A question from a fellow grower:
Can a mature marijuana plant be harvested more than once? If yes, how many times before it is no longer productive?
It depends on how you grow it. Most people take a clone from the plant right before forcing it to flower. This clone is grown in another room with about 6-8 hours of uninterrupted darkness per 24hr period to maintain a vegetative growing cycle and grown to replace the parent plant after it has completed flowering and has been harvested. This theoretically can be done forever. However generational clones can begin to develop problems such as increased susceptibility to viral infections over time. It’s always good to have a few extra seeds of your favorite strain around, just in case.
If you are growing in soil; You can re-veg the plant many times. I have done a re-veg experiment that I got 4 full yields off of, before finally taking her down. I have heard claims of people re-vegging even more times.
Hope this answers your question.
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I have read the manual about harvesting and the blogs. But, my goal is to let the plants grow into tree’s and not kill them for harvesting.
So, what about instructions on how much I can pinch off before killing the plant. Is there a bad time to pinch off the buds other than what you described under harvesting in the book?
If I try to push multiple buddings does that hurt the plants survive ability?
I’m not sure I’m totally understanding your question. Indoors you can keep a mother plant alive nearly indefinitely keeping it in a vegetative light cycle say 18 hours of light per day. Outdoors, once winter comes along the plant will flower and will die after. From an indoor tree? Yes an indoor plant trained like a small tree or bush can have branches removed from it periodically to be cloned into whole new plants and then be flowered. You can put a plant into flower and then after not too long put it back into a vegetative cycle to get new branches and growth but it is very hard to bring a very ripe and finished plant back into a vegetative cycle without dying.
I’d imagine Latewood might have more info on how much healthy undergrowth is needed to help make sure the plant will come back after being harvested as he seems to have some experience with this method.
I have a friend who brags about his 9 year old plant that has flowered three times a year since 2005. He veges for a couple of months, flowers till harvest, cuts off the buds, goes back to veg again.
What’s the quality like after 9 years? Shouldn’t be too good, but if your friend is telling the truth keeping a cannabis plant growing for 9 years is impressive in itself! (probably possible if you know what your doing)
I have a healthy grow going ( 18 plants ) ( 2 strains ). I kept them all in the veg stage for 7 weeks with the idea that they would be able to be in the flowering stage for the same amount of time. Anyway, I am 5 weeks into flowering and I am seeing amber on the buds and leaves!!! The buds are just now starting to thicken up and I was hoping to let them fatten up for a couple more weeks. The amber is only on the center cola. Should I just harvest the center cola and give the rest of the plant a chance to catch up? ( a couple more weeks since I have the time? ), or do I need to harvest the whole plant if I’m going to cut the center cola off? Let me know what you guys think. Anybody and everybody.
Yes you can cut the buds off as they become ready and leave the others to ripen up.
I harvested last March and let nature take over. The plant reverted to veg and I’m going to harvest again in 3-5 weeks. I took a few tops that were done and the potency is better than before. So, to Brendan, it works like a grapefruit tree brother. They only get better with time. It also helps if you take care of your plant everyday. Mine is outside, in the Arizona desert heat. 100+ degrees everyday It’s had no problems with anything. I keep it about 2ft tall x 3ft radius. Yes, on purpose. One last thing. Depending on where you live, your plant will live through the winter. Like mine does. 
Cheers.
So are you saying you can take a clone in veg or flowering??? And do you cut stems or pull out roots to clone. And when clipped how.many hours of light on clone? And how much darkness? And does it go back to veg or flower.
I’m sure others will have more scientifically based techniques, but it isn’t very difficult. I’ve had success cloning early in flower, but prefer to clone still in veg. Find a branch with new growth (I’ve heard lower branches better, because have more root hormones, but may not be accurate.) I usually cut 4-5" from top of branch. Cut at 45 deg. angle with sterile razor blade. scrape bottom of cut stem to expose new flesh. Soak in water, then coat with cloning agent such as Clone-X. At this point I stick the clone into potting soil or other starting medium, and treat as a new start. My experience cloning while in flower, is it takes a while and a lot of light (once has well established root system) to bring back into veg. They also tend to grow single leaflet leaves for a while.
How.long. In water
Maybe a minute or so. Again, this is what has worked for me, but maybe @PurpNGold74, @dbrn32 or some others can give more solid advice. I successfully cloned twice this summer, but prior to that it’s been many years, so may be missing something here.
You can clone a flowering plant but it takes a long time to revert to veg. I always take clones from vegging plants.
If you’re looking for help with cloning check YouTube. Lots of ways to do it successfully, watch a few videos and see what works best for you.
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