Closet Breeding for Dummies

Just wanted to make a quick guide for people wishing to make their own crosses. It's quite easy and rewarding to grow a plant from seeds you create IMO.

1. First, obviously, you need a male and a female plant. In closet grows you usually have a very limited number of plants so I won't go into selection of which plants to choose for breeding. You just have to take what you get and hope for the best.

2. Assuming you've sexed your plants the next step is to seperate the male(s) from the female(s). The male plant can be chopped down quite a bit in size and even tied/wadded up into a ball to make it smaller if necessary. It only takes a small bit of pollen so there is no use growing a full-sized male unless you have the room to spare. So after taking the male and compacting him down a bit you can throw him in a box or rubbermaid container with a CFL or two just to keep him going. They generally start to drop pollen about 2 to 2.5 weeks into flowering so you only need to keep it alive for a short while. When pollen (yellowish or golden powder) starts to drop, collect some into a baggie or some other container and you'll almost be ready for some plant porn. The male has served its purpose and can now be trashed.

3. Turn off the fans in your grow room and leave them off for about a day to keep from blowing pollen everywhere. Now it may be a good idea to remove your female from the grow area for pollination but it's not absolutely necessary. There will be that much less of a chance of stray pollen if you do it outside the growroom.

4. Finally, take your container of pollen and using a make-up brush or something similar lightly brush a bud or two on the female plant with pollen. The deed has now been done and your female is ready to go back under the light and continue budding. Within a day or two you will notice that the hairs on the pollinated buds will start to turn brown and shrivel up just like a plant late in flowering. That is a sign that things are going the way they should. Usually, the calyxes will start to split open exposing the seeds when they are mature. If you allow the plant to finish flowering normally, your seeds should be ready by harvest time.

You can pollinate different buds on the female with pollen from different males. Keep track of which buds you pollinated with which pollen and you can make several different crosses on the same plant.