As I collected pollen from 104 using a fast, easy method I thought of a while back, it occurred to me that there may be people that have trouble with collecting pollen. To that end, I am sharing this method here:
I had gotten so annoyed with losing the overnight pollen, that I used a green light to collect from the Durban male. That didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. When I got to the point where I could tell which flowers would open next, I took a few of them and put them in a cup overnight to let them dry out. I was rewarded with a good quantity of pollen.
After that, I started plucking the buds that were filling out and the ones that looked as though the outer petals were about to open, just before the lamp cycles off. They tend to be pillow shaped and soft. If it still shaped like raindrop and/or hard, it is too immature.
In the first photo, I have removed a lot of buds that looked ready and put them on an 8" paper plate. The first image has a black circle and a blue circle on it. That black circle is indicating a flower that will not open due to being to immature. You could leave it for a week and it wouldn’t give you enough to bother with.
The bud in the blue circle looks like the one in the black circle in this image. However, it is just a bud that is ready to go, standing on its edge. Laid flat, it looks like the rest. I’ve done this more than a dozen times and find it easy to spot them now. Study the buds in the first image at full size to see what they should look like.
I covered that 8" paper plate with another plate for 12 hours. The next picture show how much pollen just fell out of the flowers where they opened. Also notice, the bud in the black circle is the one I showed you as being too immature. Notice it looks just like it did in the before picture.
The last photo was taken after I turned the paper plate on its side to let the spent flowers fall off. I also included the brush i modified to use for this purpose. It is a coarse artist brush. I used a razor to cut it down to about a 1/4" long.
I put them in a smaller container that covers, along with any other spent buds I collect from the plant. I cover it and bounce it fairly hard. More pollen falls from them. and again, you can just pour them off. The big fluffy spent bud is so light, it falls off the plate taking very little pollen with it. I use this technique added to the bud shaking and I finish up in just 72 hours and can free up the Maleroom for another tenant.
I have enough pollen from 104 (Chuy Purps x Second Sight from @pookie123). I can pollinate 2 branches on a dozen plants or more with what I have now, so I cut it down Friday evening.
Saturday I made some light weight reflector panels for my Maleroom to replace the heavy wooden ones that had originally been for SCRog configuration. These are solid, larger panels that contain more light inside and block external light to prevent returning anymore plants to veg state while in there.
Speaking of which, I moved 100 (the OG Kush from @Sebring) back into Maleroom as soon as the new panels were done Saturday night. This reversal has been a total success, so far! The largest branch that got the STS treatment has buds all up and down it. The smaller one only has them at its tip. The remainder of the plant is all female. I expect pollen fall in the next 24 hours.
I’ve already pollinated 2 branches 5 levels down from top of 100 using the pollen from LR x LD and marked them with a black twist tie each. I will also be pollinating the next 2 branches up from the STS branches using female pollen from 100 herself. After I remove the male flower branches, the 2 pollinated branches will be the lowest branches on the plant.
Also, I now have 9 seedlings in the light from the XJ Medley I received from @99percent through @jellypowered. I would have had 10, but I dropped 1 on the kitchen floor while separating them from the silica beads in with them. The kitchen has other seeds on the floor also. As long as I didn’t see for certain where it landed, I didn’t even try to find it.
Tha, tha ,tha, tha, tha , that’s all folks (for now)
C50