Or is that too ambitious? I have a 4 x 4 main tent. I am ordering a 50cm X50cm tent for the clones. Will they be too big to transplant by the time I am ready to harvest the plants I took the clones from? I am growing ebb & flow in 2 gallon with hydroton.
Would it be better to transplant the clones to rock wool before moving them to the 4 x 4? Too many questions and I know I have just scratched the surface. I won’t be starting my grow until I recover from an upcoming medical procedure. Maybe I’ll have learned enough by then not to kill everything.
I haven’t even thought of how to keep the clones after they come out of the clone machine.
I would look up monster cropped clones. They are clones taken in flower and that can help you keep the clones smaller in the veg tent until the mother plants are ready
Okay, so you want to grow perpetually with ebb and flow, six plants at a time, right?
Let’s just assume you’ll grow plants that flower in 10 weeks.
Step 1: Start the mom
Step 2: Veg the mom until it’s big enough to supply at least six clones (say one month)
Step 3: Take 6 clones (ideally you should take a few extra just in case - say 8-9 clones)
Step 4: Root out clones in cloner - assume two weeks
Step 5: Move clones from cloner into buckets with hydroton (continue top feeding if the roots are not making it to where the water will flood to until they are long enough to catch the water from your flood cycle)
Step 6: Veg the six plants in the flower tent until they are big enough to flip to 12/12 - for six plants, that’s maybe 3-4 weeks in veg tops. It would be a judgement call based on the size of the plants.
Step 7: Once you make the flip, you have, let’s say, 12 weeks (two weeks to transition and show pistils, ten weeks to flower).
Step 8: Count backwards from expected harvest time, subtracting the time it took you to root and veg the clones you already have going. Let’s assume it took 4 weeks to root them and veg them until they were big enough to flower. So let’s take a month off.
Step 9: 8 weeks into your 12/12 period, take new clones from the mom (which you will need to maintain in a vegetative space) and start the process again.
Notes on the mom: If you do the mom in hydro it will grow faster than you probably can take clones - this may happen with soil as well over the span of two months. I generally take a clone at the same time I take all the clones for flower, and use that to restart the mom. This helps me keep my moms at a reasonable size (reduces maintenance and nute usage).
For the “on deck” clones - you might need a transition space for them between the cloner and the ebb and flow buckets to allow them to veg big enough.
I am growing this way, but using a 3x3 tray instead. I have three spaces: a 2x2 enclosure made from a soft-sided dog crate for seedlings and clones (DWC bubble cloner used for this), a 4x4 “veg” tent where I house moms (for specific reasons I am keeping a lot of moms right now, but for all practical purposes I could keep a single mom in it’s own 2x2 tent if needed/desired), and a 4x4 “flower” tent (with the ebb and flow system in it).
In my case I am attempting SOG grows, so I am putting clones into flower as soon as they are rooted (my next grow, which I will start in a couple of weeks, will have 16 plants in the tray).
You could use the veg space for both the clones and the moms. You said you have a 4x4 and are ordering a 50cmx50cm tent, right? That’s like 20" x 20"?
In this case, you could veg the clones each time in the flower tent, but you still need a place to keep a mom - that 50cm x 50cm space won’t be big enough to house both the moms and the clones. If you have a big enough space, you could house the clones and mom together. Light management would be something to tackle but it shouldn’t be a big issue, since the mom’s only real purpose will be to provide clones (i.e. you don’t really need to train her except to fit her into whatever space you can provide her).
With the monster cropped clone idea you’d still end up having to veg the clones for up to 5 weeks, depending on the strain and flower time required.
I don’t see how it’s possible without adding more growing space, unfortunately.
When mother plant starts getting too big you can replace her with a cutting from her. You would need to make sure you do it timed well enough for that cutting to produce clones for your next run.
Maybe he could keep the mom in the 20"x20"… grow six plants from clones in the 4x4, take clones and root them in the 4x4, veg them out… and when he wants to replace a mom, he can take a clone while in veg, root it in the 4x4, then replace the mom and flower it out… I guess you could do it if you put the clones in the 4x4. Meaning you wouldn’t have a way to overlap the clones with the flowering plants without another space. Of course you could take a round of clones three or so weeks prior to harvest from the mom, dispose of the mom, and use one of the clones as your new mom if you are confident in your cloning.
Boglegdbrn32
I was thinking that I could take clones from whatever the current grow was once I was about to turn it to flower.
Can I keep the clones in the cloning machine through the flowering process or do I need to build a micro ebb and flow table to transplant the clones to until I’m ready to move them to the 4 X 4 set-up?
I haven’t even started a grow yet and I have a feeling that I’m making this more complicated than it has to be:grimacing:
If it were me, I’d probably try running ebb & flow in cloth pots with coco in them. You can pot them out of the cloning machine and hand water until you’re ready to put them into flower.
Then either root your clones outside of tent. Or get a tent tall enough to put a shelf inside. Run cloner on bottom and mom on top
