The Mother Room

The mother room is where we all keep our healthiest and most prized mother plants. Without this room we would have to start from scratch (seeds) every time we wanted a new harvest of healthy fat buds. Having such a room is important as it allows us to keep a good plant or plants in the vegetative stage for as long as desired. With a bit of care, they can provide us with all the cuttings (clones) needed to keep us stocked up with bud for a long time to come.

The mother room is where we all keep our healthiest and most prized mother plants. Without this room we would have to start from scratch (seeds) every time we wanted a new harvest of healthy fat buds. Having such a room is important as it allows us to keep a good plant or plants in the vegetative stage for as long as desired. With a bit of care, they can provide us with all the cuttings (clones) needed to keep us stocked up with bud for a long time to come.

Below is an insight to how this type of room can be managed and what you could expect to find within the mother room. I hope you will be able to take something away that will be of use to you and your garden, and make the whole process of growing a little bit easier and trouble free...

I selected these strains as they are all either Indica or Indica-dominant, since I prefer the size of my plants to be a bit more predictable than I can be growing Sativas.

Right then, if you are growing your own crop of dank, potent ganja, you will be fully aware of how long the whole process can take. From seed to harvest you can wait anywhere between 3 and 8 months!

Now I don't know about you, but all that damn waiting for the plant to grow to maturity is a bit of a drag, ESPECIALLY if growing from seed! Having the option of another room to grow in opens up the possibility of more harvests in a year than we are used to. This extra room is going to be our mother/veg room, which will house between 5 and 10 mother plants, as well as up to 30 clones.

The lighting we are using, as you can see, is banks of 5ft fluorescent fittings plus 250w cool white AND red CFL's, as they all give off plenty of lumens for good, healthy veg growth.

The systems, as always, are my favored 10-pot Wilma system with drip irrigation. They are easy to use and user friendly, you can move the pots around with ease and all accessories to go with the system are reasonably priced in the event of malfunction or damage.

Each of the pots is lined at the bottom with felt to stop any residue from the expanded clay pellets I use from entering the nutrient tank and blocking up the drip emitters. When doing this you must remember that after each crop it is important to remove and replace the felt at the bottom otherwise it can lead to flooding of the pots!

Okay, now let's have a good look at what is needed for a good mother/veg room. Below is a small checklist of the essentials that you will need:

Plenty of FRESH air!
Adequate lighting (at least 150w)
Circulation fan(s)
Access to a water supply
Drainage!
Enough space for the strain(s) you intend to grow
Propagator for cuttings (clones)
Clonex (rooting hormones)
Sharp scalpel/scissors
Vegetation/growth nutrients
Spray bottle
Well-established mother plant(s)
Rooting medium e.g. rock wool cubes, Jiffie cubes...
Syringe/pipette
pH/EC Meters (if required)
And finally.... more FRESH AIR!

In the veg/mother room we have about five different strains that are being used as mother/donor plants. These have all been grown from seed for good healthy growth. The strains are Power Kush, Shark Attack and White Widow, all from Dinafem, as well as Super Skunk (Nirvana) and LSD (Barneys farm).

Each mother plant has been selected from a packet of 3 seeds and the healthiest plant has been held back for mothering while the other two are sent on their way to the flowering room for a little tester down the line.

When these were selected, we set up a new system to grow them in. Since they will not be moving for a long time, we have already filled our tank with EC neutral water from a dehumidifier with a Heppa filter a day or two previously, and have adjusted the pH to 5.9.

When looking after mother plants, I like to keep the feeding as simple as possible so as to reduce the risk of over-feeding them too young and stunting their growth. By this I mean that all they will get a specially designed 2-part growth formula from Advanced Nutrients which is pH and EC perfect.

The only addition is of a root enzyme, Multi-Zyme (from House & Garden). This helps the roots grow stronger and aids quicker break down of old/dead roots to keep the root system in as best health as possible.

I know that there are many different additives you can use that supposedly give you "bigger, greener, stronger plants „, but I read all the time of people getting tiny yields after using all these products that are supposed to be of benefit to your beloved ganja plants. Some people will be happy with what they get and I can't criticize them for that, if that's all they want from all the time and effort put into their plants.

I like to keep it simple and always get good results. If you take care of your plants from early on and don't overload them with this additive or that additive, you will be rewarded with good healthy plants that are viable to use however you want (flowering or mothering).

The one thing you can not, no MUST not forget is that you need a constant flow of FRESH AIR otherwise all your hard work ain't worth shit...

With the nutrient tank finally seen to, (4ml per liter of Advanced Nutrients' base nutrients and 40ml of Multi-zyme), all our levels are within the stated guidelines, we set the plants into their individual pots and place them onto the tray above the tank and insert a drip emitter from the pump in each pot for irrigation (watering).

The light is then moved down as low as possible to allow for maximum uptake of light. Please note that I am using Fluorescent lights and CFLs, which give off little heat compared to HPS or metal halides, therefore I can get my light source closer to the plants - which they immediately put to use and are flourishing within a week.

Now, all this sounds and seems pretty easy, and it is. But I repeat: the one thing you cannot forget is that you need a constant flow of FRESH AIR. Fresh air is what every plant and living being needs as a vital part of life. Give them stale or contaminated air and their health deteriorates, growth slows down and the plants are open to disease and infection. I have suffered as a result of these conditions and have had to rid my grow room of them wretched spider mites which spread like wildfire (more on these in a future issue).

CO2 is said to be a worthwhile investment but is really only advantageous if used throughout the entire life of your plants. I have not yet tried this out as I still feel as though it is still a bit heavy on the pocket, although there are some cheaper short-term use products on the market, which may be worth a try at a later point in time.

After all this is done and you are satisfied that everything is in its place, everything is on and working and your plants are looking good, you should be good to grow in harmony for the remainder of the time between the weekly feeds without having to do too much additional work. But it's always good to keep an eye on your ladies just in case!

The better the environment you give your plants, the better your plants are going to grow, and you must always remember that FRESH AIR is your friend! We all want a crop that is just a little more than we need and there is no reason why we shouldn't get a good harvest, but you have to make that difference from the start.

I hope that some of this information will be of some use to you in your own venture with hydroponic gardening. You can never have too much information about different methods, as sometimes they are easier and quicker than previous attempts and suit your/your plants needs a little better.

In the next issue I will be continuing a previous issue's article about a comparison test between a 300W LED EVADER BLOOM light and a 150W HPS with electronic ballast. This will be an interesting test as the LED is only 300W but is supposed to equal and even out perform a 600W HPS light! (There will be a test between these two as well a little later down the line).

Happy smoking, fellow stoners

Smokedout