Hermies and how to find them

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ilikecheetoes

Well-Known Member
In all my grows if you search long and hard enough I can usually find a bean or 2. My last couple runs I've found more than a couple beans.
How do you find the hermie to kill it?
There's definately no males in the house.
I grow SOG so by the time the sex shows the tray is pretty full. I dont look at each plant individually and check each bud site. Never needed to before.

Whats the best way to track down the hermie? I assume its not my mothers because they wouldnt be putting out any pollen even if they hermied because they are always in 18/6, right?
 
D

dopeboi69

Member
the only way to "find" a hermie is to actually find it. you gotta check each and every bud site. You could have a mother that is unstable and is prone to herm or you could be stressing your plants just enough to make those seeds develope. but that depends on many many factors of course. I'd try feminized seeds or clones that you know will produce great bud. After all, growing sinsemilla weed should be your ultimate goal if you want the best bud. just my 2 cents, good luck bro
 
C

CC Dobbs

Well-Known Member
You can put a wanted add in the San Francisco Chronicle. You can find lots of feminized things there. Maybe a couple hermaphodites too.
 
I

ilikecheetoes

Well-Known Member
What week roughly does polination occur? Can it occur any time between showing sex and chopping? How long does it take for a bean to actually grow? a day? A week?
I need to find some pics of hermies and males. Its been 10 years since I sexed a plant.
 
Pipe Dream

Pipe Dream

Well-Known Member
The hermies can show up at anytime. They could be easy to find or sometimes pretty much impossible because they are inside the buds. Once the calyx is pollinated it will begin to swell and the pistols will receed. After that it takes 3-6 weeks for the seed to fully mature.
 
Trousers

Trousers

Well-Known Member
Instead of finding your "hermies" why don't you figure out what you are doing to cause stress to make the plants throw male flowers?
 
Punk

Punk

Well-Known Member
ilikecheetoes said:
What week roughly does polination occur? Can it occur any time between showing sex and chopping? How long does it take for a bean to actually grow? a day? A week?
I need to find some pics of hermies and males. Its been 10 years since I sexed a plant.
Click to expand...
Hey,

When they turn herm, you will rarely be able to remove it without contaminating the rest of the grow. But normally you'll see it happen about week three, just as you think your buds are looking pretty nice and starting to stink and trich up,..then BOOM.

If you're growing bagseed, it's almost a certainty that it will hermaphrodite. The seed was formed from a hermaphrodite, with only very few exceptions.
 
Guitar Man

Guitar Man

Well-Known Member
Trousers said:
Instead of finding your "hermies" why don't you figure out what you are doing to cause stress to make the plants throw male flowers?
Click to expand...
His plants could throw out some balls/nanners without any stress. He's only getting a couple of seeds in his grow.
 
Guitar Man

Guitar Man

Well-Known Member
ilikecheetoes said:
In all my grows if you search long and hard enough I can usually find a bean or 2. My last couple runs I've found more than a couple beans.
How do you find the hermie to kill it?
There's definately no males in the house.
I grow SOG so by the time the sex shows the tray is pretty full. I dont look at each plant individually and check each bud site. Never needed to before.

Whats the best way to track down the hermie? I assume its not my mothers because they wouldnt be putting out any pollen even if they hermied because they are always in 18/6, right?
Click to expand...
Are all of your plants the same strain?
 
I

ilikecheetoes

Well-Known Member
not the same strains. Thats one of my issues right now. Im in the process of thinning back down to one strain. Multiple strains on one tray is a nightmare.
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
ilikecheetoes said:
In all my grows if you search long and hard enough I can usually find a bean or 2. My last couple runs I've found more than a couple beans.
Click to expand...
Honestly, that's not so bad. Personally, I wouldn't get bent out of shape over a dozen beans spread out over many plants.

How do you find the hermie to kill it?
Click to expand...
Not easy at all. What you have to do is literally go over every single bud in your entire growroom with a hand-lens looking for them. Even THEN they may not be so easy to spot.

Here's a few male "bananas" I noticed coming into the last week or two of my recent Williams Wonder grow. See them? There is one cluster dead center in the image, with one or two "tips" also barely visible on the right tucked away inside the bud.

I was actually inspecting for bud rot with a lens, when I found these. Fortunately, in this case the plant was chopped and curing before these even got close to actually dropping pollen and there were zero ceeds. But even staring you right in the face, I think these can be tough to see, plus they can grow on the inside of flowers making them virtually impossible to find. Without a lens, I probably never would have observed them.




I grow SOG so by the time the sex shows the tray is pretty full. I dont look at each plant individually and check each bud site. Never needed to before.
Click to expand...
Maybe you did "need" to. . .you just didn't. In any case, if this is bothering you it seems like you need to now.

Whats the best way to track down the hermie? I assume its not my mothers because they wouldnt be putting out any pollen even if they hermied because they are always in 18/6, right?
Click to expand...
If you are only getting 1-2 ceeds its theoretically possible that you're getting contamination from outside pollen from someone ELSES grow. . .though this is fairly unlikely.

Its still possible for plants under 18-6 to put out male flowers, I think, though if your mom had male flowers on it you'd probably notice, especially when taking clones, so that's also highly improbable.

I don't think there are any shortcuts here. If you want to find hermies, you have to look for them. . .carefully. Obviously you try to reduce environmental stress as much as you can, but presumably you're already doing that. I can say is that based on the ceed maturity you might be able to guesstimate when in the flowering cycle the hermies started dropping pollen so that might be a clue.
 
