Bananas week 6

[HappyLittleTrees]

So I’m at week 6. Harvest is 8-9 weeks. All my plants are grape kush from same mother. All are growing bananas in the buds now. Should I cut my losses and harvest now? I am new to growing (first indoor grow) and had nute lockout due to super low pH. Flushed plants last week until runoff was around 6.5. Now I am noticing these bananas. I’ve been plucking them with tweezers as I noticed the plant that was doing the best even had some tiny seeds. The mother plant was a clone taken late flower just before harvest. Does that have any affect on whether her clones hermie or not? I set my 600w DE hps to 60k-70k lux at a height of about 12-15” above canopy. I have an exhaust fan set on thermostat, so fresh air is constantly drawn through. Used fox farm ocean forest and grow big for veg. In flower I was giving big bloom 1/2 dose and 2 weeks ago started using tiger bloom and sweet and dandy as they were recommended to me. I ended up with the nute lockout because I didn’t pH the water after the nutes were added. Amateur mistake that will never happen again. Another thing to note. At night, temps dropped to about 65 with some drops as low as 60. Operating temp in mid to high 70’s. With all the time and money invested in this, I want to make sure it never happens again. If that means buying non feminized seeds online and ditching the grape kush, I will. I really like the GK though.
Note: original plant was a clone given to me last spring. I planted it in ocean forest outdoors and had no issues other than bugs. Had a nice harvest this past fall. Any advice would be welcomed.
Have an awesome weekend
HLT

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

 

[homegrown]

Well..your plants look really nice! Bummer with the bananas. If they were mine, i'd say screw it and let them finish till the end..their budding up really nice and still too early yet to harvest. Might as well get some decent smoke with seeds, and not shitty smoke too early. I dont think this has anything to do with temp or lights..you said it was a cutting from an outdoor plant? thats my guess.

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah the branches are just starting to get heavy. The mother of the plants in the picture was a cutting from my outdoor grow last summer. I have another batch of clones lined up to go in the flower tent. Do you think I’m doomed to hermaphrodites from here on out?

 

[DW2]

Howdy HappyLittleTrees, Do not chop them down! I have been using the 'nanner'ed' seeds for the last several grows and ALL of them have turned out to be female. The worst thing that can happen is that if You don't get the all is that they 'pop' when burned. I have found that they do not produce a bunch of seeds (the most that I have had was approximately 1.5 seeds per gram of bud) as compared to a male pollenated plant. They also carry the traits of the original plant (although not as exact of a copy as a clone).

 

[Cali]

Let them grow all the way. Like was said already you can use the seeds or not but atleast the buds will be mature and good smoke if you wait it out. On your clones you run the risk of getting pollen on them if you throw them in soon without cleaning the tent. What I would do also is cut the nanners by hand with wet fingers so you trap any pollen that tries to escape your grip. I’ve done it I cut the nanners with a tiny piece of bud so the whole thing comes off and no pollen spill.

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

Thanks for the replies. I’ll play with the cards I’m dealt and make adjustments next time around. Once the plant starts growing nanners, does it focus it’s energy on growing nanners or will it continue to fill out the buds?

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

I just went back to the tent. Did another combing. Without even removing them, I found a bunch more. Some of those bastards are up in the colas. Some are hard to see. I’ll put 2 pictures of some of what I pulled off.

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

 

[Cali]

They will focus on making seeds but the buds will continue to grow just not like they would without nanners. If it’s only one plant you can remove it but if they all have them might as well let them finish. I would just keep removing the ones I see. Those don’t even look yellow so they may not even be shooting pollen yet that’s a good thing.

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

I’ve developed a trained eye 🔍. Unfortunately I’ve found a bunch of seeds. One plant looks like it’s closed for business all hairs are basically brown and the buds never developed like some of the others. I didn’t even see any nanners on it, so I spread the bud open a bit and saw one below the surface. These things are so sinister, they pollinated the bud without even poking through! I’m concerned that the clones I have on deck will herm on me. I’m not even going to veg them once I move them to the HID/flower tent. I was considering not even wasting the electricity on the HID and just using my clone/early veg 300w LED and going 12/12 with it. I have a 2 month old clone and the mother I was going to plant outside. If the next batch doesn’t herm on me, I could always take cuttings from them and continue cloning. If they herm on me, I have no choice but to start from scratch. It’s a shame because these plants are starting to get dense and really sticky. I really appreciate the feedback everyone. 👍

 

[dphipps1020]

So, pretty much everyone already said everything. My suggestion though is toss the clones if you have seeds. Clones from a herm I would think will be more susceptible to herming as well, if you start from seed it should be more stable. I save my seeds from my grows and they've all been female so far. Even some strains that hermed and I'm not having that problem now. I know it's probably not ideal, but that's my suggestion. Also, if you can figure out what's making them herm and fix it, that should prevent new bananas. Just keep plucking what you see and you shouldn't have too many seeds. Just an add on, I had the same quality smoke from my seeded buds as I did the buds with no seeds.

