These are some of our medical marijuana mother plants, all of them grown from seeds with known genetics.
Wait, what's a "mother" you ask?
Mother plant: a plant grown for the specific purpose of taking cuttings (children) to grow a larger quantity of the same plant.
Once our moms have served their purpose we start a new mom from seed (for quality and genetic control) and flower out the old one.
If you have (or will ever) flower out a mother plant you will find it to be one of the bushiest (highest yielding) plants you've ever grown.
If you want to read a great article on selecting a mother plant (instead of starting from seed) head over to High Times and read their article "Insider's Grow: Selecting a Mother Plant".
Keep in mind that you can start a mother from a mother, but we don't recommend you do that too many times (generations) as a mother a few generations down the line can be different from the (original) mother plant.
The purple light you see in the second image is not disco related (but our moms do like music), it's an LED grow light. We have been using it for several months now and the major advantage has been a reduction in electricity consumption. The yet to be answered question is will the electricity savings offset the higher cost of LED lights.
We'll let you know.