Great thread! I have been reading a lot of your posts lately oldmac and I am impressed with your knowledge in several areas. I am looking forward to your process here, as it is much more intense than my garden.

I think that as a hobby/beginning grower, growing out a bunch of of plants, cloning them, growing those out, etc. can be a bit overwhelming, as the plant grows like a weed and 10 plants can get out of control fast. Perhaps its just my n00bness, but I had to cut down from trying to do 10 at a time to just doing one or two because it was too much to maintain and outgrew my 5x4 area very quickly.

The way I selected my first mother when I first started was to simply grow out 10 seeds and keep the one that performed the best. I based performance on tightness of the nodes, root size, and overall vigor. The plant I chose performed head and shoulders above the rest. I think if you are new to growing, this is probably the easiest way to begin dealing with a mother plant. Also keep in mind that I got my seeds (Master Kush) from Dutch Passion, so I was assuming the seeds were stable and relatively true breeding.

After getting a year of growing under my belt, I picked up some Purple Kush genes that were essentially bag seeds. I got them from a friend that got them directly from the grower in CA. He said the grower was trying to stabilize his own strain of Purple Kush, and suggested I grow out some seeds and see what I get. He let me sample the buds the seeds came from and I was very impressed with the taste and the heavy body stone. I started 8 seeds, and this time, I took a clone of all of them. In retrospect, I should have taken a few more because only 2 of the 8 survived in the long run (5 clones rooted but I killed 3 of them because of a bunk DWC system I had set up). Long story short, one was green and one was Purple, but they both had the same taste I remembered (or at least what I think I remembered :stoned from the bud the seeds came from. Obviously I got rid of the green one and kept the purple one. I am still growing that clone from the Purple plant today, and I can't wait to take some more clones and flower it in the fall.

I didn't go to the extent of actually harvesting and sampling several plants as a you are doing, so this is kind of a simpler and dumbed down version of your methods. Perhaps some n00bz like myself might be able to get their feet wet with this before jumping into your program, so I thought I would add to the thread! Can't wait to see what you find with your seedlot! :thumbsup::jointsmile:
dejayou30 Reviewed by dejayou30 on . Selecting a Mother Thought I'd share something here about the need to grow out a fair number of plants from seed, in order to select the best plant(s) for future use as a mother. I constantly see folks here with plant problems that are simply the result of growing one or two seeds, and getting what you got and then looking for help because; 1) too short, doesn't seem to grow "like my friends" plant or 2) my plant has lots of stretch and is lanky or 3) I grew this plant and it was nice and bushy but this strain is Rating: 5