Ix3u does Jack the Ripper (for everyone!)

I use two primary methods of collecting pollen. For larger plants like yours I will take my largest rectangular flat bottom glass baking pan to collect in. then I hold the glass pan as close to the male bud cluster that I want to collect from. If you can get the bud cluster within an 1" or so from the glass it is perfect. Then flick the bud stem like flicking a cigarette ash and pollen will fall onto the glass.

Collect from several clusters every couple days. Leave the pollen spread out to dry for 2-3 days in a very low humidity environment.

Then using a couple razor blades or a credit card and knife scape into a pile and put into air tight containers. Pill bottles work well, and so do contact containers.

If I am collecting smaller amounts, I will use a large soup spoon and a butter knife. I will hold the spoon directly under a male flower cluster and then tap the cluster with the knife collecting the pollen in the spoon. I use this method to collect small amounts of pollen.

When I do the spoon method I have made a pill bottle drying chamber. In a larger pill bottle I will add 1" of rice in the bottom that I have dried in the oven at 150 F for 1 hour. Then I put a smaller pill bottle inside the first. I raise or lower the rice so the top of the inserted pill bottle lines up with the top of the outter bottle. Then I put on the lid. Once or twice a day I tap the bottle from side to side to move the pollen around in the bottle. This helps to give even drying. Once it drys in the drying chamber for 3-5 days I transfer it to an air tight container.

The key is getting it dry and keeping it dry so it does not clump. Once you have it in air tight containers, you can seal a meal them with some rice for storage in the fridge or freezer.

For pollination, certainly the major dusting you are planning will work but I prefer to use a controlled pollenation. I’ll leave the males in the room if I am not concerned with pollenating all the buds somewhat but then will use collected pollen and a paint brush to individually pollenate buds. I think this gives me a more controlled pollenation. Sometimes it seems the pollen cloud technique doesn’t always give good pollenation.

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