Help with pollination

[User420111]

Hi all, sorry for asking a question likely asked before, but say I have a single grow room and want to produce seeds, but I don't want the entire crop to be ruined with them. I have 6 nice looking females and one healthy male. The male has not quite gotten to the point where the sacs are opening but I expect it will within days. The females have shown their sex but still very early on. I can count the number of hairs on two hands.

So what's the best method here? Presuming that I don't have another place to put the male out of the grow room with the ladies. Turn off the fans and be careful for a few days? Cover the male in a paper bag? Plastic bag?


What do the old timers recommend?


tia

[User420111]

So a paper bag, then? I'm just going to go ahead and put a paper bag on it.


[smokes some Blue Cookies]


OR.... I could fabricate a box made of plexiglass large enough to accommodate the size of the male plant with a few small holes covered in thin fabric to allow for air flow but not for the pollen to contaminate the rest of the grow tent. Yeah... that sounds like what MacGyver would do

[Mr.furley]

That's exactly what I do.....

Smoke some good weed and answer my own question.

Pollen is messy and gets everywhere quick in as little as 18 days from light change. Gotta keep it sealed and away best you can just opening to box to water will move it around. a Merv 13-15 air filter from the hardware store can help with air flow and cross contamination so you should look into that.

Be prepared for open pollination in your grow so you're not surprised it happened. If you're not prepared for it rethink the game plan of growing a male right now.

[User420111]

Understood. I had fully intended for this crop to be a seed bank for the future. It's just that I didn't want to totally ruin the entire thing. Trying to keep it as controlled as possible. Since the end product is going to be used for edibles anyway I'm not too concerned about the result. But I only need dozens of seeds, not thousands.

[User420111]

So I've not actually seen anything like this before I don't know if the theory is sound but it has to at least limit the spread of pollen anyway. The male plant's flowers had not yet started to open yet so I constructed a box surrounded by several layers of a single sheet of cling wrap. I later added the collection plate on the plant and a trap door on the top for access.

I remove the females out before I mess with this setup. Hoping to now keep it more or less sealed until I harvest a bit of pollen and selectively pollinate the best fems.

Just thought you'd all like to see something different. Seems to be well isolated in there, just need to be careful opening it. I know there's a ton of pollen released we can't see but this at least gives me some measure of control.

[changeofpace2014]

Hi all, sorry for asking a question likely asked before, but say I have a single grow room and want to produce seeds, but I don't want the entire crop to be ruined with them. I have 6 nice looking females and one healthy male. The male has not quite gotten to the point where the sacs are opening but I expect it will within days. The females have shown their sex but still very early on. I can count the number of hairs on two hands.

So what's the best method here? Presuming that I don't have another place to put the male out of the grow room with the ladies. Turn off the fans and be careful for a few days? Cover the male in a paper bag? Plastic bag?


What do the old timers recommend?


tia

Maybe relocate the male to a alternative area to finish. You do not require all that light for the pods to open as long as he is close, besides it sounds like you are only after some pollen. CFLs will do the job for you and maybe some glass under the plant so you can collect the pollen or a film container and tweezers will allow you to gently bump a pollen sack and collect.

If you leave it in there, you will have some measurable amount of uncontrolled pollination.

[User420111]

Unfortunately, my only other spot to grow I have dedicated to the clones so the light there is 24/7. They are also using my CFL lights so I don't have anything left to build another spot even if I had room. But it's ok I'm just trying something new. These plants are Blueberry and very good genetics. I know others who also want seeds. I had planned on this entire crop being a seed nursery for future phenotype crosses but like I mentioned above all I am trying to do it limit the amount of pollination if possible.

[changeofpace2014]

you can freeze the pollen you collect. I would use a film container with some lightly toasted rice in the bottom and then wrap it really well "After You Label It"!

your mileage will vary, but it should keep viable for a year or so at the least.

Good Luck...

