GroErr Grows...

Hey @Gquebed thanks for popping by, yeah I'd be the only game in town for the "albino" weed - lol

Thanks, the flower room is pretty pimped and easy to maintain. It only flowers weed, no storage or any other activities in there, makes it easy to keep it clean. I tied a vent into my HVAC after running a space heater in there before the room was built/finished, first hydro bill I saw made me very creative

I posted the step-by-step build of that room in the design section, a little overboard on some things but it'll last me for a while and it's nice to just focus on the grows vs. environmental issues
https://www.rollitup.org/t/diy-flower-room-w-pics-from-start-to-finish.833896/

Cheers

Almost done for the first batch, Day 49 & Day 27 shots from last night.

4-5 days left for most of them. The Blue Pyramid is pretty well done, nice and ripe, cloudy, the odd amber coming in towards the bottom. Will likely pull it Sunday night, got a good shot of the true colour showing some purple that always shows in the last week or so. All the 5gal plants have solid buds, some good weight in them. Got some bud shots of each strain, all these phenos generate some nice frost.

Group shots:



Blue Ripper Day 49:


Blue Pyramid Day 49:


JTR Day 49:


Blue Dream Day 27:


Harlequin Day 27:


Cheers

Finished picking through the F2 seeds from the Blue Ripper 2, indica-dom pheno mother. Ended up with ~75 of these to hunt through. Should be ready to start popping them about mid-December. A couple of greener one's but most are dark and fat, just the way I like'm



Cheers

Blue Pyramid came down last night, nicely ripe at Day 52, some amber coming in. 1.5 zips, maybe 2 in there, this stuff is so dense it's deceiving compared to any other strains I'm running. Looks like I may get a couple of the clones to root, took a while as I cut them a couple of weeks into flowering (first clones crapped out) but seeing some bumps on a couple of the clones. This one was bad with pythium during early veg, to the point I almost culled it so anything I get off it is a bonus. Glad I was able to save it as it's one of my favourite meds, incredible taste/smell and great indica body stone/couch lock when needed. I almost forgot until I noticed a small piece of tape I had put on a branch I pollinated, hit a few buds on one branch with the very stinky/blueberry Blue Ripper male, should be interesting to see what comes out of those seeds, could be some dank meds if they took



Cheers

hey bro,,, found ya... buds look great!! does that blue pyramid cure to a blue hue bud?? ive ran many many blue strains with no such luck,tryed low rez temps, room temps, longer veg,longer bloom, nutes etc...after several dif blue berrys,blue mystic,berry bomb, blue power, blue dream, and more.. why cant i get buds with real color? finally found a purple, purple#1 from dutch passion planted 2 both purple but they are not going to produce for shit..only 3 weeks into flower so guess we will see...

oh ive been spraying a few plants with the tiresias mist for 17 days now,,,out of 7 plants only 2 look like theyr getting male balls coming in...fingers crossed.....

TheChemist77 said:

hey bro,,, found ya... buds look great!! does that blue pyramid cure to a blue hue bud?? ive ran many many blue strains with no such luck,tryed low rez temps, room temps, longer veg,longer bloom, nutes etc...after several dif blue berrys,blue mystic,berry bomb, blue power, blue dream, and more.. why cant i get buds with real color? finally found a purple, purple#1 from dutch passion planted 2 both purple but they are not going to produce for shit..only 3 weeks into flower so guess we will see...

oh ive been spraying a few plants with the tiresias mist for 17 days now,,,out of 7 plants only 2 look like theyr getting male balls coming in...fingers crossed.....

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Hey, cheers, glad you popped by. Not really only the larger/top buds go purple, they dry/cure to a very dark colour but not really purple, beautiful colours on the vine though. It's genetics, like I can get more colour out of this one through the winter with lower lights-off temps, but it has to be in the genetics or it won't go purple imo. Maybe I'll get lucky with the cross and add some production to it, great strain but production sucks. Good luck on selfing those plants, that shit's expensive though for only 2 to take, hopefully you'll get more by the time they're done.

