flowering old mother plant out help

[medicated4]

So Im considering flowering a couple of my mothers out that are starting to get a bit out of hand. They're in 5 gal buckets and they're like close to 3x3 tall/wide and super branchy from being hacked for clones..I have 7ft ceilings and I run a 1kw air cooled light so that cuts some vert space as well. The strain tends to triple in flowering so its gonna get massive especially if I up pot size to a 17 gal rubbermaid because its close to root locked. Ive grown some really large plants indoor (1lb+) and much larger outdoor and am well experienced in scrog, lst, super crop and so on. Im still kinda scared these 2 mothers will get 2 large...they're kinda finicky also so I dont want to super crop/lst colas far into flowering. Do you guys think I should flower the mothers...or just go michael myers and hack them up into a mass of clones.lol Ill probably literally be tying the plants to like half their size which is probably stressful for the ladies and definately stressful for me haha.

 

[Phaeton]

I have done similar with elderly plants. Different circumstances but still overgrown much cloned and over rooted good smoking marijuana plants.

Support, you mentioned this, is the biggest problem I had. Not only do the individual branches need support, the entire plants got tippy from being top heavy.
Hooks in the ceiling taking the weight off the stem was the answer I used after a plant snapped a foot and a half up the trunk. Woke me up better than coffee that morning when I found it.

Eight times, once every two years, and only two suffered catastrophic failure, mostly those were not strains made for oversizing. The other six were just fine with standard support only more of it.

Worth the effort? Not enough to do every year.

 

[Drop That Sound]

I'm flowering my year old mom out with 2400 watts and 2 scrog nets under a 6 ft ceiling, normally wouldn't be possible, but here is what I did to prepare her first https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?threadid=334608.

You can actually root out all their whole branches and turn them into massive sized clones. Even down to the main stalk and just throw the stump away, basically turning them right back into ready to flower plants in a few weeks time or so!

I just finished removing the top half of my momma plant, some of the air layered clones when freshly cut had 3/4 inch stalks and 2 of them almost 3 feet tall

Hope this helps, otherwise you could totally try to scrog them, I love huge single plant 1+ runs

 

[medicated4]

@phaeton. I had the same thing happen with the stalk splitting and i cut a small piece of nylon panty hose to tie it back together because i figured it give it some flex room if the stalk acted like it was super cropped and grew a knot. worked great. I used duct tape on a outdoor plant once..lol couldnt get the shit off..held it together though..lol
@Drop That Sound. that is an amazing thread bro I didnt even know you could root big branches like that..would have come in handy more then once. Definately a interesting read for sure thanks for the link bro. G;lad to see it worked out so well for you! Shoot you guys a link when I get my grow thread started. take care fellas. <(^_^)>