Breeding for Beginners - Create Your Very Own Strain!

Any more reliable direction for choosing a male, besides what the stem smells like?

I took genetics a long time ago, I recall that the offspring exhibit traits of both parents, therefore choosing a male should be a little less random. In reality I will take what I can get. Too bad there is no pollen bank somewhere - hey now there is an idea!

1st post on this forum. Let the growing commence! My first effort was ...1986 in my dorm closet :)
Breeders will normally take multiple clones of the same plant and pollinate with differnt males when you grow that gen out you'll have an idea based females of what genes the father possessed
 
Choosing from a large and varied plant stock is the key to successful breeding. There is no guarantee for a breeder, planting only a few seeds, that they will grow into vigorous plants, even if the seeds are from excellent stock. The best solution is to grow many strains to have many plants to choose from.

You are right
 
I found my best pheno luckily came from my first seed. That was also the cut I reversed. My plan to consolidate pollination was a massive failure, but I think it was a blessing in disguise. I rarely smoke flowers and concentrate most all of my buds. Now I likely have hundreds of femenized S1 F6 and ATF x Strawberry Kush F1 seeds. There is no legislation in Alaska that requires state approval for breeding. As long as you're within the plant count you're golden. I'm going to gift some beans to check their viability. Crossing to create strains is great but preserving genetics also has its perks... lots of these companies only release limited amounts of a said strain, and if you can preserve that with an S1, you can really make a killing.
 
Hows it going MadDabber? Did you get a pile of seeds?
Pile of dank buds and no seeds! Pretty frustrating honestly. I'm running refs this round so I know I'll be good. But I'll be buying some ingredients for STS here soon. Next round I want some F1 fems.... I want em realllll bad!
 
No Seeeds??!!

Did you use the male flowers in the pic from the post earlier?

Pardon me, what is STS?
Nope. No pollen. The sacks were empty :eek:. I think in my attempt to quarantine the branch I messed something up. That or I wasn't spraying enough or frequently enough?

Sts is what the breeders use. It acts similarly to CS but using silver molecules to prohibit the female hormones, hence turning the sprayed area male.

Silver Thiosulphate (STS) it's a combination of silver nitrate and sodium thiosulphate.

I know slinks is using some of you check his journal. It costs less than a good bottle of CS for the seperate ingredients on the Zon and if you google it you can get the mixing ratio and dilution rate. For the 30 bucks or whatever you spend You get like 50 gallons of sts. Which is enough for a life time of reverals... well unless your a commercial grower breeder.....
 
I’ve used CS quite a few times with varying success. It always appeared to work as far as creating ‘male’ flowers, but I didn’t always get seeds. Will try STS next- I think it may be more effective.
 
Question:

Can I use STS on one side of a single plant and expect seeds from the female side? Turn half of it male? Or should I use STS on one clone to pollinate another clone?
 
I’ve done both. I reversed one branch of a large Thai Stick plant which was in my main flowering room. Got quite a lot of Thai Stick seeds as few as a dozen or so of each other strain I had in there. I think that’s how I would do it next time if I use CS again.
Some people have issues with doing it this way. Because of the possibility of silver being toxic. I don’t agree with this fear for the most part- as I work with silver a lot and it’s generally considered non toxic.
But there is a grey area. It seems like little or no research has been done on this one angle - where silver has potentially bonded with elements in the plant, then is being smoked.
This issue has been discussed elsewhere- with some Chicken Little tirades, some people saying it’s safe, and everything in between - but no real conclusive facts.
In any case my Thai Stick only had the tip of the one branch sprayed, the actual amount of silver used is minuscule, and I saw no effects anywhere else on the plant - so I wasn’t worried about smoking the non-sprayed part.

I also tried a method of flowering two small clones of a strain- then spraying one and using it to pollinate the other- so I could separate the sprayed one and contain the pollen situation- and throw away the sprayed plant after I was done with it.
I had less luck with this- but that was mostly to do with some environmental issues. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work just as well.
 
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