I’ve been hoping to reverse 2 Widow Maker Auto plants out of the 6 I started awhile back. I think I may have started spraying too late, so think this attempt may be a failure. All 6 are in flower now.
While tending to them this morning, I started thinking about starting more seeds for reversing, and starting the spray earlier…and I got hung up on a question.
If you have some regular seeds, and you have to spray them before they go into flower, how do you identify the females to spray?
Seems like a Catch-22…but maybe I haven’t had enough coffee…
I’ve had mixed results with reversing autos. I generally begin spraying with STS around day thirty(from germination) or whenever i see the first pistils. Then i follow up on a weekly basis, for three total treatments. I hope that helps. Patience is key.
I use CS instead of STS, but the timing should be similar. I like to wait until there are clusters of pistils to start spraying, somewhere around 21-28 days from germination. Since it’s CS, I spray daily until I see male flowers forming and then stop spraying. It usually takes another three weeks or so for those male flowers to mature and start dropping pollen.
@Mr.Sparkle uses both STS and CS, I bet he has some helpful hints to share.
Yes I would keep spraying that plant. I would also start some seeds that you want to pollinate now. The other four plants will be pretty far along by the time pollen starts to drop.
Thanks. I may just wait to get some pollen. I actually have 2 Widow Makers I’m spraying…so with a healthy amount of pollen I can figure out what to do next.
On a related note…
I have a male that is a cross between Bruce Banner (my purple budded plant) and Gambian, both autos. I’ve taken pollen from that plant and dusted some buds on the Widow Maker auto that was part of the project above.
The resulting seeds will be reg/auto, and I guess it’s a GambianXBruceXWidow product assuming I get more seeds?
Female Widow Makers have been in flower for about 2-3wks, but I think they’ll have enough time to make some ripe seeds.
not to hijack the discussion here, but I do have sts spray, and have started an auto fem in a 1 gallon fabric pot. I am guessing I should start to spray once I see pistils, and then continue until I see pollen sacs. Would this plant then pollinate itself if I only spray one or two branches. I am trying to make fem seeds of this particular cultivar, and am wondering whether it is best to have it pollinate itself, or pollinate another of the same cultivar.
I guess I just wasn’t being patient enough. I check these plants every day…nothing. I wasn’t even going to check this morning, but figured ah…what the hell.
Time to move this gurl indoors under some lights so she’s isolated and I can capture the pollen.
That would be great. My fear was I was too late in the process to even get pollen.
They are now indoors under lights. Looked really closely at plant #2, it has some tiny sacks as well, so could be a great crop of pollen.
So my two reversals have been moved indoors. The one that’s a lighter green in the photo above is not producing many pollen pods. The other plant continues to blossom with more and more of them.
I’m assuming that for the buds that don’t produce any pollen sacks, they’re not smokable, due to being sprayed with STS?
Personally, i spray sts 7 days after flip, spray again after a week and once more a week after that and stop at 3. When i’ve sprayed too much, my pollen comes out sterile. For autos, i start when i see the first pistil and follow the same time line.
TonyGreen did an awesome write up of his sts adventures on icmag. It’s a good read.
Thanks,
Mine were outdoors, so hard to judge the “flip”. As it happened, I saw buds about a week after my first spray. I was on the every 5 day schedule for spraying.
Allegedly systemic so smoking should be a hard no. I did take a puff or two from a plant that was sprayed many weeks prior in order to gauge taste and effect, but nobody recommends it. I am still alive in spite of doing many many things that aren’t recommended. Also, great work! Now we’re cookin! I’m starting to spray this tomorrow…
No sign of a seed yet…and pollen sacks still have a bit to go. Not sure they’ll make it in time to pollinate any buds on the crossed plants. I just harvested some pollen from a male cross I did between Gambian and Bruce Banner autos. I used another member’s suggestion of cutting the stalks and putting them in a mason jar at an angle on the kitchen counter. I put parchment paper underneath everything, and 2-3 times a day when I’d walk by, I’d just give the branches a very light tap-tap-tap.
Collected a fair amount. I took Q-tips and loaded them up, then gathered the rest and put them in plastic coin cases, then stored everything in a mason jar for later use. My main goal was to produce feminized pollen, which I will be getting from the Widow Maker, just not sure how much yet. The one I just harvested was regular pollen from a male that was a Gambian X Bruce Banner.
I gave some buds from that plant to my neighbor. He dried and tried…said he has them in a jar with a skull and crossbones on it labeled “DANGER”.
Been lots of fun so far.
Huge shoutout to everyone here for all of the help and guidance. What a tremendously resourceful community this is. Huge hat tip to @LemonadeJoe@DougDawson and everyone else that’s helped along the way…too numerous to mention.
Also, great work! Now we’re cookin! I’m starting to spray this tomorrow…