How do you go about pollinating your plants? Do you hit the lowers a few times a week? Do you dilute the pollen with flour?

DesertGrow89 said:

How do you go about pollinating your plants? Do you hit the lowers a few times a week? Do you dilute the pollen with flour?

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Hey @DesertGrow89 it depends on where/what I'm pollenating. One of 2 ways, but always the same method, collect and cut my pollen with flour (~3:1 to 4:1) mainly to pick up any moisture, brush it on the buds I want to pollinate using a small/flat art paint brush (I buy them at the dollar store). Only difference is if I'm doing it in a small tent and no worries about hitting other flowering plants I'll just pollinate the plants inside the tent and spray them down with water the next night just so there's no pollen flying around, that shit goes everywhere and travels far/fast. Only one application is needed, if the pollen is viable and you hit the buds somewhere around Day 17-21 of 12/12 (I go by strain and the maturity of the flowers), then you'll notice within a few hours that the hairs start to go brown/reddish, within 24 hours or so they start to recede/curl. The trick to getting quality seeds is to hit the buds when they've matured enough but not too long into flowering so they have at least 4-5 weeks to grow/mature the seeds, I recommend 5 weeks.

If I'm doing just a branch or two on plants that are in the main flower room, I pollinate the buds/braches I want outside the flower room or bring them in the tent if not in use, pollinate, let them sit for ~3 hours for the pollen to take, spray them well with water, let them dry off a bit and put them back into the flower room. I'll usually spray the pollinated branches with water again a day later to make sure no stray pollen gets spread around the flower room. That's the main caution, if you pollinate selective branches in your only flower room, you're risking pollinating other plants if you don't spray them down to keep stray pollen from spreading/pollenating your whole crop.

I've played around with different methods of processing/collecting the pollen. The key to viable pollen is to ensure that no moisture gets into it. I let the male flowers mature on the plant until they start releasing pollen, then cut one flower at a time starting with the most mature flowers (sometimes over a couple of days) and put them into a paper bag.. Once I've collected a few flowers I take the paper bag and a clean/dry plastic freezer bag into the garage so there's no pollen flying around the house. Take the flowers out of the paper bag and shake them vigorously into the plastic baggie. Then I sift that through a dollar store sifter to remove any plant material that may have fallen into the bag. Then immediately mix it with flour to pick up any remaining moisture. That goes into the fridge if I'm doing multiple day collections or planning to pollinate within a week or so, eventually I combine the batches into a single bag. For storage any longer than a week or two, I put the baggie into a mason jar, fill the jar with rice, and freeze it. imo, anything over 4-5 months for pollen is questionable for viability. For some projects like this Blue Ripper I'm keeping the male going by cloning it as I don't want to chance losing that male/pollen. Cheers.

Great post/advice Groerr.

GroErr said:

Then immediately mix it with flour to pick up any remaining moisture.

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I need to give that a try. I usually collect pollen directly in a small vial (like the ones used by some seed vendors), holding it under opened flowers, slide it around the anthers and wiggle a little. This gives me pure pollen (i.e. no plant material) but putting it in a vial directly doesn't allow it to dry very well so I need to keep the vial open for a week or longer. Will mix it with flower next time to see if I can reduce that time.

Sativied said:

Great post/advice Groerr.

I need to give that a try. I usually collect pollen directly in a small vial (like the ones used by some seed vendors), holding it under opened flowers, slide it around the anthers and wiggle a little. This gives me pure pollen (i.e. no plant material) but putting it in a vial directly doesn't allow it to dry very well so I need to keep the vial open for a week or longer. Will mix it with flower next time to see if I can reduce that time.

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Hey thanks @Sativied, hope you're well. This multi-step processing is a bit of work but I've also lost pollen to moisture which sucks even more! As you know it doesn't take much pollen but it has to be clean/dry, haven't had any issues with viability of flour-cut pollen. Cheers.