Jogro

Jogro

Well-Known Member
ilikecheetoes said:
What week roughly does polination occur? Can it occur any time between showing sex and chopping? How long does it take for a bean to actually grow? a day? A week?
I need to find some pics of hermies and males. Its been 10 years since I sexed a plant.
Click to expand...
There are plenty of them on the internet. I just posted one for you to show how hard they can be to find.

Note that there are different "types" of male flowers. True genetic males usually put out grape-like clusters of round pollen sacs that people call "balls".

Female plants "can" put of male flowers like this, but far more often, what you will see are what have been termed "bananas"; they're small curved flowers that I think look a bit more like string beans or something like that, which will appear as single flowers, or small clusters smack in the middle of normal buds. Again, these can be very easy to overlook (see my image, above for one example).

I think it takes at least a week for developing male flowers to actually open up and drop pollen, and probably closer to two weeks.

Than it takes 4-6 weeks for pollinated female pistils to actually produce large dark viable ceeds, though obviously they're immature along the way, smaller, and green in color.

So between the first observable appearance of a male flower and the earliest ceed you're actually going to be able to perceive as such is probably 2-3 weeks.

Edit
What week "can" fertilization occur? It can occur any time pollen hits a viable flower. So once flowers form and get some maturity, they can be fertilized, theoretically possibly as early as your second week of flowering if there were male pollen around in the air. In practice, it probably takes 3 weeks or so for male flowers to be established, drop pollen, then fertilize female ones. On the other end, once the "hairs" in a flower turn brown, I think its too late for fertilization for THAT flower, but most plants still contain some number of viable flowers really until harvest or nearly so.
 
Guitar Man

Guitar Man

Well-Known Member
Jogro said:
Honestly, that's not so bad. Personally, I wouldn't get bent out of shape over a dozen beans spread out over many plants.


Not easy at all. What you have to do is literally go over every single bud in your entire growroom with a hand-lens looking for them. Even THEN they may not be so easy to spot.

Here's a few male "bananas" I noticed coming into the last week or two of my recent Williams Wonder grow. See them? There is one cluster dead center in the image, with one or two "tips" also barely visible on the right tucked away inside the bud.

I was actually inspecting for bud rot with a lens, when I found these. Fortunately, in this case the plant was chopped and curing before these even got close to actually dropping pollen and there were zero ceeds. But even staring you right in the face, I think these can be tough to see, plus they can grow on the inside of flowers making them virtually impossible to find. Without a lens, I probably never would have observed them.





Maybe you did "need" to. . .you just didn't. In any case, if this is bothering you it seems like you need to now.


If you are only getting 1-2 ceeds its theoretically possible that you're getting contamination from outside pollen from someone ELSES grow. . .though this is fairly unlikely.

Its still possible for plants under 18-6 to put out male flowers, I think, though if your mom had male flowers on it you'd probably notice, especially when taking clones, so that's also highly improbable.

I don't think there are any shortcuts here. If you want to find hermies, you have to look for them. . .carefully. Obviously you try to reduce environmental stress as much as you can, but presumably you're already doing that. I can say is that based on the ceed maturity you might be able to guesstimate when in the flowering cycle the hermies started dropping pollen so that might be a clue.
Click to expand...
If you go over your buds with a good flashlight, the nanners will stick out and be seen, even if the buds are full of resin/trichomes. I also use a flashlight when looking for balls on the nodes. Also, if a nanner breaks open within a bud that is maturing, I don't think the pollen will get very far because the sticky trics are surrounding the nanner. Balls are a different story; those little bastards break open on the nodes, and pollen will blast out underneath your canopy.
 
Guitar Man

Guitar Man

Well-Known Member
ilikecheetoes said:
not the same strains. Thats one of my issues right now. Im in the process of thinning back down to one strain. Multiple strains on one tray is a nightmare.
Click to expand...
I grow more than 1 strain in my closet, but I only grow 2-3 plants. Strain is important, because finding a Herm could be related to a specific strain in your grow, rather than a stress issue.
 
TMG Genetics

TMG Genetics

New Member
You can see some hermies in this video starting at 1:15 (the bananas). This is Herijuana IBL and KO Kush F4, no stress at all. The KO is fire, the Herijuana, save your money cause it's one hermying bitch.
[video=youtube;JXp1I6xWASY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXp1I6xWASY[/video]
 
V

Vincent VonBlown

New Member
b8.PNG. You can force almost any female to produce some type of sex reversal. Some of the plants towards the end will naturally produce some type of male appendage. Some will only have dead pollen, no matter how you stress them. Like the Thunderstruck clone, pictured above. We tried to make it herm, but no matter what you do. The best you get is a few pollen sacs with dead pollen.
 
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ilikecheetoes

Well-Known Member
ok just took this one down. crap plant. big bud supposedly but it came from clone queen with 27 others that were all supposed to be big bud and there were at least 6 different/strains phenos.
never seen this many ceeds in my grow history.. Now im worried i have a nasty herm somewhere.
Problem is a have a perpetual with 6 tray with 28 plants per tray all about a week apart. So thats a lot of magnifing glass time... bleh.
hoping its just this one plant or this tray that had the herm.

Lets play wheres waldo for balls/nanners: winner gets rep? lol






 
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ilikecheetoes

Well-Known Member
checked 2 other pants i just took down from the same tray and they have no seeds. Hopefully this was the herm. I wonder how much it spread its semen across my room.
 
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