing plant
Educate yourselves on our world, people, we're about to enter a dark time
Peace

 

[MHHSP]

I like the lettuce companion plant haha

 

[cway]

This Mom is 1 yr old.. Took 140 clones off of her couple days ago... Its White Whidow ( Shantibaba ) and she is in a mixture of FFOF, Cow Manure, Worm Castings, and extra perlite... I feed her Guano Teas and occasionally a light feeding of BIOCANNA Bio Vega refined organic nutes.. She is as healthy as can be.. Took some time to get her this healthy she has been through some things...

 

[HighonPottery]

^is that mom chillin' like a houseplant? that would be sick keeping a mom in the living room under a light.

 

[cway]

its chilling in the corner of a room .. not living room but bedroom..

 

[Maculele]

Update... Moms lookin good, might have to do some scrog later

Update... Moms lookin good, might have to do some scrog later

Here are a few of the best one:





And a couple of the others:




The way things are going, I'm thinking about taking a few clones from them, maybe around 20, and start vegging them out to do a couple scrogs at a time. A common complaint is that scrogs require that extra "wasted" veg time but if you build that into the flowering periods and keep cloning the vegged plants just before they go into scrog you could run a perpetual.
Maybe I've gotta get a good soil mix going...

Flowerin' girls are about 2 weeks from done, so I'm getting excited.. I'll throw up a pic or two when the time comes. Smellin sweet, hashy, even fruity when rubbed. Verrrry nice!
Also, time to grab some outdoor ones before weather gets too bad.
I'll keep ya updated

By the way that mom in the corner is awesome! I'd like to be able to have it out like a houseplant like that. I guess it'd be possible, but I'm always afraid of losing lumens into the open, too. It's crazy how dense it is inside that plant!

 

[Maculele]

Some more training and a good feeding today...

Some more training and a good feeding today...

Just did some more training.
I'm managing to keep these moms pretty short, which is good since they only have 13" of space minus pots so like 8" high to grow. I think the grow box might be getting a little small, so I've decided to keep training these, then when my organic hydro sog finishes in a couple weeks, I'll do an organic soil scrog with the 3 smaller ones, and keep the bigger one as a mother, rinse and repeat.
I've been thinking about doing it in my 6" deep 2'x2' hydro tray with hydroton at the bottom for drainage and set up a timed drip to waste (to feed my houseplants) system to make it relatively maintenance free
Anyone with experience doing multiple Scrog plants in a small space? Links? I'll be doing some searchin...

 

[Maculele]

Moms are blowing up, check out this early chopped POG cola

Moms are blowing up, check out this early chopped POG cola

Here are some pics of a POG bud that I chopped sort of early. It's day 62 of a strain that I've found takes about 70 give or take. The trichs were 25% clear, 50% cloudy about 25% amber, so if the rest are that way, I may be chopping the rest in the next cpl days. This one was the smallest of all the ones in sog, and I wanted to be able to shift em around a bit to get some more light in the lower portions of the remaining plants, so I have an early sample. Looks and smells pretty nice to me, now it's time for a solid dry/cure and I'm sure this stuff will be top notch.
I know that sort of isn't relevant to the topic, (not BONSAI or soil, for that matter) but everybody loves budshots.


Here's an overall shot of the veg area. I've got a large mother plant, and 3 other smaller ones, two of which are actually about to get flowered ScrOG style under a 600w HPS. After that, I might pass on the POG to some worthy folks and I should be getting a couple C99 clones soon enough. I'm excited for that


And one of the bigger mom:



Havin' a good ole time...