ALL ABOUT BONSAI MOMS/MUMS

[cabanetforester]

Thx guerilla1018

Thx guerilla1018

For the kind words on me mums. Nice thread you have made here guerilla1018.

Hey folks, lots of good info and pics. You guys/gals are doing some trick gardening with those Bonsais. I think this thread or one very similar would make a good sticky.

I know very little about plant biology and the art of Bonsai. Like guerilla said I don't train my mums, just keep them rootbound in small pots of BGBM and trimmed/topped. I don't know if that makes them officially Bonsai since I don't train them?

I need to learn to train my mums so I can take full advantage of the 12"x12"x12" size allowed, but it seems that with such small rootmass the mums can only support so much vegetation before some leaves die off?

I will be adding a few more 'mini mums' soon and post up some more pics in this thread.

Next additions to the mumery are AK-47, SDIBL, SD (Strawberry Diesel) and... if it's a girl, NYCD.

NYCD were 2/10 germing and one is a male The little dude smells like a pineapple though , so a cutting went into the cloner and will become a 'bonsai' male?

I'm having some trouble with my "ez-clone" pump overheating my water so I bought a new pump yesterday. Hopefully I can get things back on track with the new additions in a week or two.


I am a first year personal med patient/grower and have to follow the legal restrictions for my state. It states I can have 24 plants total, 6 of them can be any size and/or in flower. The other 18 have to be in veg and can't be bigger than 12"x12"x12", so keeping the mums small keeps me legal and helps with limited space.

Since I only take a few cuttings at a time it works for my situation.

Does anyone flush their Bonsai mothers? I tried keeping them with straight PH'd tap water (about 130 PPM), but they seem much more happy with a little food mixed in with every watering. I'm using 400-500 PPM max and a couple ml/gal of silica blast every few waterings.

The oldest mother is 9 months with no repot yet so I'm probably past due. I am currently flowering 2 cuttings from her and they seem very normal and healthy in trems of vigor, resin production and smell .

I guess the smoke will be the true test..

I read that Indica dom mothers should not be kept more than 1-3 years or you risk degredation. I guess it probably depends on the strain?

I was worried about rooting the cuttings because while they remain small, the branches get kind of woody as even the 'newer' growth can be a few months old. So far I have taken 5 cuttings from 3 mums (lower branches) and they have rooted just fine, but I still worry.

I take my cuttings from the lower branches because I think I remember reading they will root better than the upper branches. Is this true? I might try some upper branches next time because they are less woody.

I will read this thread from start to finish again, but I'm curious to know some things about all these Bonsai mums..

What size pots are you using?

What is your feeding/watering schedule?

How long are you keeping a single mum before replacing her with a clone cutting?

Not trying to hijack or anything, but I was thinking it would be cool if people used some kind of simple format when posting pics of their Bonsais. Like they do in the "free your budshots" thread in the flower pics section or the POTM submission threads?

What do you guys/gals think? You know, maybe something like.. (strain)-(pot size)-(feeding/watering schedule)-(age)-(lighting type/power)-(light cycle)..etc..

Something like that would be nice for info at a glance.. Did I say simple? As I ramble on and on and on and on and on

Anyway thanks again for the compliment guerilla1018 and all you Bonsai masters for sharing your tips and tricks on keepin em small.

Seems to be a bit of intrest in these small mother plants. Maybe if peeps help keep the thread alive it can get a sticky?

Peace. CF

PS. I lost the email account password I used to register the name "cabinetforester",so I had to re-register as "cabanetforester" or cab-a-net forester I guess you could say . I was medicated at the time, this attempt at a SCROG probably had something to do with the silly nick..

 

[cabanetforester]

Holy crap. What an eyesore of a post. I promise not to do that again. CF

 

[Guest]

No worries cab, lots of good info in that post, not an eyesore at all. All of the information you are asking about is found in my two original posts, part 1 and 2. Feeding, lighting, Pot size, light cycle and the age that moms should be replaced is all in those two posts. Im really glad that you stopped in too, to show others what can be done with other methods of keeping small mother plants. As you said you do not top or train, but still manage to keep them bonsai size. Great job, feel free to post away any pics, suggestions etc. Take care

guerilla

 

[Treetops]

Excellent posts and info....Thanks

 

[Guest]

Glad you enjoyed it tree, OT1 was a great writer of these kind of how-to's.
Welcome to ICMAG Take care

guerilla

 

[Maj.PotHead]

i feel the need the need to bump this fine thread he he

 

[danturion]

Wonder when you cut

Wonder when you cut

Hallo. I am a rookie in this and I just wonder when you have a plant let us say for about 3 weeks old when do you take the first cutting?? My plant have 3 pair of leaf now. Will I wait or can I take away the top now. I hope you understand what i mean.