Wow thanks for taking the time to write that up. I read a post from uncle ben saying that he uses a 1:12 ratio (pollen:flour) and hits receptor branches a few times a week on a weekly basis. But you just said only one application is needed. Your method seems easier and less of a hassle. Perhaps I'll try both ways eventually. Also didn't know that females should be pollinated around week three, very useful post!

DesertGrow89 said:

Wow thanks for taking the time to write that up. I read a post from uncle ben saying that he uses a 1:12 ratio (pollen:flour) and hits receptor branches a few times a week on a weekly basis. But you just said only one application is needed. Your method seems easier and less of a hassle. Perhaps I'll try both ways eventually. Also didn't know that females should be pollinated around week three, very useful post!

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Cheers, no problem. I remember reading that in UB's post too, not sure why he does that, have never hit them more than once and only time I didn't get seeds was with some older 6 month frozen pollen, got less than a handful. Might be something to try with older pollen? Hmmm...

Couple of decent clones coming up, should be flipped by the weekend. One of each Blue Ripper pheno in 7gal's, vegged and trained for about 6 weeks now.. Trellised them and shaped them a bit, both are looking strong, should be a good run.




Cheers

ive always had problems keeping male pollen viable for long times...i put silica packets and flour or corn starch in but still viability only lasts a few months at best..which can be very troublesome wen u need the pollen for back crossing for stability...
if your using coildal silver spray to get pollen, how many days do u spray flowers? not quite sold on this mist yet,,maybe i should have stuck w/ making the silver spray myself..idk

TheChemist77 said:

ive always had problems keeping male pollen viable for long times...i put silica packets and flour or corn starch in but still viability only lasts a few months at best..which can be very troublesome wen u need the pollen for back crossing for stability...
if your using coildal silver spray to get pollen, how many days do u spray flowers? not quite sold on this mist yet,,maybe i should have stuck w/ making the silver spray myself..idk

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Yeah I've pretty well settled on 5 months maximum for pollen viability. For the one's I want to keep I'll keep them going through cloning so I can generate fresh pollen as needed, it can take months and months to find the next pheno worth pollenating. I've never done selfing, haven't really had anything worth selfing, but I may just do these 2 Blue Ripper phenos as a back-up so I'm interested to see if that spray works as advertised.

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!







Cheers,
Mo

Hey Mo, nice treats for after gorging on turkey! Happy thanksgiving to you and all the folks south of the border, I'm still full from ours in October

While our US folks were getting fat on turkey I was pulling some nice fat and solid buds out of the flower room

The Blue Pyramid was pulled at Day 52, these 2x Blue Ripper and 1x JTR at Day 55 below. I had turned off the IR light about 2 weeks into this run as I wasn't pleased with the results over a couple of runs. I maintained the 630/660nm for 10 minutes before lights on as I had good results with those prior to adding the 730nm at lights off. I also maintained the 12.5/11.5 schedule for the CMH lights. The buds on all of these are rocks, just solid and they're very dry when I pulled them so it's not that they're holding a lot of moisture (you can see the one Blue Ripper is a bit droopy as it was more than ready for water). I'd be cautious adding 730nm with these CMH lights, not looking good unless I was doing something wrong. Will be leaving them off for now.

Here's the 2x Blue Ripper (one large/one small at bottom/front) and JTR at the back.


JTR turned out to be a nice haul, those two outside colas have thick stems but are still bending out under the weight, nice. One of the smaller colas at the back has some back-crossed Blue Ripper seeds





Larger Blue Ripper, buds are the same, nicely matured and frosty:





Cheers

Beautiful work as always GroErr
Love the Blue Ripper

BobBitchen said:

Beautiful work as always GroErr
Love the Blue Ripper

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Cheers and thanks Bob, can't wait to see what the new indica-leaning pheno pulls with some training, looking very strong. I'm favouring this new pheno for smell and taste, very blueberry/sweet after some cure. They'll be loaded tonight