I’m a novice grower from Belgium with a few succesful grows under my belt. I joined OG last year and still learning my way through the forum and my grows.
Thanks to covid i had a very interesting past year where i finally built my own grow-closet, tried my hand at scrogging for the first time, tried timelapsing videos etc… Playing around around and experimenting with different things was great fun and a great way to learn a lot more about my favorite plant.
I tend to grow both autoflowers and photoperiod plants, both organically and recently got my hands on some regular lemon haze auto beans. Sooo… why not try my hand at breeding this time. My closet is still full of kosher tangie kush that just started blooming but the room nextdoor still had an emty secret jarding lodge 90 standing there doing absolutely nothing useful.
It might be awesome, it might suck. And maybe i’ll even end up with a fewfreebie beans too much to pass around. I’ll also try to brainstorm a little about things i read on the topic of breeding.
The setup is fairly basic since i’m using my better gear in the other room:
Lodge L90 tent.
I took out the divider between the compartiments to start with. Depending on how many i’ll grow out i’ll put it back in or not.
All the beans should be stable autoflower genetics so i should not have to do any selecting there.
I’ve been reading up a lot on breeding and selecting what plants to use. Since i’m working with autoflowers and since it’s the first attempt i’ll be keeping things pretty basic for now.
I’l start by selecting them on growth first and probably weed out the weakest plants.
I’ll probably use the best male and i’m hoping to keep the best 3 females. This won’t mean much in terms of flavor and potency but that will be a matter for later on i think.
The original plan is to put the male in with the girls and just let them do their thing. But i’m also going to give a go t collecting pollen, maybe from one of the other males. At the very least it’ll give me some experience on how to do it and if i want to use this way of pollinating later on the chances of royally screwing things up might be a bit smaller.
I’d love to just keep going crazy with these, continually breeding the best plants with eachother in the hopes of creating an absolute wonder of a lemon haze plant and mybe then trying my hand at some self-pollinating or something.
Even since i’ve started looking in to this stuff i discovered there’s still soooo much to these plants i had no clue about. It’s both intimidating and very motivating at the same time.
Very cool. I have my first zkittlez x white widow plant drying now. Looking forward to the seed count from the one limb I fertilized. I’ll be watching along here with you.
Good luck with it
So not you whole plant was fertilised? Only a few cola?
Wow… that’s something new to me. Haven’t read anything about that yet.
If i had to guess you’re using something like a plastic bag to keep your pollen from jumping to the other branches?
Extra question:
With open pollination, how long do u guys keep your male(s) in with the girls?
My mind immediately went to the following scenario:
I let them fertilise the whole plant except for the main cola. It would be great to have some buds to smoke from each of the parents. Tasting samples will give me interesting info to breed with the beans i get from this run.
Thanks for the ideas
This was actually my first try at pollenating manually. After collecting from an isolated male, I then used a small brush to carefully apply pollen to two specific flowering branches. I didn’t use a plastic bag or anything else, I was just hoping that by careful application it would stay where I put it. I will know soon if fertilizing only part of the plant was successful or not.
There are lots of folks on here with vastly more experience than I so I imagine they could advise on different methods. As I said, it’s my first try
Still a very cool idea.
I can’t wait to see if it worked out 4 u.
I’m hoping for succes in both our grows. The idea of partially pollinating a plant has been running wild in my head all day. And at the very least it will be a fun experiment to try.
I’ve been reading up on on things and i think i might have found a way. I’ll still have to figure out some of the details so don’t judge too harshly.
When the males are nearing maturity i’ll separate them from the girls. Maybe just keep the strongest one or 2, depending on how many i have. When the pollen sacks get to bursting i’ll wrap the main cola of each of the girls in a plastic bag. I should be able to seal the bag around the main stem with tape. Then i pollinate the girls, probably by brush (or shake the male around in the room I feel my nutty-professor-brain itching again…). After a while i would spray the plants with water to neutralise the leftover pollen and then the plastic bags can come off.
The first problems i would have to consider are the time i should wait before i spray the plants. I’ve been looking around and apparently there are quite a few different opinions on the subject. Also, the survivability of the mail stem inside the plastic bag might be an issue. But much will depend on the time i’d have to keep them that way…
These are from one branch like this one and another somewhat smaller branch. (had a serious aphid infestation on this plant, but nice beans!) So far the only seeds are from these two branches and no seeds from branches that were not pollenated. I put some of these seeds in p towels to see if they were viable and 3 popped in less that 24 hrs.
Best of luck to you with your trials
Thanks.
I will definitely do it that way with this grow.
For now the little ones are showing some nice growth. One is a little behind the others and i’m already seeing some differences in the leaves. So different fenos probably but it might be a little soon still to really tell.
For now 6 seems like the strongest growing female,
5 & 8 are showing the least promise. Seems like 2 & 3 are a bit bushier than the ones in the back row, But in general we’re talking about small differences here.
I feel my nutty-professor-brain itching again…). After a while i would spray the plants with water to neutralise the leftover pollen and then the plastic bags can come off.
