Females got repotted into 1-liter containers, and males got trimmed back to just 2 main stems. It’s still pretty crowded in here but I think the root zone increase will help these girls stay healthy through the rest of their time.
Before:
Stretch has kicked in this week, with my male plants now getting within 7" of my light. I’m gonna keep their main stalks going so I can get a feel for how they mature. Might want to use one or both again if they lay down their stuff the right way
These plants are really kicking into gear now, and I gotta make some room! I decided to isolate the 2 dudes into a smaller box to collect pollen. I think they’re gonna drop some in a day or two. I bent 'em over sideways, basically bent them in half, and I’ll just weigh them down so they stay bent for a few days.
Ladies got a little more room now, and light is on 100% power. There’s a difference in height between some plants which I imagine would be a bit more significant in a larger space. The shorter ones don’t seem to have stretched much, and the taller ones have not quite doubled in height. I think there’s probably another week of vertical growth, so I might not have to train anyone after all. Yay!
Boys started dropping pollen yesterday! I’m gonna let them go a few days before I collect and dust the females. I want to have a good number of seeds come out of this run, so I wanna wait until more flowers have set on the ladies.
Both dudes look really similar, just one is a little bigger and stretchier than the other. I’ll be mixing the pollen this time to give more genetic variation. I don’t know what direction I’m interested in yet so I’ll have to wait and see how the ladies grow. I’m always inclined to pick the shorter male since I grow in such vertically restricted spaces, but I’d rather just get all the genetics I can in seed form before I start bottlenecking it more than it already is.
Well shit, it happened so smoothly I didn’t even notice that one of my dudes is a herm! The one on the right’s got a BUNCH of white hairs sticking out the top, I thought they were just little stems at first. Nope, pistils. Damn! Better chuck that guy and make sure none of his pollen sticks around… I don’t know how he herm’d so bad, there’s no light leaks. Might be a response to being rootbound though. I’ve grown in solo cups a few times now and I think some plants just don’t like the root restriction.
Well that’s one male down, so we’re down to only one male left. Gotta kill plants to find keepers. I’m really glad I separated the males, I could have easily made a lot of seeds with herm traits and wouldn’t know until right afterwards. Dodged a bullet!
Yesterday I took some pollen and put it on a lower branch of each female. Kept the fans off and let them sit for a while to make sure the pollen was received, then put them back in the cabinet. After a few hours it looks like some of the pistils have already started to brown on the tips, so we’re on our way!
I did some reading on ICmag of some DJ short articles about breeding, and he mentions using males that produce female flowers (reverse-herm) as good males because they tend to create more females in the progeny. I’m not sure how true that is, but it’s making me wonder if culling the hermie male #7 was a good idea? I still have a clone of it sitting in my veg chamber, I didn’t have the heart to kill the whole thing just yet.
Wondering if anyone has any input on males that. Does a male that responds to stress by producing pistils differ than a male that was going to produce pistils in ideal conditions?
In my limited experience, I think it can be hard to say. I have seen pistils on males in lines where I’ve never seen ANY female intersex traits. I have also seen pistils on males in lines where most of the females hermed.
My suspicion is that the first case is not uncommon for 88g13hp, because I have observed it in downstream crosses from that.
Interesting. That was my consideration immediately when reading that article.
I’m thinking of doing another seed run with both males and a single female to see if there’s any truth to this. I can do 1 clone pollinated with #7 and one with #8 and see in the progeny how they both work.
…Anyone interested in testing that when I get around to it?
I wouldn’t be scared to test those seeds at all. Just over a year ago I was shaking my keeper male over the selected females and only then noticed a few pistils. Thought I had just fd up my project so i started reading about it and found quite a few articles claiming it increased the female to male ratio. Last fall i tested it out for myself and out of 9 seeds i had 2 males and 7 females. Not one of the females i kept hermied. The male i kept did tho. I may have gotten lucky but i plan on growing a larger number of this last batch outside this summer to really find out. Really enjoying this thread as i grow in cabinets as well.
Well shoot that’s really similar to my situation. I wonder if that 88g13hp was a fem-leaner?
