Hey everyone.
I have been messing about with different methods if reversing fems for seed production and like many people on OG have typically used colloidal silver or STS. BOTH of which require more effort and concentration that my puny attention span enjoys SO after reading a paper recently on a method used in reversing hops I thought I woudl give it a go… Success!!! I have only tested in on the one fem so far, but it responded in a MUCH shorter time with a lot more balls that is usual with spray.
First a little background on HOW silver works for those who may not know, and also some theoretical ideas on how to make it work even better. If I get anything wrong here, I don’t pretend to know everything so please feel free to correct.
Silver Nitrate acts as an antagonist for the plant’s ethylene receptors, so prevents ethylene uptake and ‘triggers’ the production of pollen containing only XX chromosomes i.e. females. Silver nitrate in it’s pure form is poorly transported by the plant, and on it’s own a dose that is in the effective range for leaf application results in photo toxicity…i…e leaf burn, hence CS or STS.
So the easier method is this:
Get 100mg of Silver Nitrate, dissolve it in 10ml of distilled water, this amount is nominal, so long as the ratio is the same the dosage will be the same i.e. you could mix 100ml with 1 gram IF you had million plants to reverse, however silver nitrate will degrade over time in solution and as the effective dose is only 100 - 200 micro grams even 10ml is a lot.
So mix the 100mg to 10ml, then all that is needed is a 1ml insulin syringe, the syringe will have the 1ml made up of 100 units printed on the side of the syringe, from the silver nitrate mix, draw up 20 units and inject it directly into the stem you want to reverse, or if you whack it in the main stem it appears that every branch north of the injection site will turn. That’s it. Do it once and before long you should have balls everywhere. How easy is that? It took my fem plant less than two weeks to turn almost completely.
So the other part of this for those who like to mess around, is to get hold of some Cobalt Chloride, which works slightly differently… it instead interrupts the biosynthesis pathway for ethylene production with a dosage around the 300 - 500 micro-gram range. I have not tried the cobalt, but when I do I will take the same approach and inject them separate rather than as a mix.
This works most easily on fleshy stems, it near impossible to inject into woody stems, at least with a insulin syringe.
Now if someone else can try this to confirm it works, that would make everyone’s life who is making fems MUCH easier.
