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ALL ABOUT BONSAI MOMS/MUMS

G

Guest

This article was originally written by OG member Oldtimer1, and it has already been partially posted in the grow faq submissions thread but I feel it would be helpful to post the entire article with the pictures included. Hope somebody finds this and it helps :joint:

Part 1
MAKING, MAINTAINING, AND RENOVATING BONSAI MOMS


This Article was originally published at overgrow.com 27/6/2000. Revised and archived 20/10/03 by Oldtimer1.
Now we will deal with every aspect of the care and maintenance of Mums including root and branch pruning as well as the renovation on an old mother well past her sell by date.

"Tired of huge unwieldy mothers that take up too much space? As I've shown before, a fully established bonsai mum only takes 8 inches x 8 inches."

This bonsai mother, if well fed, produce 10 to 30 good cuttings every 14 days under an HID or every 20 days under fluorescent shop light. This means a 4 ft x 2 ft shoplight with 18 Mums, could produce an output of over 9500 cuttings a year.


Typical Bonsai Mum
8887BONSAI1-med.jpg


We are not talking about intensive production here but it shows just how flexible and efficient the system can be. What it does for the connoisseur is allow them to keep a good selection of varieties in a relatively small space. If you don't fancy growing one for 6 months or a year it doesn't matter. All she will need is regular maintenance.

Lets start with Mumming up a plant from a rooted cutting, once again this is simple. You will find that with every batch of cuttings a few will stand out, being sturdier and generally looking better all round, pick one or two of these to make your Mums, not some wimpy left over reject. Remember this mum will provide you with cuttings 4 to 18 times a year for the next 3 to 15 years, so only the best will do. Pick a fully rooted through cutting from the plug tray and pot on into a 2.5 inch square pot. I find square pots much easier to deal with when it comes to root pruning, as you will see later.

Grow it on for a few days so it can start rooting through then trim its top back to leave 3 or 4 side shoots.
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These little branches to be will make the main framework of your Mum. Ideally as they grow they should form an open cup shape. The top 2 will grow the fastest and when they get to about 5 inches pinch or snip out their growing tips to just above a leaf node. This will allow the second pair to catch up in a day or so, then pinch them out as well. This will encourage side shoots to form, any that grow into the central cup shaped space pinch out.

You will now have 6 to 8 leading shoots coming up. When they reach 4 to 6 inches they can be taken as your first set of cuttings. You cut them back to just above the first leaf node of the new growth. So after the cuttings have been taken the mum is only a tiny bit larger than the last time she was cut back but the main branches will be starting to get thicker.

Now is the time to move up to the next pot size and a 3 inch sq is ideal. The next set of leading shoots will tend to be 12 to 16, plus there will be others coming up from lower nodes so in total there may be 30 or more. Any really thin ones or any growing into the centre either cut back to one node or remove altogether.
8887bonsai5.jpg


In the picture above from the left:- [one], is the trimmed cutting from above. [two], Has had 2 sets of cuttings taken off and is more than ready to move to a 3 inch pot. As you can see it is a little short of N showing its better to move after only taking one set of cuttings. [three] in a 3 inch pot 12 cuttings have been taken with 2 left on to show where to cut back to. [four] is a five year old Mum that has just had 32 cuttings taken off and could do with some more small twiggy bits removed. She is in a 1 litre pot and has been since she was 3 months old.


Note how all have an open centre, this allows light to both the centre and the outside. It will fill in between taking cuttings but if pruned back to this form, makes better and more even growth giving more good cuttings each time. Water only is used while forming the Mums and no fertiliser. It is not until they are in their final 1 litre pots and a set or two of cuttings have been taken that feeding starts.


The general care and maintenance for fully formed mother plants.

