How Long to Determine if Pollination was successful?

Back story: I CS'ed out one of the females and everything went swimmingly as it produced pollen sacs in about it's 3rd week of flower. I did as all the tutorials said. I collected the pollen sacs, placed in an air-tight container, with a descciant gel pack. I took the pollen out some days later to extract the pollen from the sacs. This particular strain doesn't seem to like to "release" the pollen and I had read that you have to kind of get at the sacs to get the pollen in some strains. So I did, gently cutting and opening the bananas, and just tapping them onto the glass dish. I have what I believed to be perfectly good blondeish-yellowish pollen. I swabbed it up and did the "tap" method, visibily TONS of pollen fly onto flowers. I was very meticiulous and ensured they were getting covered.

Question: What's the max time for the pistils to start showing a change? I've ready anywhere from 1 to 4 days. I did this about 24 hours ago, and I see no noticable difference in the pistils color.

Give it 2-3 days and you should see the hairs begin to brown and receed into the calyx.... I typically repollinate about 5-7 days later, but is not necessary.

amgprb said:

Give it 2-3 days and you should see the hairs begin to brown and receed into the calyx.... I typically repollinate about 5-7 days later, but is not necessary.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. That puts me at a little ease.

Have you ever had pollen sacs that didnt seem like they wanted to release the pollen on their own? I'd say like maybe a couple out of 50 seemed to release pollen when removed from the plant. Most I had to bang a bit against the glass plate. I felt like it was good looking, yellow pollen.

Could I be pulling ot too early? Do you have any recommendations on when pollen becomes viable?

Do you do fems normally, or regular?

I do both fem and regulars.

You very well maybe pulling too early. I wait until the sacs are yellow and appear as though they will open very soon. Do a test on a few, thump a branch and watch them spring open. Then you will know what to look for.

I will harvest pollen for up to 7-10 days, collecting as much pollen daily as possible.

My first time collecting pollen, i was a bit to eager and did not wait long enough and was like you, having to force the pollen out. Let natures take its course and give your plant a few more days to mature, and you will see just how easy it is to collect large amounts easily.

amgprb said:

...
My first time collecting pollen, i was a bit to eager and did not wait long enough and was like you, having to force the pollen out. Let natures take its course and give your plant a few more days to mature, and you will see just how easy it is to collect large amounts easily.

Click to expand...

I really hope that's the case. Have you ever had a plant NOT produce viable pollen? No matter how long you waited? Or was it always a point of trying to harvest too early? Thank you so much for your replies. Been pulling my hair out!

When you say sacs, do you mean the sac holding the bananas right? I have plenty of open sacs, and exposed yellow to dark yellow bananas. They fall off with the gentlest of touch - making me think that they are beyond ripe.

Did you try to use the pollen you forced from the sacs to pollinate? Or did you just wait, and get new pollen before proceeding? If you used it, were you able to pull seeds from the pollen you had to force out?

I have other plants that are dropping pollen left and right. This one, which developed it's sacs first, seems to now be "behind" the others that are dropping pollen without a hitch.

^ I have had that happen a few times, some strains seem to really dislike giving up their pollen when hit with chemicals. You will also find the pollen from these plants to not be very fertile. So collect a lot and use a lot to get a handful of seeds.

Dubdeuce said:

I really hope that's the case. Have you ever had a plant NOT produce viable pollen? No matter how long you waited? Or was it always a point of trying to harvest too early? Thank you so much for your replies. Been pulling my hair out!

When you say sacs, do you mean the sac holding the bananas right? I have plenty of open sacs, and exposed yellow to dark yellow bananas. They fall off with the gentlest of touch - making me think that they are beyond ripe.

Did you try to use the pollen you forced from the sacs to pollinate? Or did you just wait, and get new pollen before proceeding? If you used it, were you able to pull seeds from the pollen you had to force out?

I have other plants that are dropping pollen left and right. This one, which developed it's sacs first, seems to now be "behind" the others that are dropping pollen without a hitch.

Click to expand...

I have always gotten viable pollen... My first few attempts were that i was trying to harvest to quickly i feel. Yes, when i used pollen from the premature nanners (that i forced out) i was still able to get seeds, though the amount of pollen was much less.

The open sacks are beyond mature, they still contain pollen but not as much as if you had harvested just prior to opening, as that is when it has the most.

What i do is collect those pollen sacks daily, place them in a jar out of direct light and with the lid off... Once i have collected enough (5-10 days, strain dependent) i will vigorously stir them with a small paint brush. You will see the jar will be filled with yellow powder at this point. I then "paint" the pollen onto the plant that i am using to make seeds with.

