Male Flowers - The basics of LST/defoliations (+Pollen Harvest)

[Lester Freeman]

In this thread I will illustrate what the onset of male flowering looks like, as well as what it looks like to fully flower a male and harvest it's pollen for future storage and selective pollination, as well as explore the plant reactions to Low Stress Training and vigorous defoliations.
Specific things about the grow: These 2 plants were grown inside a small closet,ultimately using two 55 watt CFL's (2700 K) and two 23 watt CFL's (5500 K) as specified in my first journal here on 420 Magazine: First Journal - Ghetto Closet Grow. I also used the "hardyness" of the males to practice the basics of Low Stress Training in combination with strict vegetative defoliations.

Showing the defoliation/LST

After the re-growth

Repeated defol/LST after re-growth + new re-growth

The onset of flowering, we have the limbs stretching, and starting to show the formation of pollen sacks at internodal points

The male flowers

To harvest the pollen, we can cut off branches and place them into a glass of water, and tap the dust onto a plate,etc and collect, make sure to keep the pollen dry and in air-tight container, and can be stored in the freezer for 1-2 months (does not last long!)

That's it! Start to finish. Now you can start your own breeding project whenever you want!

 

[KingJohnC]

Good documentation! How many days did it take from when you first saw pollen sacks forming to when they began to open?

 

[Ascended Master Kief]

Very neat to see a male grown to fruition.

 

[Lester Freeman]

Good documentation! How many days did it take from when you first saw pollen sacks forming to when they began to open?

KJC,
Between the time I first saw pollen sacks forming, and when they began to open was about 6-7 days.

Very neat to see a male grown to fruition.

Indeed

 

[c526]

book-marked for future reference

thanks relaxed

 

[Lester Freeman]

book-marked for future reference

thanks relaxed

Awesome!

 

[c526]

as someone who has never seen male pollen in person, does it have a "keif" type of texture?? powdery? or is it "sticky?

with what you collected, how much pollinating could be done??

if you had a shitty neighbor, could a guy plant a male in his yard and infect the whole neighborhood??

 

[Lester Freeman]

as someone who has never seen male pollen in person, does it have a "keif" type of texture?? powdery? or is it "sticky?

with what you collected, how much pollinating could be done??

if you had a shitty neighbor, could a guy plant a male in his yard and infect the whole neighborhood??

Pollen is actually some of the finest powder I have ever seen or touched. It is so finely particulated that it almost appears "slippery". It is so fine it will embed itself into the pores of your fingers. With the amount of pollen I collected, I could have pollinated many entire plants, it does not take very much pollen to pollinate. Because it is so finely powdered, this allows it to fly through the air with ease, and depending on which way the winds blowing, pollen can travel for a surprisingly far distance.

 

[Ascended Master Kief]

Pretty dang cool, Lester. Wanting to expiriment myself now with male plants.

 

[trichomes]

Trichreps awarded, just keep that pollen from blowing towards the "shores"

 

[BigIrishDoode]

I came up with a simplified way to collect the pollen, I supercrop the main stalk so it lays horizontally over a pan tray. a cookie sheet works well ,lined with waxed paper, every day I take a pencil and tap along the stem making pollen fall on the waxed paper I collect the pollen into a container to finish drying, it's also a good idea to keep this male in another room with fans or drafts, I also trim off all the fan leaves that are on the side that's facing the collection tray, this way pollen does not land on them and get stuck.
You can also do this by laying the container/pot the plant is in on it's side,but this tends to be messy and difficult to water.

 

[Lester Freeman]

I came up with a simplified way to collect the pollen, I supercrop the main stalk so it lays horizontally over a pan tray. a cookie sheet works well ,lined with waxed paper, every day I take a pencil and tap along the stem making pollen fall on the waxed paper I collect the pollen into a container to finish drying, it's also a good idea to keep this male in another room with fans or drafts, I also trim off all the fan leaves that are on the side that's facing the collection tray, this way pollen does not land on them and get stuck.
You can also do this by laying the container/pot the plant is in on it's side,but this tends to be messy and difficult to water.

Thanks for chiming in there BID!

Yeah, I definitely left out some details in terms of collection. Your idea is good because it can be tedious and annoying to collect pollen sometimes.

 

[c526]

hey relaxed,

could you take that pollen and apply it to autoflowering plants?? say,waste a plant for a hundred seeds??

 

[Lester Freeman]

Sure, why not! You would dilute the autoflowering gene and make it less probable to be present in future seeds, though.

 

[pinky2213]

now that's phunny

 

[pinky2213]

as someone who has never seen male pollen in person, does it have a "keif" type of texture?? powdery? or is it "sticky?

with what you collected, how much pollinating could be done??

if you had a shitty neighbor, could a guy plant a male in his yard and infect the whole neighborhood??

Pollen is wikkid stuff I have seen it or the results of it. I have had males pollinate girls from about a half mile away (blew from one side of the hollow to the other through very dense vegetation trees and all!

 

[SmokerJoe]

I've read somewhere that pollen from other plants such as roses or chrysanthemums ect could cross pollinate with marijuana and that is a primary reason why there are so many more strains then what would normally be possible when they were all pure strains crossed to make hybrids. Is there any merit to this?

 

[Lester Freeman]

I've read somewhere that pollen from other plants such as roses or chrysanthemums ect could cross pollinate with marijuana and that is a primary reason why there are so many more strains then what would normally be possible when they were all pure strains crossed to make hybrids. Is there any merit to this?

Impossible.

 

[Greensmurf420]

I'll be putting this thread to good use in about a weeks time. Thanks for great pics

 

[Lester Freeman]

I'll be putting this thread to good use in about a weeks time. Thanks for great pics

You're welcome

A better method to collecting the pollen would be to super crop the entire branch horizontally so that all the pollen sacks drop their pollen on a piece of paper or such, and collect it that way. With the way I posted the collection process, it was somewhat tedious but is just the basic rundown