The Mums need just enough fertiliser to keep them healthy. Feed of half strength fertiliser twice a month, using say a 6-2-4 fish mix as about right [its not critical]! This keeps them in good general health but doesn't over feed them. If you want faster production at any point change to a full strength feed once or twice. Every 2 to 4 weeks a new batch of cuttings are taken even if they are not needed and just put in the worm bin. You can think of it as being like having to mow the lawn and keeps the mum the same size and form for years. Because so much is taken away they can get short of macro nutrients so every month or so give them a foliar spray using maxicrop. Judge this by how the plants are looking not by a time table.

One of the main things that all growers need to learn is regular close observation. To know when they are healthy and need nothing to the first signs of deficiencies appearing. The one thing they may run short of is magnesium even if dolomite lime is used in the compost, this is easily dealt with by one watering plus a foliar spray, using 1 ounce of Epsom salts dissolved in a gallon of water.

They will need root pruning once or twice a year. This depends on how intensively they are fed and how good your water quality is. Despite what is normally quoted it is virtually impossible to flush out salt build up from a root ball. A temporary over fertilisation yes but the gradual crystallisation of salts and carbonate deposits no! If your water supply is heavily contaminated with minerals I recommend a small Reverse-Osmosis filter to clean your water for both your Mums and your production plants.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Now root pruning and Mum renovation. "

The method of root pruning is the same for routine maintenance or renovation.

Here we are dealing with a 7 year-old mum that hasn't been root trimmed for nearly a year. I have deliberately neglected her for the last 10 weeks for purposes of showing you the recovery. She has been on a diet of R/O water only, no other feed of any sort. This is to show you how tough Cannabis is and how far you can let things slide and still get a mum back into productivity. Its not a recommended practice and continual abuse like this will eventually kill a mum.
8887bonsai6.jpg

8887bonsai7.jpg


As you can see there is little residual fertiliser left in the compost. It is what we call spent (worn out). The first thing we do is trim back nearly all the top growth back to the main framework branches. Leaving one or two tiny shoots at the tip of each branch to draw sap and keep the branch alive. If all the shoots and buds are removed, 99 times out of a 100 die back sets in-- and once that starts the whole plant usually dies within a month or two. It doesn't matter if the small shoots are yellow from lacking N, they will soon start to grow and green up as the new roots start forming!

Next the rootball should have 3/4 of an inch cut off each side and an inch off the bottom. This reduces the 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.5 inch rootball to 3 x 3 x 3.5 inches high after the loose compost is scraped from the top. This means that two-thirds of the soil is being replaced. A good full strength organic compost is used when repotting and it only takes a day or two for the roots to really start growing into the new compost.
8887bonsai8.jpg

8887bonsai9.jpg

8887bonsai10.jpg

8887bonsai11.jpg


Set the bottom of the rootball on about 3/4 of an inch of compost then pack out the sides and finally cover the top with a 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch. This means the mum is planted round a 1/4 inch deeper every time root pruning is done about 1/2 an inch a year. In a couple of years from now I will cut down vertically and split the plant in two as the side branch will have a root system of its own. Using this method the roots are constantly being replaced and as well the main trunk replaced slowly. This seems to keep the Mums healthy for many years.


The second mother of our selected "ES" line lasted for just over 15 years using this method. Interestingly if you want to hold a plant long term in a small pot say a 2.5 inch sq this can be root pruned the same as the 1 litre plant but only taking off about 1/4 of an inch all round. I keep Dads in this pot size and some are over 5 years old.


NOTE: it is very important to make sure there are no voids or air gaps left when packing the sides, use a pencil or small dibber, fill slowly and firm lightly.

The last picture is 12 days after the root and top pruning- It tells it's own story! Already there are enough nice leaders to make 10 good cuttings. I have to admit to putting her under an sodium light to speed up her development and make this Issues deadline. Even so, the recovery wouldn't have taken much longer in the mum box.

Thats it you should have all the info you need to make and root cuttings in compost the make and maintain bonsai mother plants, its easy, give it a go! .
 
