Outdoor : Keeping a male growing long enough to harvest pollen

So I'm busy sexing out my 7 week outdoor plants by way of pre-flowers. I am selecting females to grow for the duration of my Southern hemisphere outdoor season - 12/12 is beginning March - bud harvest is end May 2023.

This morning I found my 1st confirmed male, and it is seed from an unknown sativa mother which produced some good buds last harvest. A very nice clear and light headed trippy buzz that is worth sustaining.

I want to cross this little guy with my two 'commercial identified strains' I have on the go for the same grow season. Both are feminised seeds from growbanks.

- Durban Poison (South American supplier)
- Dirty Banana (South Africa supplier)

I know that I can't predict exactly what that breeding will produce, but the parent lineage looks promising for some funky results. Maybe I'll get lucky with some wildcard hybrid vigour, and it can't hurt none to roll the dice. At the very least I'll get some decent enough seeds for future grows and buddy bartering.

I'm looking for experienced hints and tips and advice on how to nurture this one male through to pollen production ... but in the most minimal size and also with the least effort.

#1 I know is to keep the guy away from the gals.

I'll find a foster parent to keep him growing at least an unmetricated mile or two away. Hence my also with the least effort requirement. The custodian won't be an experienced grower.

#2 Can I keep him stunted ?

How much of him can I top or prune off to keep his size down to just one or two branches ?
How and when should I prune ?
What pot size minimum should I use ?

I need to keep him just happy and healthy enough to make a quarter teaspoon of his yellow pixie dust - just enough to pollinate maybe 2 buds x 2 plants.

He has already been topped at node 5.

#3 Do I need to worry about nutrition ?

I've got some excellent organic living soil, and a few lactobacillus ferment extracts:
- dandelion
- thistle
And a steeped:
- lawn grass and 10% urine

That I can give to my plant custodian, to be watered weekly, 1 teaspoon to a gallon, alternate weeks.

And some homemade earthworm castings for a top dress, once end January, and once start of 12/12.

As long as the pants stay alive, that should be good enough for pollen production, shouldn't it?

I presume it's not like maximising females for icky sticky big dense bud.

- - -

Oh, and I should be okay pollinating feminised seeds, won't I?

I'm not trying to breed anything stable, just pullin' the handle on the slot machine to see what I get out from lady luck.

Yes, you can definitely stunt a male to keep it small, use small pots, trim roots, and chop branches. If you do too much, you won't end up with much pollen though, so be careful! Using fresh pollen that has just dropped is easier to manage than dry pollen too. It doesn't fly around everywhere right after it has dropped, so you can collect it, and pollinate your selections without worrying about pollinating every pistil on the plant-you can use a little paint brush, like a watercolor brush, or even a q-tip. I like to wrap sort of a funnel around a pollinated branch with tin foil once I think it's close to dropping, then if the pollen drops, it drops right into the funnel and falls to the bottom, where the tin foil is mashed up against the branch. Then I cut the branch below the funnel, take the entire thing out and open up the bottom of the funnel over something to collect the pollen-if that makes sense. It's just one way to manage pollen out of a million. Good luck!

Rurumo said:

trim roots

Click to expand...

Great! Thanks.
That's the kind of new info I hadn't found in any searches, or thought about yet.

So based on that, I'll do one or more branch prunes and a gentle root trim between end December and mid Feb.

I'll make sure to finish with any stress stuff by end Feb, and have him in his final pot a week or two before outdoor sun 12/12.

Then give him a clear run into flowering without messing him about once that starts.

New question:

If I wanted to keep him here in my same yard as my girls for a while longer

Can I cut his balls off as nanners appear ?

Or will that

a) stress him out

b) expose my ladies to too much chance of pollination because it's hard to get them all, and there is too much chance I will miss one by accident

TaoRich said:

New question:

If I wanted to keep him here in my same yard as my girls for a while longer

Can I cut his balls off as nanners appear ?

Or will that

a) stress him out

b) expose my ladies to too much chance of pollination because it's hard to get them all, and there is too much chance I will miss one by accident

Click to expand...

I cut off the branches with male flowers, and allowed them to finish in a glass of water indoors. Males flower quite quickly

TaoRich said:

New question:

If I wanted to keep him here in my same yard as my girls for a while longer

Can I cut his balls off as nanners appear ?

Or will that

a) stress him out

b) expose my ladies to too much chance of pollination because it's hard to get them all, and there is too much chance I will miss one by accident

Click to expand...

Yes you can.. what i do is watch the ball as they grow(crush one that looks like it will pop soon and see if its ready) and when they are about to bust i chop them off and put them in a ziploc bag or jar.. they will pop open in the bag.. then i use a q-tip /cottonswab and lightly touch the hairs on the selected sites you want seeded.. i used a jar this season .. as you can see i only had a few balls i used.. no big pile of pollen is needed to get hundreds of seeds.

Thanks @Boatguy & @farmerfischer

More good ideas to add into my thinking. For safety's sake, I might prefer to get it the hell way from the rest of my females before it knocks them up and gives me seeds on all of them.

I'll probably 'bonsai' it with a root trim and branch prune, but let it grow its nanners at a mate's spot.