Nature or nurture?

I had a strange run where all dozen plants across two tents (from seeds from 4 different breeders) ALL hermied. All evidence points to the cause being an environmental issue.

My question is: Are the seeds that resulted more likely to hermie because they came by way of a hermie? Or could I simply have feminized seeds, assuming they were grown in a proper environment?

If i recall the only time you want a herm pollinated seed is when you revers a female with NO HERM traits..


But then again ive grown fire bagseeds lol

Someone smarter in this area then me will chime in

Cold$moke said:

If i recall the only time you want a herm pollinated seed is when you revers a female with NO HERM traits..


But then again ive grown fire bagseeds lol

Someone smarter in this area then me will chime in

Click to expand...

Certainly not smarter but was listening to potcast today and dude said the pros don't make fems out of hermie prone shit so your probably good if you were using reputable genetics

He was talking about testing by light stressing n shit to find the ones who were least herm prone prior to making seeds.

In your case it sounds like something went terribly wrong for a prolonged period which could herm just about anything. Especially since you were working with multi breeders.

But you can still get some males
Its a low percentage but it happens
When purchasing "fem" seeds.

Another dude was talking about that and saying he hates the term fem seeds because customers get irate when they end up with a male in a 5 pack.

Its all good ive been about as smart as a box of hair eversince last harvest ...i wonder why lol

charface said:

Certainly not smarter but was listening to potcast today and dude said the pros don't make fems out of hermie prone shit so your probably good if you were using reputable genetics

He was talking about testing by light stressing n shit to find the ones who were least herm prone prior to making seeds.

In your case it sounds like something went terribly wrong for a prolonged period which could herm just about anything. Especially since you were working with multi breeders.

But you can still get some males
Its a low percentage but it happens
When purchasing "fem" seeds.

Another dude was talking about that and saying he hates the term fem seeds because customers get irate when they end up with a male in a 5 pack.

Click to expand...

I'm not actually looking for fem seeds, I'm just hoping that if I take the time to pop and and grow them that I'll get healthy girls and boys -- those I can separate and work with. Hermies are just a PITA.

The truth is, I'm not 100% sure yet what the cause was of my epidemic. It was nothing to do with light, when the lights go out in the tents, they go out in the whole room, so there is no light to leak. From the various people who have tried to help me with this, the most likely cause was either too much nutes, too high pH, or a combination of the two. I did discover very late in the game that the city water came out of the tap around 6.5 and after sitting in a recycled food grade 55 gallon drum that I watered from, it rose to 8+ (no idea why). So high pH is a likely cause or at least influence.

Humanrob said:

I had a strange run where all dozen plants across two tents (from seeds from 4 different breeders) ALL hermied. All evidence points to the cause being an environmental issue.

My question is: Are the seeds that resulted more likely to hermie because they came by way of a hermie? Or could I simply have feminized seeds, assuming they were grown in a proper environment?

Click to expand...

Firstly WOW!
Ive always heard it to be true. But always assumed the opposite.
Had dozens of hermies outside over the years. But never due to environment. Was always my genes.
Never had one indoors with different seeds. Long hot summers, low humidity etc. Honestly dont think they would if i tried.
But at the same time i believe you

This is definitely a first for me.
Really puzzles me about two tents as well.

Temps / humidity, light cycles etc?
Was anything out of the ordinary for long?
Are they regular seeds? Or feminized / autos?

Seems if its 2 tents. Its a temperature and humidity thing.

Was it a veg tent, and flower tent? Or were both in flower?

Definate dicks and balls. On every single plant??

I have heard of a timer losing a tong or whatever so every morning at 3 am dudes lights were coming on for an hour.
It was the dude from dude grows shoe if i remember correctly.

Said it took forever to figure it out because he was always asleep when it happened.