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G

Guest

ALL ABOUT BONSAI MOMS/MUMS PART 2

ALL ABOUT BONSAI MOMS/MUMS PART 2

TAKING CLONES FROM BONSAI MOMS

"A lot of interest has been shown in the methods we use to keep mother plants, how we make them, manage them and how we do our cuttings production." - Oldtimer1 1999.
Article originally published at overgrow.com April 30 2000 this article is revised and archived 5/8/03


This issue we will we will cover our soft tip cuttings system in detail and a brief outline about our mother plants! Every grower can get the same results by imitating our easy organic system.

8887BONSAI1-med.jpg


As an outline our mother plants are kept root restricted, i.e. using some standard bonsai methodology and techniques. It is an excellent method for keeping mother plants long term and has proved a very reliable system since we developed this method some 24 years ago. The longest a mother has lived like this without having to be replaced is just over 15 years. On average pure indicas need replacing every 3 years, hybrids every 4 to 5 years and pure sativas every 6 to 7 years! Of course it depends on the care they are given! Male plants can be kept in the same way and in fact will stand more abuse than mother plants.


Clone, Mum and Dad box.
Its a double deck with 2 times 4ft x 2 ft lights each with 4 x 40w coolwhite fl lights Close up of tray top left
270 rooted cuttings, in plugs ready to go into pots. Close up of top tray right
100 cuttings at the start of rooting.
8887bONSAI12-med.jpg

8887bonsai13-med.jpg

8887bonsai14-med.jpg


One of the big advantages using bonsai mother plants, is that each only needs a maximum of 8 x 8 inches. So a 2 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft high box with a 4 tube fluorescent shoplight can hold 9 mothers. We call the plants we keep Mums and Dads! Not to be confused with chrysanthemums (that bit is for you Cha Cal).


Some of the quotes I have read in High Times saying that you get genetic degeneration by keeping mother plants long term, this is total rubbish!


Degeneration can certainly occur if a mother plant gets infected with a reversion virus. I will cover this later! The grass produced today from our mother plants is just as potent and smells just as good as when it was first grown out from seed many years ago. In fact it is better now, we have better lighting and superior growing techniques, allowing the clones to express their potential more fully.


I am going to start by showing you our largest mum, this time from above. She is in a 1-litre pot (the largest size used). With all the top growth pictured she is about 13 inches tall and ready to take cuttings. Inset is a cutting being clipped out see below.

8887bonsai15-med.jpg


The type we take are small soft tip cuttings, 2.5 to 3.5 inches long. It is important that there is no lignification at all. When I first discussed this with friends on the net some 3 years ago was with some disbelief, and a lot of amusement at the idea of toothpick sized cuttings. How on earth was I going to get a decent crop of buds? Well, soft tip cuttings have an unrestricted growth potential and grow much faster than semi hard or fully lignified hard wood cuttings. At the end of the day we get a much higher crop weight using the soft tip cuttings.

I use fine point scissors for trimming the plants, they are fast and easy to use. Quick enough to do 2 to 3 cuttings a minute. Forget the stories that they bruise the stem and cause rot, it's rubbish! They do need to be sharp, so buy a new pair and keep them just for this task. As far as hygiene is concerned, providing all you Mums are free of virus, simply put them through the dishwasher after every session to get rid of the sap build up. This keeps them free and easy to use.


How to prepare the cuttings
8887bonsai16-med.jpg

Inserting cuttings and covering with bag
8887bonsai17-med.jpg


To Summarize

Preparing the cutting:-


[one] - typical tip cutting ready to prepare.


[two] - snip off the side shoot and leaf the node you want to root.


[three] - cut just below the node you want to root.


[four] - dip the trimmed node in rooting hormone.

Inserting the cuttings:-

-3.5 inch square pots are used to root in


-Filled with half perlite and half universal compost or allmix


-The mix is pre-soaked with water dosed with 1 ml of 35% or 2ml per litre of 17.5% H2O2 and 5 ml of maxicrop


-Then the cuttings are dibbed in to the compost, 9 to 12 per pot


-The dibbed cuttings are then watered in using a fine rose same mix as above to settle them in.

