When do males start releasing pollen? How to control it?

Roger A. Shrubber said:

there's a lot of variation. just like in female flowering, you may have a good idea of when it's going to happen, but there are no guarantees.
just have to watch the sacks. you don't have to wait for them to open fully, you can take them just before they're about to burst, and store them in a sealed jar with some desiccant.after giving them a few days to dry out, you should be able to pop them and use a paint brush to apply the pollen to the buds you want pollinated. i've found it works best for me if i wait till about the third week of flower, when the females buds are still a little whispy, but the stamens are starting to get well developed

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eyderbuddy said:

Hey everyone, i've never really thought about making seeds before, but my CBD reg seeds all turned out to be male. Soooo, i killed the males i didn't like and kept the best looking one, and i'd like to save the pollen to pollinate a few branches.

So i'd like to know when does it start releasing pollen? Any ideas? I'ts been flowering for 11 days now, and i'm thinking of taking it into a separate room before it starts opening up. Because i don't want to pollinate the whole grow, just a few branches.

Any comments would be helpful really. Also can anybody guide me through the pollinating process as i've never really done it before? Like, when to pollinate? Which branches should i pollinate? How to save and store pollen?

I've done a bunch of reading and it sounds pretty basic, but i'm sure some of you in here are experts at it and have a few tricks up your sleeve.

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OldMedUser said:

I cut off the tops of some branches and put them in a glass of water so they drape over a sheet of tinfoil with a 2700K CFL over them with a timer set to 12/12. The pollen and dead flowers fall onto the foil for collection and I do that in my bedroom closet far from the girls.

To pollinate a branch on a plant remove the plant from the grow room, put a big garbage bag over the plant so just the lower branch you wish to pollinate sticks out. Then use a little paint brush or q-tip to dust the buds. Leave it sit over night then spray the bag, branch etc with water to deactivate any loose pollen, remove bag and put her back in the flowering room.

If the rest of the buds on the plant are ready for cropping before the seeds are splitting out of their calyxes you can harvest the ripe buds and just leave that branch on the plant until the seeds are ready. Pollinating at 3-4 weeks flower is what I aim for and seeds can take up to 6 weeks to be ripe so with short flowering strains the rest of the buds may be ready before the seeds are.

I did not follow my own advice the last grow and got pollen everywhere which cost me big in yield and potency so don't be a dummy like I was!

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xtsho said:

Good looking male.

@OldMedUser method is spot on. Follow that and you'll be just fine. I had the same thing happen to me. I popped four seeds and the CBD God turned out to be a male. I didn't realize I had gotten regular seeds. So I ended up crossing it with a White Widow, Night Nurse, and Critical Kush that were fems and freebies. Added three more crosses to my collection that I don't know when I'll get to growing any of. I'm swimming in seeds. I make seeds every grow. It's an addiction. Once you start you can't stop.

You can move that plant anytime. Just make sure it gets decent light.

This thread has some good info https://www.rollitup.org/t/seed-production-a-tutorial.20319/

Good luck.

This ^^^^^^

That's basically how I do it as well. I prefer a small paintbrush over a q-tip but either will work. I've also started pollinating entire smaller plants for making seeds and just let them go until the seeds are literally falling out of the buds. By small I mean SOG size.

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OldMedUser said:

I've done that too with small plants and will be doing it in the near future as well. Making my own silver nitrate and sodium thiosulfate so I can make silver thiosulfate to make fem seeds from a pure CBD plant crossed with my fave regulars. Figured out my Beam test with a trial run so I can test offspring for CBD as that's what I plan on growing most of is CBD strains.

Ignore the printing on the plastic shot glass. That's a sample of one of the CBD crosses I have showing a positive reaction for CBD. It wasn't decarbed but I have 5 samples prepared to do a comparison test and 1 sample is a non-CBD strain to see what happens with it.

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OldMedUser said:

I cut off the tops of some branches and put them in a glass of water so they drape over a sheet of tinfoil with a 2700K CFL over them with a timer set to 12/12. The pollen and dead flowers fall onto the foil for collection and I do that in my bedroom closet far from the girls.

To pollinate a branch on a plant remove the plant from the grow room, put a big garbage bag over the plant so just the lower branch you wish to pollinate sticks out. Then use a little paint brush or q-tip to dust the buds. Leave it sit over night then spray the bag, branch etc with water to deactivate any loose pollen, remove bag and put her back in the flowering room.

If the rest of the buds on the plant are ready for cropping before the seeds are splitting out of their calyxes you can harvest the ripe buds and just leave that branch on the plant until the seeds are ready. Pollinating at 3-4 weeks flower is what I aim for and seeds can take up to 6 weeks to be ripe so with short flowering strains the rest of the buds may be ready before the seeds are.

I did not follow my own advice the last grow and got pollen everywhere which cost me big in yield and potency so don't be a dummy like I was!

Click to expand...

xtsho said:

Good looking male.

@OldMedUser method is spot on. Follow that and you'll be just fine. I had the same thing happen to me. I popped four seeds and the CBD God turned out to be a male. I didn't realize I had gotten regular seeds. So I ended up crossing it with a White Widow, Night Nurse, and Critical Kush that were fems and freebies. Added three more crosses to my collection that I don't know when I'll get to growing any of. I'm swimming in seeds. I make seeds every grow. It's an addiction. Once you start you can't stop.

You can move that plant anytime. Just make sure it gets decent light.

This thread has some good info https://www.rollitup.org/t/seed-production-a-tutorial.20319/

Good luck.

This ^^^^^^

That's basically how I do it as well. I prefer a small paintbrush over a q-tip but either will work. I've also started pollinating entire smaller plants for making seeds and just let them go until the seeds are literally falling out of the buds. By small I mean SOG size.

Click to expand...