Hey y’all. I swear I’ve read a few times that when making seeds it’s ideal to start flowering the females first, then to start males a bit later to give the fems a headstart for maximum production. Of course now that I’m searching for it I can’t seem to find it anywhere lol.
Is this true? If so how long of a delay is ideal?
I don’t think there’s a need to start the males later. If the goal is maximum production you can always hit the females with pollen again a week later.
If you are doing a single shake pollination, where you don’t keep the male in with the females, or you have pollen separate from the male, it would behoove you to start females a week or two earlier, assuming you are pollinating quite a lot and not a single branch or two. Are you looking for jars of seeds or just a couple hundred? Long flowering females can take weeks to start showing pistils, depends on the variety.
Males typically begin dropping pollen a bit before females start pushing pistils in earnest. But once they start dumping pollen it is everywhere lol. I get ripe pollen sacs on males typically withing two weeks.
If you are just running a male in with the females, as is my style, don’t sweat it, you are about to have more seeds than you know what to do with.
Summary: There is about a week delay, depending on many factors. Ideal time to pollinate for most female indoor varieties is about week 3/4 when they’re covered in fluffy white pistils. You can do later of course but seeds take about 6 weeks to ripen.
Sweet that’s good to know. I’ll be running them together to have at it as they see fit. It seems weird that nature would make the males start first for some reason, but I guess they keep producing pollen later into their flowering anyways?
Thanks 
Edit: “you are about to have more seeds than you know what to do with”
I need them for a good pandemic protein source 
In the wild, if you’re the first male to start producing pollen, half the seeds from most of the females within 100ft of you will be your genetic information. Pistils can’t be pollinated twice and there’s only so many. It would benefit you to be the first. Granted, tropicals and long flowering plants tend to produce pistils the entire life cycle even at end of flower.
What male are you using to what females?
This is where collecting the male flowers as they’re about to burst comes in real handy.
That’s how I collect.
That makes sense. If only being quick was considered an advantage for us human males 
I’m not sure what I’ll be crossing with what quite yet, but it should be something awesome.
@OleReynard ya I’ve collected smaller bits of pollen a few times, but have no experience with actual real time breeding. I’ve only let a couple males live in my career to date! Good trick to catch them before they open, I guess the pollens in there ready to go anyways…
in my opinion, it is a nice way to keep the males 3 weeks aside the females and then,introduce them in to the flowering area.
you will get more pistils ,hence more seeds.
Yes it is true they will take longer ,but not much more : on average , hybrids take 7 to 9 weeks to be ready to harvest by our standards ,but that doesn’t mean you can go any further .
Saying that, If you do polinice at the third, it does give plenty time to the seeds to get proper ripped, maybe not all will be fully developed, but a good amount of them will have that proper brown colour.
I don’t like to use the first male, yes ,it indicates fast flowering, but doesn’t mean is the best one to work with,
The ideal scenario is to have 4 to 5 males and some cuts of each of them aside, turn them to flora and see what is the best one that fits in to your breeding and after that ,use it to pollinate everything you want, the male selection is just the same way yo do with the females look for things you want to keep on the offspring , tests them and look for dominances
I know nature does things differently ,but as we are creating the best environment for the plants, why not also create the best scenario possible??
Cheers everyone
Wow 3 weeks. That’s probably ideal for max production! I guess what’s the hurry if you’re not gonna smoke em anyways lol
I think the sweet spot for most hybrids is to start the females first and then put the male in 7-10 days later.
I’ve don’t it all sorts of ways and I think it’s always better to flower a little to early then too late. Some males don’t kick right in to flower so you can get burned with some strains if you wait to long and end up with lots of immature seeds.
I’ve always had great runs just flowering them all together and leaving the male in until at least week 4 of flower
Beauty, thanks… sounds like you’ve done this once or twice haha
I’m thinking I’ll just do a small headstart of about 7 days and they should line up pretty nicely. Do males just continue dumping pollen once they’re going?
Yeah they keep dumping for a good few weeks or more
Great. For some reason I had the impression that they dumped for a few days then stopped. I think I really underestimated nature’s intelligence here haha…thanks
I was just looking up how long mine went for and they were dumping for about a month and still going but I chopped em.
Oh wow, so no big deal if they start a bit early then. I hope you have them a towel and a cold beer after their efforts.
There’s about a week when they start dumping a little, and then about a week to two weeks after that where they just keep ramping up.
I usually pollinate females starting the second week, and then if pistils continue to develop a week later, a second time. Often i collect pollen and store it in a gasketed dry box for the week. A good dry box can keep pollen viable at least 6 months.
I just used pollen that i collected last September, and it still works, though i notice it seems to have degraded a little.
Nice theres a pretty big window there. I found some pollen in a jar in my fridge that was about a year old and tried it on a couple plants that are finishing up now. Looks like I got a few viable seeds but the pollen definitely lost most of its potency.
how do you know when pollen is ready to be harvested?? is there any way to tell when they’re going to start opening up before they actually do??
If you’re just making seeds for personal use, I like starting the males a little early and hitting the entire female plant while she’s nothing but preflowers. Only takes a couple seeds per gram to pull a hundred out of each oz.
If you wait till the very first pistil starts to wither, right around the time the puffball stage turns into actual buds. 40 seeds a gram isn’t impossible.