-Cover with a plastic bag and put under constant 24-hour lighting


-Preferably cool-white fluorescent lighting at 20 w per sq foot and a temperature of 75 degrees fahrenheit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"There are a number of reasons for not rooting directly into plug trays."
Lets look at what we need from a rooted cutting... We want one that is suited to growing in a confined space i.e. a pot. They are as closely matched as possible. To get good yields from a grow, uniformity is the rule. It is no good having one plant that produces 50 grams when its 2 neighbours only produce 15 grams each. They are identical stock but this is what is often seen in grow after grow. It is much better to try and get all the plants averaging 35 grams well within the capacity of the stock line of a plant that can make 50 grams.

Remember we are talking about growing in soil based or soilless compost mixes. The root type that the cutting produces is very important, lots of fine feeder roots are the ideal, anchor and tap roots are totally unwanted when growing in a pot. Remember the amount feeder root mass directly effects the potential crop weight

The 3.5-inch pots are 4 inches high; the rooting mix is very open with low nutrient content. This encourages early taproot development. Not all the cuttings will have rooted at the same time, so when they are transferred to the plug trays the root balls are trimmed to the same size and the tap root is removed, this goes a long way towards equalising the clones. Once they are transferred as below they tend to stay pretty even and grow on rapidly. To show what we are looking for some equalised clones grown on and just put into flower. There are several varieties in this grow and there is not more than an inch or so between plants in each variety. They are placed by variety to make a stadium effect and make maximum use of light.


Around ten days later the cuttings will have rooted through. The rootball is gently broken up, each cutting has its roots trimmed back to equalise the cuttings and make them fit the plug tray! Full strength peat or coir compost using organic base fertilisers, are used for this.

Then they are put back in the Clone/Mother box for about 5/6 more days until thoroughly rooted through, this is very important at all stages of repotting! Fully rooted plants just jump ahead when moved on-- we have found that plants moved into bigger pots too early typically produce 25% to 30% less final crop weight!



Moving the rooted cuttings to plug trays.
8887bonsai18-med.jpg
Cuttings in plug trays a few days later ready to move on to their first pots.
8887bonsai13-med.jpg
Showing a cutting out of the plug tray, fully rooted out and ready to go.
8887bonsai19.jpg


Cutting like this can be taken from any plants in veg. That's it you are ready to grow!
 
G

Guest

Your very welcome vh Ghost. I wish we could both thank oldtimer himself for this well written article. I hope that this helps you in your ventures.

If anyone has any suggestions or anything to add about bonsai moms or bonsai period, please feel free to post it. Also I need some feedback on my posts, I was thinking of using the thumbnail pics but I usually like the full size so as not to keep clicking then closing etc. But if most people like the thumbs I would be happy to change it.

:canabis:keep it green
guerilla:joint:
 

mmartine

Member
Damn mon i think you just made my life easier.............thanx for this great info.....my i also add very god thread very well documented........
 

Closet Funk

CeRtIfIeD OrGaNiC!
Veteran
Good thread. Bonsai mums rock. I made a few mums from seed. I grew out some seeds and selected my best two plants. Luckily they turned out female. I had them in 1 gallon pots. I topped at about the 4th node and let some side branches form. Once side branches formed I choose two main branches and chopped the rest. I then cut the top stem off where the two branches grew from. This way two side branches are my main frame. I then transplanted them into 1/2 gallon square pots. I trimmed the roots. I put them in regular potting soil with a pinch of Plant-Tone, Lime, and Gypsum. I just water them when needed and take cuts every month. One of them died from unknown reasons. Possibly from the one watering with tap water or root rot. My other mum is healthy. I gave her some Maxi Crop today because she looked like she needed some. I'm going to take more cuts in about a week. I plan on having a few bonsai mums. She will be a good starting point when I start in the fall. Take some clones, root them, and flower them out.
 
