clone help please

[kat]

Hi guys, hows things?

I need a little help/advice on my clones. I've been using the same strains ( heavy duty fruity, columbian gold) for the last 4 years, with a 90-100 % success rate. However out of my last 2 batch of clones, 50 % died and the survivors are showing hardly any growth at all, theyre very stunted and sickly looking. I've explored the possibility of nute burn and took preventative measures (flushing, 1/4 strength feeds) with no improvement, and things are almost at a stand still.

also last crop I had half of my grow cupboard produce beautiful mature plants while the other half died, even though both tubs were subject to exactly the same conditions in the same space. I've replaced my bulbs, replaced perlite and tubs etc, and there was/is no signs of bugs, spider mite etc in any of the plants.

I have heard that strains can just peter out, is this a possibility? Any help would be appreciated.

[loylty gets u nothing]

gday

sorry i cant offer u any advice on the problem at hand

i was actually gunna ask u a ??

regarding the coulumbian gold?? do u do it indoors?

how does she fare and have u any pics?

take care

bil

[kat]

hi Bill, yep indoor grow, looks good and usually grows well, great taste and affect. I got the original clones from majoroz seedbank a few years back now. heres a couple of pics.

 

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff292/dcmags/100_0641.jpg

 

http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff292/dcmags/100_0643.jpg

[WantDaChronic]

cannabis can be kept alive for many years using mother plants and clones, but after a few generations all will start to lose some vigor and some will even start putting out male flowers so they can seed up and die off unfortunately cannabis was designed by nature to only last a year and then die so we should be happy that we can keep our favourite strains alive alot longer, but if you want to make the best of a strain you will need to make seeds and start over every few years...

 

there are a few things you can do to reduce the chances of a strain going bad like keeping mother plants alive for as long as possible. that might be really hard to do, but if you can keep a mother plant going for 6 months or longer before replacing it, it will last many years longer than a strain you replace every 2-3 months. you should also make sure the mother plant is well into vege before taking cuttings because the more mature the cutting is the higher the chances it will root and they will root faster as well.

 

btw making seeds is extremely easy to do and you can make them almost genetically identical to the plants you have kept as mothers with a few compact fluros you can create hundreds, if not thousands of seeds every few months and if you begin making seeds after you have chosen that special plant you decide to keep you can guide the genes of every generation of seed closer to it all that you need to do is get a male plant to seed up a cutting from your mother plant and then use a male from the newest generation of seeds to seed up another cutting from the original mother plant. at first it will be a 50/50 cross, the next generation will be 75/25 and the next 87.5/12.5 and so on. after 5or 6 generations all the seeds will sprout plants that are virtually identical to the original mother there will ofcourse be some viarience between individuals like potency, bud size, etc. but they will be so close to the original that it wont matter + since they will be sprouted from seeds they will have heaps more vigor than any cutting you take from the original mother

[kat]

thanks for that chronic, great info, i think i need to do some seeding.