No smell, no taste

[earthmother]

I had this beautiful juicy female. Smelled like old fashioned roses, tasted exotic. I cloned it and the clones are being harvested now. They have no smell at all, taste like ?. Smaller buds, less glitter. What'd I do wrong?

[tiedye0420]

Did you let your mom bud to full maturity before reverting her to veg.? I hear that can take away from the virility and other things.

OOr you did not let the clones bud long enough and the end result is lack of smell.
But, Your really not giving us a lot of info to go by out here.

[earthmother]

Yup, it budded to full maturity first... Yup, the clones were allowed to fully mature. The only thing I can see that was different is I used different potting soil. Could it have something to do with different nutrients? The mother was grown in organic compost. The children were grown in store bought self feeding potting soil. Been doing this for years but just recently learned how to clone...

[tiedye0420]

Im thinking that fully budding the plant out, before reverting them to veg is your main cause. Im just beginning with cloning this year myself as well, but been growing hobby style 30 years or so.


But i have heard that once the plant buds fully- it changes the chemistry a bit. The clones are weaker, and do not grow as fast. Im sure the problems cascade from there.

A lot of growers will take cuttings from all their plants, root the cuttings and then bud the cuttings first, keeping track of which were cut from where of course. This way if you get an exeptional mommy you will know before the mom actually buds- because you have only tested the cutting. This way when you do run across a really nice mom you can keep it permanently in vegitative state, never losing anything to reversion.

And the soil could play a part in all this- a contributing factor so to speak, but Im fairly positive the soil differences are not the main cause of this negative effect. I have a strain i have grown in both organic soil, and miracle grow time release soil. The buds taste the same, and have the same smell. The organic being a tad bit sweeter.

[smooth man]

Although it is possible that your clone's lack of potentcy is due to re-budding/vegging the mom, it is also possible that it's NOT.

I have, at various times, flowered mother's up to 6 times, harvested, and then re-vegetated them. All successfully so, including taking clones over a minimum of 3 months, and as long as 6. I have ALSO had mothers/strains that just didn't like to be re-vegetated, no matter what. You might have such a strain... The best bet, to me, is to not re-veg moms... I have 1 mom that is now 2 years old, and 2 more that are about 18 months...

There are times when a mother will lose her potentcy.... she will produce nice, perky, smelly clones one day/week, and then they can suddenly start going downhill for no <apparent> reason.

Look for any of the following: (but don't confine yoruself to just this admittedly incomplete list)

-variations in:
-ph of your water...some municipal water supplies PH will vary by as much as +-1.5-2... (if i measure ph straight out of the tap, it comes out VERY high, but when I let the water sit in milk bottles for 24-36 hours first, the ph is almost perfect w/o adding anything...took me 3 years to figure this one out, and after I stabilized the PH of the watering solutions, my results, and the longevity of my mothers, were greatly enhanced)
-nutrient/fertilizer solution
-ambient humidity (did it change during a climate/season change)
-soil/grow medium makeup, to include possiblity of parasites

-lighting variations... some strains are finicky, I've even seen a FEW clones that were virtually impotent when the only variations I could really find or isolate were the AGES of my HPS bulbs...

Normally when one of my mothers' clones start to show signs of decreased fervor or potentcy, I pull out a few seeds (from my original mother I forced into partial hermaphradism almost 9 years ago) and start up a new set... I do 10 seeds, which normally gets me 3-6 females, and choose the 2 that seem strongest during the first 2-4 weeks...