G

Guest

Thanks for the kind words. As I already said all praise is due to oldtimer1 for this great article. Im glad you found it helpful. I love how to threads with big pics myself, much easier to go through IMO.
 

Maj.PotHead

End Cannibis Prohibition Now Realize Legalize !!
Mentor
Veteran
thankyou for reposting this and for saving it in the 1st place :) guess i have another project turn 1 or 2 of my purple shaq clones into a bonsai right on duder
 
G

Guest

well smack my ass, thanks oldtimer1, this has been in my, ahem, "filing cabinet" for years now & have been using bonsi cuttings rather successfully for years now, cheers oldtimer1

:woohoo:


its the original publication of this info, with added coffee & paint for, em,er,em,er preserving it i guess.....
 
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jaykush

dirty black hands
ICMag Donor
Veteran
very informative thread. bonzai mums are great you can have a ton is sucha small space.
 

Closet Funk

CeRtIfIeD OrGaNiC!
Veteran
It's amazing that alot of growers don't use the bonsai technique. When I first found out about it I had to try it. It's perfect for small space growers like me. My plan is to have at least 2-4 mums under a shoplight at a time. When I grow out some strains this fall I'm going to select my favorite ones and keep bonsai mums from them. Then when fall comes rolling around again I can take some clones from some choosen mums and begin my cycle again. This is always going to be my method of keeping mums for sure. Later on when I start experimenting with some breeding I'll make sure to use the bonsai technique to preserve genetics for crosses. Here are some possible bonsai mums I'll have in the next year or so if I get some nice keepers.

Somango x Lavender
Cali-O
Sweet Tooth #3 x Lightstorm
TFB
Trainwreck x Purple Kush

I'll probally keep the best 4 out of those.
 
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I wish I would find that old thread on OG about making bonsai mums that were super micro-mini that actually LOOKED like the bonsai plant. Of course not the leaves but the true growth style. He did something to put the plant into a stasis under really low lighting and make it grow extremely slow. I just remember the thread being difficult to read as english wasn't this guy's first language and he had a hard time explaining how to do it but essentially you had a plant that really looked like the bonsai style plant and it was extremely small but produced something like 7-10 cuttings per week.
 
exactly man .. i miss it lol.. tried to find it on google archives but had no success. I am going to try and use this idea and just reduce things to make a really small mother because i'm not going to need hardly any cuttings at all since I will only be growing out 2 cuttings in flower using scrog with my NGB style cab. Preferrably, I would like to have 4 different strain of mothers so I can switch off every other harvest.
 
G

Guest

I find it so much easier not to keep a mother around at all,I used to take a coup[le of cuttings from each clone from near the bottom the day I went 12/12 with them,but lately I've just kept a couple whole plants back to cannibalize for my next generation of cuttings.The multiple tip cuttings I get using the whole plant like that makes for some healthy clones
 
G

Guest

SKELETOR said:
I find it so much easier not to keep a mother around at all,I used to take a coup[le of cuttings from each clone from near the bottom the day I went 12/12 with them,but lately I've just kept a couple whole plants back to cannibalize for my next generation of cuttings.The multiple tip cuttings I get using the whole plant like that makes for some healthy clones


only problem with tha,t that i see is your going to be diluting the strain after awhile....its best to keep as close to the original generation as possible..and if your just cloning a clone off a clone.....and do it again..and again..and again...your 10 generations away from the original...it wont really be as strong and have the exact same strong genetics...potency...yield..ect..its been diluted.....BUT...its way more convienant to do what your saying....just clone the plants to restock yourself

this is one reason i do not buy clones from Clubs usually...only a particular few...but most clubs buy clones from vendors...and know nothing about their history...they could be 100th generation for all you know when you get them =c(
 
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E

ebbnflow

all my mons are bonsai style. bonsai moms rule. i keep them in 5.5 inch square container. I ffedthem only organic nutes so bulid up whont happen as much. I flush once a week. There kept in rockwool mini cubes instead of soil.dont forget bonsai dad's!!
 
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