 

[Guest]

well this is my first attempt at growing and i spent months reading here before starting just wished i had paid attention to this thread before . here is my situation i was gifted some clones i have been vegging them out for several months taking cuttings along the way i have 2 mothers (just in case) of this strain well i have had my first harvest and glad i was gifted this strain great smoke quick flower times(56 days). well im one of those implusive persons lol so when i jump in i jump in full bore i order and received some beans i also grow out some bagseeds of some very good smoke well i have a 4'D x5'W x6'T veg area well i think i might have had bigger ideas then space the mothers i have been growing out are now almost 3' tall and are bigger around then a 5 gal bucket
i have been trimming almost every other week now and think i should do it more often i cant keep this thing from growing fast let it rootbound but got scared after a week and its in a 5 gal bucket now well i planted 5 each of the new strains i got and am running out of room would like to keep a very wide variety of moms
i guess my first question is is it to late to try to bonsai a plant will i do to much damage chopping to much at once? or should i just start a new mom from a clone and start earlier keeping it short?
i let her get this big or started to let her get this big as i wanted to keep myself in plenty of clones well we are cutting 40-50 cuts from each plant now and she isnt slowing down i have just recently started to back of on the ferts but she just love them so much not sure just what to do here ( idealy i would like to devote a full room to a veg area but teenagers in the house isnt the best idea)
any comment would be much app.

 

[franco.gh]

Hallo. I am a rookie in this and I just wonder when you have a plant let us say for about 3 weeks old when do you take the first cutting?? My plant have 3 pair of leaf now. Will I wait or can I take away the top now. I hope you understand what i mean.

you can already cut. The ideal period to make cuttings is between 3 weeks and 6 months. Mother plants can be kept for a long time (years) but after 6 months the plant tissue becomes woodier, harder, and it looses some vigor.
Ideally, replace your mothers every 6-9 months.

 

[Frogger]

cool info BONSAI MOMS love'm

 

[Guest]

Good point franco they can also get preflowers which are anathema to cloning,if this happens go towards the bottom of the plant and pull a new mom with zero pistils.

 

[Guest]

here is my bonsi moms they are ready and waiting to be cut back so they look a bit tall all are in three gallon bags i can get about 5-9 cutting per plant abaout every three weeks..they are about 9- 11 inches tall ....awsome info about cutting the roots cant wait to try next time i re-pot

 

[Guest]

have some questions

have some questions

ok i have been a bad gardener i allowed our mother plant to become way to over grown here is some before and after pic she was 34" from top of soil

thats a five gallon pot she is in well we are keeping 2 of each strain but these 2 girls have just grown way to big taking up way to much space so we decided to test it on one first and just keep trimming the second one for now well we took 20 of the best of these trimming and put into jiffy-7 and throw out probably 40 more here is what she looks like now




now next question is when ( or should i have done it the same time) i trimm the roots ? was wanting to put her in maybe a 2 gal container if possible
i also left 2 more branches then i thought i should on it as this was my first attempt at this figure when she gets over the shock of this i will cut the other 2 branches
any and all advice is much appreciated

 

[Guest]

Keeping moms are a pain in the tucas.

 

[Guest]

walkabout - If you are looking to reduce the size of your mother plants I would suggest taking a clone of your current mum and then following OT1's tutorial on the first page of this thread. Since they are already contained in 5 gallon pots, it would be very hard to keep them small because they have so much root room in such large pots. If you take a clone and begin making a bonsai mom from that she will stay small with little more than regular mantenece.

Best of luck

guerilla

 

[Guest]

would it be possible to just slowly reduce the pot size? if i keep the top trimmed up?

 

[jojajico]

has anyone used copper hydroxide to limit plant size? jorge cervantes says in his book that it causes the roots to once they reach the edge of the container (lined with copper hydroxide) that the roots turn around back into the container. this produces a very dense root strucutre and the plants foliage grows quickly because of it.... or something like that. i was wondering if this would be a good way to keep mums as the container can be small but it would produce alot of clones.

 

[Guest]

would it be possible to just slowly reduce the pot size? if i keep the top trimmed up?

I can only give my opinion as I have no experience doing this.

It does seem feasible to use root trimming to decrese pot size in order to create a bonsai effect, however I would be worried about the plants health suffering as a result. The roots on a plant that large in a 5 gallon pot are very large and more than likely encompass the whole pot. It seems like ti would be difficult to trim enough of the roots to make it fit into a small 1 liter pot while still maintaining the roots that the plant need to live and thrive.

On the other hand, as long as you first trimm most of the top growth leaving only a few shoots and leaves, then trim the roots, its seems possible that the plant would respond as if it had been that size all of its life and grow back as such.

As I said I have no experience with this so please do not take my opinion as fact. Im sure there are many other growers here that could give you a better awnser. Maybe franco from greenhouse will chime in as he has helped many growers since he got here with hard to solve probalems. I will send him a pm and see what he says.

Sorry I couldnt be of more help, but either way, you will always have the option of starting a new clone and using that as a bonsai mom.

guerilla

 

[Guest]

has anyone used copper hydroxide to limit plant size? jorge cervantes says in his book that it causes the roots to once they reach the edge of the container (lined with copper hydroxide) that the roots turn around back into the container. this produces a very dense root strucutre and the plants foliage grows quickly because of it.... or something like that. i was wondering if this would be a good way to keep mums as the container can be small but it would produce alot of clones.

Thanks for the post jojo. I have not heard of this method myself but it seems like a great tool that bonsai growers could use if it is true. Most of the techniques that I have tried from jorge have been great so I have no reason to think that this wouldnt work. I'll have to do some research on it and maybe even give it a try out in my OP.

guerilla

 

[Guest]

hey bro this is all a learning experience for me i figure there is no failures just lessons of what to do or not to do the next time
and ty very much for helping answer these question