I’ve never grown out males before.
Female plants form pistils and grow buds that get bigger and denser until the plant is ready to harvest.
Male plants form pollen sacks but do all of the pollen sacks open and throw pollen within a short window or do pollen sacks form, grow and then throw pollen continuously throughout the flowering period?
It’s a process but there is a heavy zone.
For a landrace NLD (Malawi Gold) how long would you estimate the zone being open in terms of weeks from showing sex? And where would the ‘Heavy Zone’ be?
If you flower a male like a female, it’s “continuous” until the senescence is kicking (earlier than female).
The flower formation is “layered” until the male reach its full potential of fertility, so you will see at first three or four waves of little pollen release until “buds of male’s flowers” are formed. Then it become a more uniform release where almost all flowers are opening.
They always do this, early or late stage. Once opened, the air dry the “bananas” that permit to the pollen to lose it’s integrity and to fly. This last part is mechanical and not so much hormonal once the flowers are opened.
Now the male’s expression are as diversified than females in shapes, timing and manner to flower. A short afghani will not release its pollen the same way than a tall haze.
Ok thanks this is great information!
@Cr0Barron , I don’t have much experience but I’ve noticed plants start showing gender around week 3 of flower. The pollen starts dropping fairly heavy around week 4. You should have enough pollen by the end of week four so you can cull males.
When done pollenating spray everything with water to ruin any active pollen. It’s really pretty easy. The real difficult part is not transferring the pollen. Take care of your other plants first and the pregnant last. Pollen gets everywhere, like on your clothes and hair. If you visit your other girls you may accidentally pollinate them. I usually do it at the end of the day. Good luck…
A strategy I use is to cut the males off at a certain point. I kind of do the math backwards. Seeds take 5 weeks ish to mature so there’s not much point pollinating after that.
I usually give my males a week including heavy shakes and closing the tent with the fan off to leave a cloud of pollen, then I kill them at the end of week 3 still leaving me with 5 weeks for seed and having the plants finish at about the same time.
Best of luck.