Your seeds will prolly be mostly fems
And I would have no issue running them but your mileage may vary

Tim1987 said:

Firstly WOW!
Ive always heard it to be true. But always assumed the opposite.
Had dozens of hermies outside over the years. But never due to environment. Was always my genes.
Never had one indoors with different seeds. Long hot summers, low humidity etc. Honestly dont think they would if i tried.
But at the same time i believe you

This is definitely a first for me.
Really puzzles me about two tents as well.

Temps / humidity, light cycles etc?
Was anything out of the ordinary for long?
Are they regular seeds? Or feminized / autos?

Seems if its 2 tents. Its a temperature and humidity thing.

Was it a veg tent, and flower tent? Or were both in flower?

Definate dicks and balls. On every single plant??

Click to expand...

Interesting... I've NEVER had a hermie in an outdoor, and only had them indoors! This is why it's so hard to get to the bottom of anything!!! LOL

(Edited to clarify...)

They were both tents that were run veg through flower. There was some variation, but most grew 1-3 pairs of male flowers just below buds, midway up the stems. So some plants only made a dozen or so seeds. This run contained a mix of OGS, Greenpoint, and some F1's I crossed (although not from either of the previously mentioned breeders).

In the subsequent grow I had one full hermie from showing sex, it started out male on one side of the plant, female on the other -- that hermie was an OGS Double Diesel. I had one hermie after flower started, and that one hermied badly. It was an LSD (Mazar x Skunk) that I had grown outside with a lot of success the previous year. I've got a handful of seeds from that one... I just don't know what to do with them.

At this point I'm hoping to do only one winter indoor and a summer outdoor. In order to avoid the crop destroying crappy fall weather around here, I'm growing all autos outside this year. We'll see how that goes. But that leaves me with one 2x4 and one 3x3 for my winter indoor, and to feed my patient I need about 8oz from each tent, so I don't have a lot of space to experiment.

Tim1987 said:

Temps / humidity, light cycles etc?
Was anything out of the ordinary for long?
Are they regular seeds? Or feminized / autos?

Click to expand...

Sorry, I started rambling and didn't answer all your questions:

Temps and humidity were within normal, possibly the humidity was a little low.
Everything was just what I've been doing for years.
Seeds were regular, not feminized or auto.

Im confused because you talked about you making your own crosses.

So to be clear this time you had 2 tents with seeds from 4 breeders that are not known to have herm issues?

Anyway that is the information i was basing my response on

charface said:

Im confused because you talked about you making your own crosses.

So to be clear this time you had 2 tents with seeds from 4 breeders that are not known to have herm issues?

Anyway that is the information i was basing my response on

Click to expand...

Yes, I was testing some crosses I had made from a previous grow. They were untested F1's, so if those were the only ones that had hermied, I would have guessed 100% bad genetics and moved on. Other breeders seeds that hermied were regular seeds from OGS, Greenpoint and Hermetic Genetics. I can't blame any of those breeders, although I was surprised to find that both OGS and Greenpoint sell F1 crosses. I guess that's becoming normal or standard practice? I'm not an expert, I thought the idea was to bring a strain to IBL before you officially name it and actually charge money for them. I'm probably way off base on that. I scanned through the very long Greenpoint thread on RIU, and I did not see a lot of complaints about hermies.

Humanrob said:

Interesting... I've NEVER had a hermie in an outdoor, and only had them indoors! This is why it's so hard to get to the bottom of anything!!! LOL

They were both tents that were run veg through flower. There was some variation, but most grew 1-3 pairs of male flowers just below buds, midway up the stems. So some plants only made a dozen or so seeds.

In the subsequent grow I had one full hermie from showing sex, it started out male on one side of the plant, female on the other (a mix of OGS, Greenpoint, and some F1's I crossed (although not from either of the previously mentioned breeders)). I had one hermie after flower started, and that one hermied badly. It was an LSD (Mazar x Skunk) that I had grown outside with a lot of success the previous year. I've got a handful of seeds from that one... I just don't know what to do with them.

