Hey now A while back, beans were popped, clones taken, flowered, and males were identified.and their clones destroyed. One superskunk, #14, was kept for breeding purposes, sinced it showed the most vigor and smelled lemony. Well, one of thclones mustve been mislabeled, because a male was spotted in the greenhouse, and ejected immediately. It had not been long, but obviously pollen did escape. BUT... It seems that it pollinated a few plants, but at a time when the preflowers were formed, but I guess, no other pistils were accepting the pollen. So just the calyxes of preflowers, single and identifiable, were seed-bearing. Often one or the other.(left or right) It is interesting to note that it is a sinsemilla crop of cannabis, but with a dozen or so seeds in each plant, all accessable. Could this be a future breeding technique, or just a way for people to make Some seeds without filling a crop with them... So now have many beans of Superskunk X vanilla, blueberry headband, lost coast OG, and, although the trimming like edward scissorhands is just begun, Im sure it will be in the bubba and superskunks too, the latter of which are almost violet they are so purp Here are 2 pics of the easily identifiable "prizes"
Good post, pics and observation. +Rep. This is just how I do my seeds for breeding. The pollinated pre flowers also seem to make *better* seeds than the pollinated buds if they are kept in flower and the male is still present. Here's the real happy news. Pollinated pre flowers will still develop viable, healthy seeds even if kept under a 18/6 vegetative light cycle. This was a little experiment I did sometime back. Someone had asked the question about pollinating pre flowers. I had 6 extra clones and my kid had grown a male. I give him the seeds when I need a male, he's 5 for 5 so far. Anyway, I put the 6 clones outside with the male and after he spewed I left 3 outside to flower and get more pollinated and brought 3 back in to the veg area. Actually, it was the clone area with T-12's. No HID's or even the T-5 HO's I use for veg. All the pre flower seeds developed perfectly, outside or under the T-12's. The outside plants that were left to flower and be pollinated further had their share of good seeds along with a sizable portion of white or poorly developed seeds. IDK why, perhaps because the buds were just starting to develop. Who knows? I really didn't care after how the pre flower seeds turned out. A pleasant surprise. Wet
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing! Wet, you say that the pre-flowers will develop viable, healthy seeds even if the plant is kept in veg? Wow. I am really interested in this. I would love to do some breeding but I just don't have the space to keep males and pollinated females isolated from my general flowering room. Just so I can be sure that I'm understanding correctly, would you mind reviewing this process: I could allow a male plant to flower in an isolated location and save the pollen. Then I could take the pollen and use a paint-brush to pollinate a girl who was just showing her pre-flowers. If I then allowed the female with the pollinated pre-flowers to flower, would I risk pollinating the other girls in the flower room? (I don't think so but I'd like to be sure) If I just kept the pollinated female in a vegetative state, she would actually develop viable seeds? This would be such an awesome way for me to actually do some breeding despite my space limitations . al k mist, thank you for sharing this, and also thanks to wet for sharing your experience.
Three things sorta came together at the same time. 1. Someone on another forum asked if pre flowers could get pollinated in veg. Lots of opinions but no real experience, just guesses. 2. I had some extra clones for a friends outdoor grow that never happened. I was just going to toss them. 3. My kid was growing a plant from seed for 'his' own. I've done nothing but clones for 3+ years, same strain. His plant was in my T-5 veg area. Looking good and taking up too much room in a 3 gallon container. It was this time of the year or a little later and got moved outside to flower. Couple weeks later it showed, 100% male. He was sad and wanted to kill it right away. I remembered the question from before, had extra clones and asked him to wait. Plus he could have the 3 clones left outside to flower. He was much happier then. All the clones were still in party cups, the male in a 3gal and much taller. All I did was arrange the party cups around the larger pot once it started releasing pollen. So, I don't know about the saving pollen and using a paintbrush on the pre flowers. I have done that before, just not this time. It was a real slap dash thing just to see what would happen. After 3 days I brought 3 clones back in under the 18/6. The other 3 were left outside and transplanted to 1 gallon pots after a week or so. My kid did that, so I'm not sure exactly when. They were in the vicinity of the male, but not right next to it. They were 'his' plants so I didn't mess with them. I just wanted whatever seeds came off. Ya know, if you're going o have the male in *an isolated spot* anyway and you had rooted clones going you wouldn't need to store anything. Just put the clones next to the male for a day or 2, or hold it above the clones and give the (open), flower branch a light tap or 3. Depends on the flowering of the male. We didn't let ours get to full flower and really dump the pollen. LOL, I know there are other outdoor growers in the vicinity, plus my own. Once the rooted clones are pollinated, just move them back to the veg area. Or flower them, your call. Kill the male. Wet
Hey wet, sorry I missed your response! I had a super busy weekend and wasn't paying much attention. Thanks for your input, I really do appreciate it! I am going to play around with this in the future and see what I can do. Thanks again
Those pre-flower seed are always larger and more robust than the others.If outdoors on an otherwise unpollinated plant, they need to be harvested as they ripen or else they will fall to the ground before the plant is finished maturing.
