Question about maintaining mothers for my first grow

Hey guys, thought I'd give you all some background first. I've been vegging three AK47/SSH plants that showed the most promise from the ones I've germinated. I'm growing these in individual hempy buckets using the 3 series GH nutrients.

I'm in the ninth week of growing and two of the tree are definintely a female (whoo!) Now I plan to keep these as the mothers and use clones from them veg for a little bit and then flower.

Now my question is what should I do to maintain the mothers? And what I mean by that is what do I do to ensure they'll be healthy, but not grow to mammoth proportions? Once I start cloning, would it use the energy it was going to use to grow higher to repair the cuttings and sort of even out by itself? Should I back down the nutrient dosage as well?

Lastly, and I guess this is purely opininated, but how long do you think I should let the clones veg for until I begin to flower them? Taking into accoutn of the bucket themselves, the plants can probably only get up to 5ft max. I'm looking to maximize the yield without of course having it too tall for the enclosure. So what do you guys think? I was contemplating letting them veg for 2 weeks and then stick them in. Sound good? Or should I wait a bit longer?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks fellas.

if u want to keep the mothers to a certain height u can tie them down or just like u said cut back on the nutes. and as far as flowering your clones, it depends on how much room u have. i usually like my ending plant height to be around 4 ft, so i start flowering when my plants are about 1.5-2ft tall. remember that a plant will double or triple in height during flowering.

good luck!

like vanslyke said you can tie down the mothers to keep them short or you can get humbolt's own bushmaster which encourages side branching and stops vertical growth. http://www.weedbay.net/forums/plant-bud-shots/117-humbolts-own-product-test-grow-bushmaster-purple-maxx-gravity.html. as for when to flower your clones, you have to remember they will double or triple in size during flowering. you said you have about 5ft of clearance so flower them around 2ft or a little less.

Thanks for the replies guys, but I just had a few more follow up questions I'm unsure about.

I measured the plants and each is about 2.5ft. This took about 8 weeks to grow. If you guys were in my position, would you take clones from them since you know they are a female and grow the clones out in the veg room then flower them? Or would you simply make some clones of the mothers, then toss the mothers into the flowering room?

I understood the part about flowering plants doubling or tripling in size and tripling a 2.5ft tall plant would obviously be too tall for the flowering room, but I'll be doing a vertical grow, inspired by this thread: https://www.rollitup.org/general-marijuana-growing/70310-vertical-grow-400-watt-hps.html

Do you guys think since I'm doing a vertical grow, the plants wouldn't get as tall as they would in a traditional grow and I should be okay to stick the mothers in once I take some clones?

Any help, any at would be appreciated as I wasn't expecting a dilemma like this so soon.

Thanks in advance!

Bump for opinions.