I wouldnt know, I have a room hald the tents on and other half tents are off. Bedroom light on all the time, watching tv. Peaking inside tents with flashlight during dark. Harvesting a plant next to another one by turning grow light on and off as I chop branches..
I did just spend a arm and leg to redo my setup again to isolate them. Because well for one, if one molds the rest wont be too contaminated to keep. For second, if breeding is the goal, you want to isolate them because if two plants or more side by side pollinate, it skews results for that whole immediate area if not; the whole tent. Given the way they circulate air.
Youd want to see that it didnt herm from seed, even letting it go 2-3 weeks past the last harvest window to test for rodelization. Then stress test it, do anything possible you can think of to make it herm. If it doesnt herm, shes breedable. If say, two plants side by side one seeds, the unseeded one could of been the herm too, no way to know.
Il have pollen filters on my filters and minimize opening tents as I read thats the most cause of pollen drift. Anyway if youre not breeding, none of this matters. Id utilize the ability to run as many possible and just clone the one that checks your boxes. Theres a high chance it will never herm again if it was suitable to your setup over many others.
You can still determine a good smoke that way by curing and then removing seeds. I read you can dry it brittle and run thru a sieve and de-seed really fast like over a pound. If its related to other traits like hash it can change the potency if the hash just falls off but this will make a mountain of drysift you can just mix back into the bag.
Basically, some traits might be best observed if it didnt have seeds so isolating them would help that. Just toss the seeded, its faster than having to toss plants near by which could of been the winner. Which depending on the starting point and desired traits might of been hell to find.
Anyway, drifting off topic. If youre not worried about any of that, by stability the only other thing Id worry about is its genetic resiliency to being cloned. The usual benchmark is 10 generations or years but some can go sooner or later. Mine was lost in 2 yrs but some can go for 20-30 yrs or longer. So I would keep one stagnant mother and have clones that you just take clones off of for the next grow.
That way you can test about how long your clone would be good for while still having the original being replaced minimally like once a year. Growing them too long without replacement can cause the same issues youre trying to avoid so just replace clone yearly.
I would take copy of each clone u send to flower as bonsais and keep the best one for long term. You dont want to mother a bad clone genetically that can speed up the decline of mothers longevity. You wont know until harvest time which ones the duds are. This becomes more important towards the end of the expected lifespan to buy as much time possible, before losing the pheno.
To just find a stable mom youd need to specify what you mean by that. I do dabs only which relies on many genes working together so its easy to lose a pheno. Otherwise, they should grow fine and smell and smoke fine but you mmay notice a decline in subtle things. Subtle things that made it so great, great tasting, potency etc.
It can seemingly be fine for 20-30 years but was lost in as little as 2. So if none of these things are your concern Id just take a clone of what you like even if it herms, my first pheno I lost that I speak of just now, was a herm. It still served me really well. So as direct comment to light leaks, I dont worry about those. A herm will find a reason to herm.