Thanks poppy! I'm planning on trying this out and doing some experimenting with some indoor plants but it's good to know that they mature before the plant does. I'm going to also try this while keeping the plants in a vegetative state. I don't see why I couldn't pollinate just the pre-flowers using a paint brush and some pollen, what do you think? That way I could save the pollen from the male and have it available to use at my own pace.
If you can keep the pollen alive then more power to you. It does need to be refrigerated, I know that much. In some hybrid strains the males and females planted at the same time are not in sync, and it's basically the only pistils that will get pollenated are the pre flowers. When the calyx starts to turn brown the seed is ripe.
I gotcha. I would love to be able to have the pollen available to use when I needed it, rather than having to keep a male alive. Maybe it would keep in the freezer. I'll have to do some research. It's definitely worth some experimenting. Thanks for the info!
Some people are successful at keeping males going from clones and keeping them from flowering out. I believe this depends largely on strain as well. I tried it years ago with Sk x NL keeping a male cutting at 18/6, and eventually it said enough and flowered out. It will be interesting to see if freezing the pollen will work. Jorge Cervantes has claimed to have kept pollen alive for over a year at 38F.
^^^^^That^^^^^ I've never had any luck keeping pollen alive no matter what I did. Was much easier keeping a male in veg. But I've also noticed, once they get started flowering, they keep on flowering till death regardless of the light cycle. Re-vegging ain't going to happen. Never did for me anyway. I happened to have a clone of my kids male simply because it looked so much like a female. Usually I can spot males in veg and treat accordingly. His plant fooled us and I took clones 'just in case'. I kept one, but never used it. I did use the seeds though for a cubing project. The next cross will be F3. I am using no females from the seed, just the males crossed back to a clone of the strain I've been running. Right now, it would get too confusing to mess with crossing any of the crosses. I want to get to 90% or so of the strain I'm running, perhaps in the F4 or F5 generation. There are no seeds for it, so all I can do is backcross until it's nearly 'pure'. Then start crossing the crosses and then go on to rule the universe. Wet
Yep, I've got big dreams of doing some outcrossing over the next years Wet. I've got hundreds of sativa seeds all mixed up. Leda Uno, Santa Maria, Panama Red, etc, and finding a real true male in any of them would probably take growing out hundreds at a time. My big dream is if I can find the heavier flowering Panama pheno and cross it with an SS Chronic male, then inbreed the hell out of the resulting cross.
