Hey Al, I took a bunch of clones a few weeks back and now they've rooted. I however took much smaller clones than you do (didn't have big mothers). They are between 5 and 7 inches tall right now. Do these look ready to go into flowering for SOG?
Your plants look pretty good, aside from being a little nitrogen and phosphorus deficient- see purpling stems and yellowing lower leaves. Always better to shoot low with ferts than high! The problems I see are fixable.
However, most of your plants have been vegged too long for the SoG method. They look like they have been vegging for several weeks. If these were put in to flower, they would be too tall by the end of wk8.
Not only will overall height be a problem if you don't have a lot of vertical space to work with in your flowering area, but the buds down low on the plant (just above the point where you will have removed all branching) will likely come up sparse and fluffy. Zero veg time post the clones setting root prevents this problem.
Yes, these
could be flowered, but they look like they'd be better as mother plants for you, if given a bit of a feed and about 7-10 days under 18-24h HPS (or MH) light.
If you have any pics of what your clones look like at day 1 of flowering, I'd be very interested to see them. I've seen your pics of how you clone and also pics at 4-8 weeks flowering, but none between then. Thanks a ton; advice is very much appreciated!
These pics appear earlier in this thread, but I'll repeat them for your convenience. If you go through the admittedly very long thread, you will find these pics and others.
My clones look like this when they are ready go in to flower:
Clones are not intended to grow vegetatively in my clone box, only be convinced it is daylight for 18+h/day to keep them in veg mode. They are not appreciably larger when they come out of the clonebox as opposed to the day they were cut- low intensity light from fluoros will see to it that they don't grow much.
My plants look like this during flowering:
These are in my tray#1, for plants in wk1-2. Pictured plants have been flowering for 2 weeks. As you see, they gain vertical height really quite quickly even though they are under 12/12 and are eating high P flowering nutes. Plants take about 4 weeks to completely stop gaining vertical height and start packing on the budmass.
Here's tray 2:
This tray houses plants in wks 2-4. Pictured plants are in wk4.
Tray 3:
Tray 3 is for plants in wks 4-6. Pictured plants are in wk6.
Tray 4:
Tray 4 is for plants in wks 6-8. Pictured plants are at wk8, ready to harvest.
To get plants to finish up like this, you must not veg your clones between the time they set root and the time you put them in to flower.
In your case, I'd use a couple of the larger plants as mums and flower the smaller ones right now.
The plants intended as mums should have their mainstems lopped (of course, you'll use those cuttings for clones) and then should be vegged under 18-24h HPS light for about 2 weeks. They will be ready for another pass of cuttings, or will be ready for a maintenance pruning if you don't need more clones at the time.
I presume you're going to do something about the pots of soil...