As the title says.
I am of the firm believe that organically grown bud is … kinder than hydro or chemical nutrient-grown in general.
So that’s where I have my focus on.
Does it have any effect on seeds though? Is there any evidence in that regard?
- Yes, organically grown seeds are different from e.g. hydro grown ones
- No, in what way would they be different?
I’m asking becuse I am looking to make my first F2s ever, after so many years. Maybe try preserving a line or two, maybe dabbing in some pollen chucking and see if I find an awesome cross.
I recently came across the Kratky method and immediately considered how awesome that is for autoflowers. I have never grown them and am extremely skeptical of Ruderalis as a drug variant. But people are convinced by them so i wanted to give em a try as well. And the Kratky method seems awesome for that. Just stick a bucket in the veg tent and there you have it.
Since I am currently trying to decide on how to set up my breeding tent, I considered it for that as well.
It will be located 2 rooms away from my growroom. However they are still connected by air. There is another option in a shed in the garden that has electricity. But that I could only run over the summer. Even then I would probably have to buy another LED light as the 315w CMH I intended to use for the breeding tent would run too hot in the shed. But it would be super far away from my grow room. 0 Chance of pollen escaping. The shed also isnt really a shed. It’s a small stone house with proper windows and a proper roof and has electricity. But is very tiny, I would have to move a shitload of stuff around first. Still it would be cold as fuck in winter and in summer would be … ok I guess. Maybe I can make the CMH work in the summer. Exhaust fan will just have to run overtime.
Anyway.
Running the breeding tent at negative pressure with a filter and using certain methods (spraying air with water, clothes discipline, using a pully mechanism to shake the male in the tent without opening it etc.), I hope I could get away with not seeding my stuff 2 rooms over in the basement either.
What y’all think?
- Basement should be fine with discipline
- You are messing with forces you can’t yet comprehend. Make the garden shed work.
Now to the final question and why I thought about the Kratky method and hydro vs organic in seed making:
Do I isolate males fully in clear storage container boxes i.e. “isolation chambers”, let them flower in there along with the girls, then when they are ready to throw pollen, take the boxed up males outside with me, collect their pollen individually and do the whole brushing on with a brush on individual bud-sites with bags around each pollinated branch?
Because it seems like a whooooole less work to me to just throw the selected male in there with 4 or 5 females, all in Kratky buckets and either bank on the ventilators spreading enough pollen around or pre-install a very strong ventilator set on max and directly pointed at the male and plug it in when it is ready to release pollen.
Another method I saw was to put the male on a board that is connected by ropes to a pulley. When ready to release pollen, you can lift the male over the pulley from outside and then drop it a couple centimeters. The impact will release copious amounts of pollen, can maybe repeat it once or twice as well.
Another bonus of Kratky here would be that the water reservoir in the bucket gets depleted by itself over time, thus the plant dying off. So you can just wait it out, maybe give the male a little less water to start out with and when everything (particularly the male) is died down, you can open the tent for the first time with negligible risk of pollen escaping. Harvest and done.
At first I was thinking the one male pollinates several females openly thing is better for making F2s and the single branch pollination of same female with various male pollen is better for making crosses.
But even in making an F2, say you have 3 males and pollinate 3 branches of the same female with one father each. It would still let you see in the progeny which father combined “best” (subjective to you of course) with that female. As opposed to which females combine with your one chosen male the best, in the other method.
Is there then even a good reason to not pollinate branches of a selected mum individually aside from the other method being much easier?
Guess you would have to be damn sure about your selected male, then the easier method makes sense…
But as we all know, herein lies the trick. Finding the right male.
I mean you still gotta grow out all the stuff and while in the easy method you would have to grow out 5 F2 seedlines to even begin selecting, when going with 3 males and individually pollinating branches you would end up with 15 F2 seedlines.
Maaan, breeding is hard when you don’t have excessive space…