Thank you both kindly for your replies. I definitely have TONS of open sacs, however, zero pollen dropping naturally from this strain. There are literally like 50 sacs just chilling in the dirt below, that fell off on their own accord. Plenty that I collected, and was able to pull what I considered a decent amount of pollen from to dust almost every site. Going to hope I come out with at least a few out of it!

amgprb - I will let it continue to do what it does, and I will follow your steps of waiting/collecting more in hopes to get more mature sacs, or make use of what I can get. I have a feeling that this strain doesn't want to give up it's pollen, because I have a second strain that I started spraying AFTER this one, and it's totally spewing everywhere at this point, and the sac maturity level would be about congruent at this point, in the sense they are both browning/opening/showing nanners, etc.

I've had mixed results with pollination. I think that I was probably pulling nanners too early too, but I think also, that some of the pollen sacs were sterile. I've tried a couple plants which just would not give me pollen. Lots of sacs, some even had the yellow powder, but no seeds were produced from it.


OTOH, I harvested seeds yesterday on a different strain, so I know it works. Sometimes.

Michiganja Meduana said:

I've had mixed results with pollination. I think that I was probably pulling nanners too early too, but I think also, that some of the pollen sacs were sterile. I've tried a couple plants which just would not give me pollen. Lots of sacs, some even had the yellow powder, but no seeds were produced from it.


OTOH, I harvested seeds yesterday on a different strain, so I know it works. Sometimes.

Click to expand...

I'm starting to think I might be having the same issue with this plant.

The ones you had issues with, did you ever try a different plant of the same strain with success, or does it seem to be strain based?

Granted, it's only been 48 hours since I pollinated, so I'm sure I'm jumping the gun on my assumptions to some degree, but it's not looking very promising compared to the other CS'ed females that are dropping pollen like wild fire.

Dubdeuce said:

The ones you had issues with, did you ever try a different plant of the same strain with success, or does it seem to be strain based?
.

Click to expand...

I haven't got that nailed down yet honestly. I'm suspecting maybe, but I don't have a scientific way to prove it. I had tried to CS a Sugar Black Rose and a King Tutankhamun last winter, got all sorts of pollen sacs, but no powder. It was a first attempt at CS, and I was spraying the whole clone. It was about a foot tall when finished, and took forever. I now only spray the bud that I want to produce pollen.

I got another Sugar Black Rose seed, (oh shit that was good weed ) and I'm going to try for some pollen again, as I am really, really interested in breeding this one. I just hope I got the same pheno from this seed.

Michiganja Meduana said:

...
I got another Sugar Black Rose seed, (oh shit that was good weed ) and I'm going to try for some pollen again, as I am really, really interested in breeding this one. I just hope I got the same pheno from this seed.

Click to expand...

Sugar Black Rose's genetics were extremely stable/consistent with my experience as I've ran her a number of times from diff seeds.

Yeah, I did the exact same process to 2 different strains and like you said, I was spraying the whole plant. However, one plant is producing pollen that has no problem dropping from sacs, where the other one produced the sacs that I had to open to get pollen. I'm just really hoping I get at least ONE seed out of all that pollen I used.

In the future I will definitely only be spraying the bud sites themselves vs. the entire plant. Although I don't think that played a HUGE issue into it, I would obviously like my entire plant to not look like shit, lol.

My Sugar Black Rose

Ohhhh SBR. What a squatty little bitch she is. Haha. Is that the one you sprayed or is that a new one?

Thats my new one. Thank you Attitude Seeds. It was a freebie the first time, I happily ordered another. Just saw the first white root on two of her clones too.

Hey Dubdeuce, I have a problem.

Evetytime I grow a Sugar, right in the middle of veg, I have the hardest time with the bottom leaves dying and falling off. The plant looks pretty healthy as you can see, but this morning, leaves started dropping again. Here's a pic today, and the leaves that fell. I got them out of the trash can for the pic.


\

I gave it 5-5-5 with CaMg. Just to keep it going. Last time this happened, it was nearing the end of flowering. I thought it needed more P and K, so I gave it some, and she died on the vine.

You totally shouldn't be worried about yellowing leaves, even during veg. The lowest leaves are inevitably the first to go, because they will be getting the least amount of light. Did these come from near the bottom? The plant looks plenty healthy otherwise.

You get yellowing from 1 of three things - lack of water, lack of light, or lack of nutrition. Seeing the rest of the plant, I would wager it's fairly healthy and the lowest one's just weren't getting enough light. The plant knows which leaves are wasteful to it's production, and will drop them accordingly. In fact, without trimming upper canpoy fan leaves, nearly every indica/hybrid strain I've ever grown has lost leaves during veg - especially if you veg/flower larger plants. Smaller plants are easier to ensure maximum light penetration, and thus less leaf-fall off during veg.

I'd say she's beautiful.

ty.

Gotta be nutes. light is not an issue. thank goodness.