At this point I'm hoping to do only one winter indoor and a summer outdoor. In order to avoid the crop destroying crappy fall weather around here, I'm growing all autos outside this year. We'll see how that goes. But that leaves me with one 2x4 and one 3x3 for my winter indoor, and to feed my patient I need about 8oz from each tent, so I don't have a lot of space to experiment.

Click to expand...

Yep. Beats the shit out of me.

If you have been using seeds from a hermie.......

I will say.
DONT KEEP THE HERMIE SEEDS. They were my worst seeds EVER.
If i planted 10. 6/10 were probably hermies.
Worst seeds i ever, ever, ever had.
Honest truth

As far as im aware. For proper feminized seeds. You need two female clones. Flower one, spray colloidal silver. Collect the pollen.
Then put the 2nd clone into flower. Dust with the saved pollen from, the first clone. Harvest the seeds.
Then both chromosomes are female.

But a female seeding itself. Would not be a good idea at all. Because theres still a lot of male in those seeds. Hermaphrodites would probably be quite a common occurance.
Put it this way. I cant see it being 50/50 male to female. Any male genes, will probably be in a hermaphrodite, in this case.
But it is a guess. None the less.

I like my regular seeds. Not interested in feminized or auto in the slightest.
So with that said. Take what i say with a small grain of salt

Ill keep watching this thread so keep us posted if you figure it out.
Every time I think i understand this shit im wrong Lol

Hopefully one of the breeder types will show up clear it all up for us.

Tim1987 said:

I will say.
DONT KEEP THE HERMIE SEEDS. They were my worst seeds EVER.
If i planted 10. 6/10 were probably hermies.
Worst seeds i ever, ever, ever had.
Honest truth

Click to expand...

It's like we are in parallel but opposite universes...

When I started growing, a friend gave me some seeds but he couldn't remember what strain they were. We grew them outdoors and called them "Mystery" -- it became our favorite. I had taken a clone from one and grew it indoors in a closet (this was way back in the early days...) in summer and it was a hot grow, and it hermied. We were naive and excited to have more seeds since I had used up all the ones I had been given. We grew them successfully the following two years outdoors without a hermie, but then tried the last few indoors, and they all hermied.

I'll probably dump all the seeds. The bummer is I was selectively pollinating on this run, but since I had hermies in the tents I can't be sure any seed on the branches I pollinated were not pollinated by a hermie flower...

charface said:

Ill keep watching this thread so keep us posted if you figure it out.
Every time I think i understand this shit im wrong Lol

Hopefully one of the breeder types will show up clear it all up for us.

Click to expand...

I know what you mean, I thought I was at a point in my grow experience where I was just fine-tuning things, and then I everything went sideways.

This came up in a grow thread I had going before that ended out being almost totally about hermies >>>>>>>

OK folks, I'm going to sleep, I'll check back in the morning --

g'night all

Humanrob said:

It's like we are in parallel but opposite universes...

When I started growing, a friend gave me some seeds but he couldn't remember what strain they were. We grew them outdoors and called them "Mystery" -- it became our favorite. I had taken a clone from one and grew it indoors in a closet (this was way back in the early days...) in summer and it was a hot grow, and it hermied. We were naive and excited to have more seeds since I had used up all the ones I had been given. We grew them successfully the following two years outdoors without a hermie, but then tried the last few indoors, and they all hermied.

I'll probably dump all the seeds. The bummer is I was selectively pollinating on this run, but since I had hermies in the tents I can't be sure any seed on the branches I pollinated were not pollinated by a hermie flower...

Click to expand...

Far out "mystery" aye lol.
That does make more sense to me, tbh.
It still is pretty puzzling. But your post probably is the most logical answer.

My understanding is seeds from hermie pollen will either be female or hermie. I've grown out seeds from one plant that was pollinated by hermie pollen from another plant. No hermies in the few of them I grew out.