I think the only way to have more than anecdotal evidence is to test several hundred seeds, and if a significantly larger number are female, and those females don’t herm, then it would really reinforce this claim. And then to do a side-by-side with a male that grows pistils and a male that doesn’t could show us if there’s even a difference.
Plants are starting to stink a little sweet and a little sour, reminds me of a bubblegum bagseed plant I grew years ago. I like it! It’s fairly mild, at least so far. I get a good whiff when I open the door of the cabinet, but each individual plant doesn’t seem to stink quite like they all do at a distance. Probably something to do with a combination of smells.
Pollen was successfully received on each plant almost exclusively to where I tried to put it, so that’s good! Some stray dudes did get around though, so there’s a few plants with some seeds growing at the top. Oh well, more seeds means more backup.
The smells have started to kick in as the buds begin to swell with seed production. Basically I sniffed one of these plants and immediately said “eeww wow gross” and had to investigate. Smells like old red bull with something rotten behind it. I don’t really know the words to describe it but it’s got a sour and rotten funk to it that seriously just made me think of an energy drink left in the sun. Several plants have an aroma similar to this. The others have a much more mild aroma that smells like grass clippings and green apples.
I’m still super impressed in how well these plants are doing. This is my second run with this soil and amendment type and I think I’m crushing it. There’s some under and over watering issues I’ve gotta dial in, but I’m gonna stick with this method for a while. It’s basically a soil blend of happy frog, perlite, worm castings, and KIS nutrient pack as an addition. I fed them when I repotted into their 1-liter containers at day 12 and I think that’s about all they’ll need for the rest of their stay. I figure maybe 5 weeks left on these, roughly 70 days from flip? That seems standard for the 88g13hp logs I’ve seen.
I started to see a few seeds growing in areas that I did not pollinate. I think I must have just had some stray pollen floating around somewhere in the cabinet or stuck in a fan or something, so I gave everyone a spray-down of water.
Surprise surprise, I actually found 3 pollen sacks growing on different plants! They weren’t open at all and I was able to extract them without anything happening. Made me think these aren’t as stable as I was hoping. I’m now on a serious herm-alert for the rest of the grow. Luckily my plants are small enough that this doesn’t take very much time and I can do it every day when I water them, but man this throws a whole wrench into my game. There’s no light leaks and I can’t imagine plants looking this good have experienced any stress. Except, actually, a few days ago I decided to clean up some lower branches, so i stripped a few leaves and way-low bud sites. Maybe that snipping was enough to trigger some of these girls?
Anyway, 3, 5, and 6 are on the bad-kid list right now. If I have any more problems their clones are getting the boot. I don’t have space for all these plants and if I can help remove that trait from the gene pool I’ll be double happy.
This makes me re-think my herm-male reading I did from DJ short’s articles. I’m probably inclined to believe intersex is intersex regardless of what sex plant expresses the most.
Couple of quick bud shots from today. Day 40 from flip. Nanner patrol came up empty today, so that’s good news! The smells have stayed about the same, but bud production is noticeably increasing every day now. It seems like the taller plants have that rank sour aroma, where the three shorter plants seem to be more grassy and mild.
Day 43 from flip. I’ve found no more signs of herms, so I think whatever happened I’m in the clear from! The buds are now starting to mature like they’re in their 2nd half of development. Hairs are turning orange from the tip and bracts are starting to swell up and retract just at the tops of some of the plants, notably 2, 5, and 6. I would be surprised if any of these had more than 4 weeks left to go, it’s looking like the final 3 now!
After doing a little more reading I decided that an experiment with the female-leaning male is a bad idea. There’s plenty of people saying that’s a bad idea and frankly I don’t have the space to dedicate to something like that. So I’m down to 1 male among 7 females here. And from the looks of it I’ve got a boat load of seeds inside each plant, so my next run with the females will be seedless!
The only female I feel unimpressed with is #3, she’s got a thinner bud structure and looks like she’ll yield quite a bit less than everyone else. Combine that with her stretchy characteristic and it’s just not the kind of plant that thrives in my environment. #5 and #6 were unimpressive in veg, but they were also the first to stink like taurine and old feet. Others came in behind that, but so far the only ones who really stink like that are 5 and 6.
