how do I get a Mother?

I have been reading about growing mother plants and have read that the clones will be less potent if you flower the mother then re veg. my question is how do you know if a plant is female without flowering it?

You cut a small clone, root it and then flower it to determine sex all while leaving the original plant in veg
Or buy feminized seeds

My guess is that the best way to grow a mother is with feminized seeds. Also you can take clones off of your plants that you're growing, and label them so they correspond to the plants that they came from. That way when you flower you can just keep the clones from the females and trash the males. I don't really understand the decrease in potency unless it's because the plant is old and not as efficient at absorbing nutrients as it once was. I've never heard anyone give a good scientific answer about potency loss with re-vegging, just people that swear that it happens. Maybe someone else will chime in and change that.

If you wait a little a lot of strains will show preflowers in 24 hours of light.

just take the clone off the mother, label, root, flower, dry and then smoke, whateva has the best allround quality(growth, potency, tight buds, etc) i will take into mother and just flower the rest of them


and ive never had plants become less potent, ive reveged and flowered a plant, got a bigger yeild the second time round, and i think it was more potent 2.... this is my experience

Wow thanks for the quick replies. what is the minimum light requirement for just a mother plant? thanks so much for the help.

I wouldn't use less than 50 watts

couple of good 65w dual spectrums CFLs should be good.... i use 1x100w 6400K CFL and it works but i dont think its optimum, more lights you can spread out and u dont get the heat issues(so u can run cheaper smaller fans)