Well I am just starting to look into cannabis breeding, although I have done plenty of tomato breeding . I would love to make my own crosses but I didn't think it was a viable option given my space limitations. Thanks to you gentleman I now know otherwise. First I have to get my hands on a male plant (usually it's the other way around, no?). I didn't think of just keeping a male in veg and then taking clones and flowering them when I needed the pollen (of course the easiest and most reasonable option eluded me). I don't have much information to contribute, but if you all have any information on breeding or tips that you would like to add or anything else I am all ears! Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction
First time I ever got high was off Panama Red. Had smoked before, but with no effect. 1967 or 68, when it was actually around (Miami). First joint,... nothing. The guy rolled another and 1/2way through that .......... I couldn't even start my truck for 4 hours. LOL One breeder mentioned (DJ Short? IDK) that sativa males onto indica females didn't work nearly as well as indica males onto sativa females. This was concerning primary crosses and just something that stuck in my mind. Naturally, my female is pure indica and the male, some hybrid (?). Not pure sativa for sure, not pure indica either. BTW, everything got chopped when the seeds were ripe. 5-6 weeks from pollination. Pissed my kid off, but I was more concerned with the seeds than buds. Wet
My Dad grew those old line sativas from the early 70's till the mid 90's when he got too sick to do it anymore. Immediately after he passed, someone did a B&E on his house and stole a lot of stuff, which also included the original bagseed Kush and lowland Afghani from bagseed as well. I took all that I could find, and have grown those sativas out several times over the years. Some are the most awesome tasting herb, like out of this world, and others not so much. Some of the Panamas' you'd swear have a deficiency but it's just the natural color of them. They can be almost canary yellow with purple leaf stems, and when they are finally ripe around Nov, the buds will be just as red/purple as anything you ever saw. The plants can get enormous, but like typical IBL sativas, they yield low per foot of stalk. My idea is to try and beef them up while retaining that "lost in time" flavor. Poppy Sr. also told me the same thing about it Wet. He said that the herb they got the seed from would take quite a bit to do the trick, but when the seeds of it were grown out domestically it produced a far superior product. My 1st time nabbing some bud from Dad and smoking it Halloween Night I was like 1 step from trippin balls !!
Wow,thanks for the responses. that is so awesome that there are so many others into breeding. When we were gifted a bunch of original superskunk beans that had been bred with itsself since the death of Jerry, and already had a sizable inventory and a distrust of corporations, the decision was made to breed, the goals set forth once the collective was up and running, but for various reasons (patients needing medicine to see them through a...to them... non-productive grow, and personal issues), it was decided to wait until after the fall crop and do it indoors over the winter. Well, round one was accomplished for us...thanks, mother nature. The moms still are vegging, and while there is not a huge selection, less than 50 of each, surely there will be a stand out male to breed back to each of the moms, at other places, since only one at a time could be bred Dude has a tahoe og male alive, and when the time is ripe for him to travel, he will bring a clone to the collective NOW...TO OTHER QUESTIONS A plant breeder in the non cannabis world has agreed to a non-species-specific discussion about other aspects of this field. Unfortunately, he will not take a retainer for his credentials to be used by us. Wet, when you mentioned the male indica to the female sativa, is there a specific reason for this?? which traits(cannabis wise) are passed from the paternal side? are some traits more dominant when they are on the male side of the equation? When breeding to get a bunch of seeds of xyz strain, because they like the way it grows and wants to preserve the genetics, one could take its clone, and a pollen donor of similar or desired traits, and pollinate, then find a male in those beans to grow out and pollinate back to the female, so it now has 75% (or 66%...im tired). of original genetics of that clone(and would be considered an f2, correct?), pollinating back to a clone of the same mom will increase the percentage of original genetics if one likes the cross, then starting the process fresh would stabilize that strain eventually Seed companies put out fems and F1 for a reason, I assume.
Wet, whatcha got working with that cubing project? My stepdad was a roadie in the 70's and 80's. I grew up on a lot of those old strains. Nothing like them around these days or at least I haven't found them. Panama red is one of my all time favorites. Gooey red sativa buds. We would roll a pin joint, smoke half, and go to the movies. Great high. Good luck Poppy. I would love to see something like that around again
AKM AFA the male indica on the female sativa, I think it was just an observation on the breeders part. I guess he did it both ways, sxi and ixs and it seemed both were landrace. This was several years back, but I'll see if I can find where I read it. Wet
Found it and it depends, apparently he does it both ways, but it's a long read, The Art of selection and breeding fine quality cannabis DJ Short Cannabis Culture Magazine, March 7, 2003 The art of selection and breeding fine quality cannabis | Cannabis Culture I really need a hard copy of this to really digest it. Wet