[Ckbrew]

changeofpace2014 What do you put the actual pollen in, maybe a filter paper pouch or similar?

[changeofpace2014]

I tap the pollen sacks with the film can under it and I brush up any collected pollen around the pot. - Be sure to pull out any of the sack that may end up in the canister.

[Ckbrew]

Following, this is great stuff, next on my list of things to do. Similar situation.

[Ckbrew]

Reading this thread and planning to implement a similar plan some questions arise. How far can you stretch the pollen from the male? I take it that a small plant will be adequate for producing pollen. Once the female is pollinated, how high is the risk of it cross contaminating other females in the same tent that are not intended to produce seeds? Are there any extra issues when using two clones from the same mother for the two plants for the breeding process?

[User420111]

Reading this thread and planning to implement a similar plan some questions arise. How far can you stretch the pollen from the male? I take it that a small plant will be adequate for producing pollen. Once the female is pollinated, how high is the risk of it cross contaminating other females in the same tent that are not intended to produce seeds? Are there any extra issues when using two clones from the same mother for the two plants for the breeding process?

Well let me answer those questions based on my experience so far! So amazingly it has been a stunning success. What I did was to isolate the male into a small wooden frame surrounded by plastic wrap. When the flowers were ready to release the pollen (right around the 3rd week of flowering) I turned off all the fans in the room, and VERY CAREFULLY placed a mirror under the flowers and tapped them gently. I successfully harvested quite a lot of pollen. So then I took the pollen and seeded one branch on each of my best plants using a small, clean paint brush. I repeated this process three or four times until I was sure each branch I wanted was very well dusted. After about two days I turned all the fans back on and let everything run normally again.

What I noticed right away was that after about two weeks it was obvious the pollination was successful. There was a little bit of unwanted pollination on very close branches but otherwise the rest of the plants are totally fine. After I was satisfied the pollination was successful I removed the male and the tent completely.

Heck I was so happy with the results I thought about making some sort of "MALE PLANT ISOLATION TENT©" prototype for others in the same situation. When you have very little room and want to pollinate selectively but not ruin the entire crop.


I don't know about your clone question but I feel like the genetics would remain the same.


In the photos you can see the tent I made. After a while I removed a section of the plastic wrap from the top and installed a piece of plexiglass instead, like a lid so I could access the plant without moving things around so much. Then you can see the plant with the seeds growing, and the proximity of all the other plants all in the same tent which did NOT get pollinated.

[changeofpace2014]

Nice....

[Ckbrew]

"seeded one branch on each of my best plants"

Now that is something I had not thought of. The plan was to pollinate just the entire seed bearing mother intended to save this genetic line. Maybe next year. I plan to save as much pollen I can for storage. Thanks for the experience. Is your male a natural or forced with silver? It looks like the male had a big chunk cut off the top. How tall is your box, about 30" ?

My first 4 clones were just cut from the mother, on my way to save the RP-1 seed project.

[User420111]

The male did have to be topped while it was flowering because it was pushing up against the plexiglass, creating condensate and I was afraid it would develop fungus or rot. So I removed about 4" off the top, it didn't seem to mind much.

It was a natural male. One of three, but this was the healthiest boy. I tried once doing a forced male flower regimen with colloidal silver but was unsuccessful. Something I want to try again in the future when I have more Ag. I ran out about two weeks after starting to spray it every day and I think it needed more. The funny thing is that plant NEVER flowered. It was stuck in veg for weeks and weeks, not even growing anymore. But not flowering either. So the colloidal silver definitely was doing something unnatural.

I have four females all of the same Blueberry "strain" but I have no idea what the phenotypes are really like. A couple are tall and big buds, a couple are short and compact. I don't know if that is due to a random selection of seeds from the Crop King Seeds bank, or whether that strain just presents different characteristics from plant to plant. So I seeded one big branch on each of them and intend on separating them by variation.

Best of luck! A fun part of horticulture is learning