 

[NickyChicks]

Damn, I'm happy you made this post in a bitter sweet way. I recently noticed what it thought were burnt tips of small sugar leaves but nope nanners. Found 3 last night on my Northern Lights plant. Now I have it out of the tent in natural light and I've found like 5 more plus some not so developed seeds. 😐

 

[Jordann]

I have 2 plants that hermed on me after 4 months of raising tying loving and caring for that are in natural light now just doing their own thing. I got lots a big old Nana's. They got some of my good plants making seeds now. Didn't catch it quite fast enough

 

[dphipps1020]

Keep the seeds, they will all be female

 

[NickyChicks]

If I get any good ones I will for sure

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

Dphipps1020, the clones are not from the plants that hermed, they are from the same mother. Do you think I should still toss them? In hindsight there are multiple factors to why this happened. My pH problem probably got the ball rolling. I spent 5 hours flushing the plants. 14 of them in 3 gal cloth pots. I ended up using cold tap water for the flush. Something I’ve come to find out is a no no. Temperature fluctuation could’ve also been a factor. I hope it was an error that I made that caused this rather than a mutation from the cloning process. I thought I was king of weed for a month or so. Now I’m eating humble pie.

NickyChicks, it’s a bummer that happened to you, but I’m glad my post was able to help someone else out. I’m really not 100% sure how long the nanners were there because I wasn’t looking for them. After this hard lesson, I’ve been combing through these plants like I’m looking for ticks after being in the woods. Many of them were found only after spreading the bud open. One thing I’ve noticed is the pollinated hairs turned brown like they are dead. The normal color change on my plants is a maroonish color. A bunch of my tops had brown hairs and sure enough, there was a nanner in the area.

My buddy that gave me the clone last year doesn’t grow indoors any longer. He has property in a rural area that he plants his outdoor grow. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t grow indoors any longer. He has no kids and everyone who enters his house is either a pot head or someone who doesn’t care. His in-laws even smoke. He told me no matter how good you think you are, something always goes wrong. It’s too much of a headache to do it any longer. Outdoor you are at the mercy of the elements, but it is pretty much free.

 

[dphipps1020]

They still look good so roll with it. If you already have clones going from the same mother, try it again why not. If they herm as well then I would definitely say cut your losses and start with some of the fresh seeds you have (or will have). If they don't, must have just been a freak thing that made them do that (maybe the flushing or pH). Any light leaks in your tent? Maybe a flap isn't all the way shut? Just thoughts at this point but if you can pinpoint the issue, it should help you prevent it in the future.

 

[HappyLittleTrees]

Couldn’t be a light leak. Tent isn’t top notch, but it’s in my basement with the windows covered with cardboard and gorilla tape. It is completely dark down there when lights are off. Up to the point that I noticed the cal deficiency, my grow was going awesome. The only nutes I used were grow big in veg and big bloom for first 4 weeks of flower. After week 4 I started adding tiger bloom and sweet and dandy (recommended you me).
Two things I did wrong:
-whenever I fed/watered, I always went light. I was worried about over watering. I had a 16oz water bottle with the top cut off and used that to dump 2 scoops in each pot. Plants were happy as could be. Never droopy. I came to learn that even if I pHed the mixture, there was still a buildup of salts from the nutes over the course of the grow. The fox farm tiger bloom tanked my pH though. My fault for being ignorant, but that stuff is straight acid. Combine that with the stingy watering and there’s my acid soil causing nute lock.
- When I tested the soil and found the pH out of whack, I went into panic mode. I flushed the hell out of these things. It took so long to get the runoff to 6.5 that I would soak one plant in a bucket of water while I was flushing the other. It took me 5 hours! Not sure if the cold tap water could cause that problem, but each plant got soaked in cold water for a long time.
Next time around I will probably use different nutes or no nutes and just rock the soil. I veged the plants for about 3 or 4 weeks before switching to 12/12. The plants were only about 10” tall or so in 3 gal cloth pots. Stretched to 18-20” in flower. Pretty sure there was plenty of fertile soil in those to yield decent results. I was better off with underfed plants than these herms. I am getting over the self pity now and looking forward to the next grow🤓 I’m actually pretty stoked if these seeds turn out to work. I could shelf this strain and try another. Saves me from keeping clones all year long.

 

[dphipps1020]

Yeah personally I like the ease of amended soil. I have been using it for about 8 or 9 months (I think) and it's been great. Never mixed nutrients for watering but I would imagine it's similar to hydro and that's really what I wanted to get away from. Mixing nutrients gets expensive when you have a lot of plants, most of my reason for easing off the hydro. I thought about doing mother plants and cutting clones every time but I decided this time to try my luck and hope I get a few seeds. Got a GG male I'm going to collect the pollen and crossbreed, that should be fun. Just hoping I don't over do it and end up with entire buds worth of seeds. Definitely more fun growing different strains every time though. I have been trying to rotate strains. I actually have 7 different strains flowering right now so I'm looking forward to that. Unfortunately I have no idea what the flowering times are because they were bag seed, I only know the strains. On some of them I wrote down whether they're sativa or indica, and what the THC % was. Figured that could come in handy later on when I'm deciding on what to grow.