Bonsi Mums2

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Learn how to create and care for a

Bonsai Mum

With Pictures and instructions by;

OT1

Compiled by

Myeika Faith


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All about bonsai Mums!

This Article originally published at overgrow.com 27/6/2000. Revised and archived 20/10/03by Oldtimer1.

Here we will deal with every aspect of the care and maintenance of Mumsincluding root and branch pruning as well as the renovation on an old motherwell past her sell by date.

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

This bonsai mother, if well fed, will produce 10 to 30 good cuttings every 14days 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 9500cuttings a year.

Typical Bonsai Mum

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


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To Make a Mum

Lets start with Mumming up a plant from a rooted cutting, once again this issimple. 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 theseto make your Mums, not some wimpy left over reject. Remember this mumwill 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 trayand pot on into a 2.5 inch square pot. I find square pots much easier to dealwith 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.

An ideal rooted cuttingfor making a mum.

Trim the top.A look from the top, the

side shoots have beennipped back as well.

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 growthe fastest and when they get to about 5 inches pinch or snip out theirgrowing tips to just above a leaf node. This will allow the second pair to catchup in a day or so, then pinch them out as well. This will encourage sideshoots to form, any which grow into the central cup shaped space should bepinched out.

You will now have 6 to 8 leading shoots coming up. When they reach 4 to 6inches 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 havebeen taken the mum is only a tiny bit larger than the last time she was cutback 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. Thenext set of leading shoots will tend to be 12 to 16, plus there will be otherscoming up from lower nodes so in total there may be 30 or more. Any reallythin ones or any growing into the centre either cut back to one node orremove altogether.


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All The Stages To Making A Mum

In the picture above from the left:-1) Is the trimmed cutting from above.2) 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 moveafter only taking one set of cuttings.3) In a 3 inch pot 12 cuttings have been taken with 2 left on to show whereto cut back to.4) Is a five year old Mum that has just had 32 cuttings taken off and could dowith some more small twiggy bits removed. She is in a 1 litre pot and hasbeen 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 untilthey are in their final 1 litre pots and a set or two of cuttings have been takenthat feeding starts.


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The general care and maintenance forfully formed mother plants.

The Mums need just enough fertiliser to keep them healthy. Feed of halfstrength fertiliser twice a month, using say a 6-2-4 fish mix as about right [itsnot critical]! This keeps them in good general health but doesn't over feedthem. If you want faster production at any point change to a full strengthfeed once or twice.Every 2 to 4 weeks a new batch of cuttings are taken even if they are notneeded and just put in the worm bin. You can think of it as being like havingto 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 soevery month or so give them a foliar spray using maxicrop. Judge this by howthe plants are looking not by a time table.

One of the main things that all growers need to learn is regular closeobservation. To know when they are healthy and need nothing to the firstsigns of deficiencies appearing. The one thing they may run short of ismagnesium even if dolomite lime is used in the compost, this is easily dealtwith by one watering plus a foliar spray, using 1 ounce of Epsom saltsdissolved in a gallon of water.

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


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Root pruning and Mum renovation

This method of root pruning is the same for routine maintenance orrenovation.

Here we are dealing with a 7 year-old mum that hasn't been root trimmed fornearly a year. I have deliberately neglected her for the last 10 weeks forpurposes of showing you the recovery. She has been on a diet of R/O wateronly, 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 intoproductivity. Its not a recommended practice and continual abuse like this willeventually kill a mum.

Boy this lass is sickA hard prune back leaves her looking

bare

As you can see there is little residual fertiliser left in the compost. It is whatwe call spent (worn out). The first thing we do is trim back nearly all the topgrowth back to the main framework branches. Leaving one or two tiny shootsat 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-- andonce that starts the whole plant usually dies within a month or two. It doesn'tmatter if the small shoots are yellow from lacking N, they will soon start togrow 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 offthe bottom. This reduces the 4.5 x 4.5 x 4.5 inch rootball to 3 x 3 x 3.5 incheshigh after the loose compost is scraped from the top. This means that two-thirds of the soil is being replaced.


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Taking Clones from bonsai Mums

"A lot of interest has been shown in the methods we use to keep mother plants, howwe make them, manage them and how we do our cuttings production." - Oldtimer11999.

Article originally published at overgrow.com April 30 2000 this article is revised and archived5/8/03

Here we will we will cover our soft tip cuttings system in detail and a briefoutline about our mother plants! Every grower can get the same results byimitating our easy organic system.

As an outline our mother plants are kept root restricted, i.e. using some

standard bonsai methodology and techniques. It is an excellent method forkeeping mother plants long term and has proved a very reliable system sincewe developed this method some 24 years ago. The longest a mother has livedlike this without having to be replaced is just over 15 years.On average pure indicas need replacing every 3 years, hybrids every 4 to 5years and pure sativas every 6 to 7 years! Of course it depends on the carethey are given! Male plants can be kept in the same way and in fact will standmore abuse than mother plants.

Clone, Mum and Dadbox.

Its a double deck with 2times 4ft x 2 ft lightseach with 4 x 40wcoolwhite fl lights

Close up of tray top left270 rooted cuttings, inplugs ready to go into

pots

Close up of top trayright

100 cuttings at the startof rooting.

One of the big advantages using bonsai mother plants, is that each onlyneeds a maximum of 8 x 8 inches. So a 2 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft high box with a 4tube fluorescent shoplight can hold 9 mothers. We call the plants we keepMums and Dads!Some of the quotes I have read in High Times saying that you get geneticdegeneration by keeping mother plants long term, this is total rubbish!Degeneration can certainly occur if a mother plant gets infected with areversion virus. I will cover this later! The grass produced today from ourmother plants is just as potent and smells just as good as when it was firstgrown out from seed many years ago. In fact it is better now, we have betterlighting and superior growing techniques, allowing the clones to express theirpotential more fully.


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How to prepare thecuttings Inserting cuttings andcovering with bag Put cuttings into mumbox to root


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There are a number of reasons for notrooting directly into plug trays

Lets look at what we need from a rooted cutting... We want one that is suitedto growing in a confined space i.e. a pot. They are as closely matched aspossible. To get good yields from a grow, uniformity is the rule. It is no goodhaving one plant that produces 50 grams when its 2 neighbours only produce15 grams each. They are identical stock but this is what is often seen in growafter grow. It is much better to try and get all the plants averaging 35 gramswell 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 compostmixes. The root type that the cutting produces is very important, lots of finefeeder roots are the ideal, anchor and tap roots are totally unwanted whengrowing in a pot. Remember the amount feeder root mass directly effects thepotential crop weight

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

Around ten days later the cuttings will have rooted through. The rootball isgently 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 compostusing organic base fertilisers, are used for this.

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

See Pictures below.


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Moving the rootedcuttings to plug trays.

Cuttings in plug trays afew days later ready tomove on to their first

pots.

Showing a cutting out ofthe plug tray, fully

rooted out and ready togo.

Cutting like this can be taken from any plants in veg.

That's it you are ready to grow!


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Links

UK420

http://www.uk420.com/

Cannabase

http://www.cannabase.com/cl
http://www.uk420.com/http://www.cannabase.com/clhttp://www.cannabase.com/clhttp://www.uk420.com/


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Bonsi Mums2

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