In the past, when I have pollinated plants, I’ve just kept the male(s) and females in the same room together from seed. I’ve come to find out that this isn’t the standard practice for breeding. It seems most people wait a couple weeks before introducing the males. Unfortunately, I only have one grow space. I could probably rig up a second space, possibly, to isolate the males.
What are the downsides of keeping the males and females together in the same room from seed during an open pollination? This isn’t a yield run. I won’t be selling the product. This is primarily a seed run and I will use the cannabis for personal use only.
-Honestly it depends on what angle your going for if your doing isolated breeding such as pollinating a branch of a plant opposed to having the male splug till it keels over in every nook and cranny of the plant.
-If your going for a very seeded crop keep me right where hey are select your male or not be ez
-If you want to collect pollen or do isolated buds id quarantine them “if you dont want your whole crop dusted”
That’s great news! I’m going for #2, a MAXIMALLY seeded crop with strong, mature seeds. I don’t care to know who the fathers are, either; I want to do it as naturally as possible. It sounds like I just keep 'em where they are.
Ya people just do that because males tend to flower a bit faster, but they generally will dump pollen for a couple weeks so it doesn’t really matter. Those ladies should get fully pollinated either way.
The downside of keeping your males in the same tent with females is that the earliest male will always preferentially pollinate your females. There’s some theories about why early males might be worse than mid/late males, but to me it seems very speculative.
Nonetheless, it’s hard to do any kind of male selection that way. You’d probably be better off chopping the males just before they start to pollinate, and putting some stems in water under 12/12 in a small isolated setup and collecting pollen that way. If you use a dry box, you can keep pollen viable for months if you need to, so there’s no pressure to pollinate immediately.
That makes sense. I’ve already got one male that I can tell is going to be much earlier than the rest. What about just isolating any early males and then re-introducing them when the others start to pollinate? It would be much easier for me to isolate one or a couple of males than half a dozen or more.
If not, then I will chop and collect the pollen and manually pollinate, though I really wanted it to be as natural as possible.
I’m going to look into the early male thing–that sounds like an interesting area of research.
That would definitely help for sure. Mostly a pistil will transfer the male genetics to the ovaries as soon as the pollen touches a pistil. It happens fast. The females continue to produce new pistils for a few weeks so there is a period of time where new pollination events can occur. So you could probably wait and try to do it all at once. Or you could let the first male go for a day or two, and then cut it and let the later males take over for any new pistils.
One way or another, you just have to figure out how to not let the first male dominate everything.
One advantage to separation is when your are crossing two strains with drastically different flowering times, for example a 8 week plant to a 16-20 exotic would pose challenges with out the right timing to get them together when there both ready for each other.
Wow! I really like this idea. This is gonna be the new plan A, for sure. I really appreciate the help. I’ve never had more than one male in a room at a time, so this is the first time I’ve ever had these considerations. I definitely have the tools in the toolbox to make this open pollination work now, I think.
Likely the early male will start with just a few flowers opening. If you pluck them off and tap them over some female flowers, you can keep from getting too much of the pollen around your tent and kill it before it makes a mess. You might also want to spray some water around a few hours after you chop the early male to keep the pollen from floating around too much.
I find this gives me more flexibility. I like to pollinate specific branches for seeds. I prefer it this way because the majority of the plant is still seedless.
Nods, I may just move my males (once i find them, they’re sexing reaaaaaly slow) and put to finish in the T5 side, seems like a pita to cut branches etc.
Because i put 2 seedlings per cup of blue lights cross and malawia i will take the males when they show their faces…solid advice from @lefthandseeds…the plants are not super large so they are easy to move around…leave the males up stairs in the spare room and let the females camp over once in awhile…spray them down before returning them back to flower room.
i want all the males to pass on all the traits…out of 16 seeds 14 came out…who knows i mixed the seeds 8 bluelights cross and 8 purple malwia (exclusive)
I would think a early flowering male should bring the average flowering time down on seed produced maybe not much but I would bet it has some influence same as a 8 week female compared to a 10 week female
Here are a couple tips I don’t think I have seen mentioned yet.
The main reason you don’t want to leave the males in with the females too long is you will get over pollination. When that happens you end up with tons of immature seeds, and sometimes the plant doesn’t have the energy to mature any seeds so they will all be light and pale.
A trick I have used to simulate the 2-week head start for the females is to top all the males when they first start getting flower clusters. Topping usually sets them back about two weeks. I like to have the female buds be about the size of a lima bean when I pollinate.
Finally you can make a male isolation chamber with a sealed clear tote, a small electronics fan to create some negative pressure, and some Merv 13 filter material. this allows you to keep the males in the same room but keeps the pollen off the females. You take the chamber carefully out to another room to water, and collect pollen.
In my picture the intake has the Merv 13 filter material, and it is also inside the unit between the fan intake. The infinity fan I got has a nice square clip that allows you to easily add filter material. Since making it, I also now tape a layer of the filter over the fan exhaust on the outside of the box.
I think this is the original tutorial I first saw describing these:
