Experienced Grower Needs Help?

[unforgiven]

the 2 journals in my sig are my first and second lol.

I just tend to get ummmm not quite sure how to put it, but the first thing comes to mind is obtusely verbose. or verbose in an ocd kinda way. in my life I have worked with many kinds. when teaching unskilled, cheap labor, often times not even speaking the same languages, to do highly skilled work takes a certain ability to be an egotistical asshole that knows it all. but ya better be able to back it up with knowledge and ability. all of which requires heavy details. simplified. lol speak smart, but reeeaalllllly slooowwwly.

yes, I just insulted myself. gotta have a backbone to be a supervisor and trainer of idiots. lmfao

as to growing, it's the details and simple sciences of it that really attracted me to it. so I want to keep learning as much as I can from all of the great growers here. who HAVE done it for a really long time.

oh, and before I get attacked for simplifying the science of growing, i'm not. we've all heard: measure twice cut once, right? so basic common sense right? learn and do. period. and repeat it over and over.

and remember,
have fun eh

 

[newbgrower316]

Unfor how should I go about handling my pollen situation? I just saw a few specs of pollen on a leaf but the GSCA has tons of leafs and unopened pollen sacs should I defoliated it some? I'm thinking the leaves will probably get in my way when extracting the pollen or should I not defol since it's an auto?

 

[unforgiven]

lmao talk about a several pronged question with soooo many answers.

all I can give you is what I do.

as you already know I am a firm believer in defol. my current grow is all autos, so yep you can defol autos. well, I can. if you can or will is up to you to decide. I have had em come out looking like they went to marine training. lol sheared near clean. it all grew back and then some in a matter of days.

not that I would recommend that sort of approach to anyone, as it can be detrimental to your personal plans for your girls.

if your sacs are already "spritzing" their pollen about. you don't want to defol. they will all fall off as you work the plant then.

I hope they are segregated from the females?

now, as far as how I have collected pollen.

I use a small pill bottle with a fliptop lid. the fliptop was a mistake, it has knocked sacs off inadvertently. so, a small pill bottle makes a good collection device if you are harvesting sac at a time. its not too cumbersome, your hands will do more harm to the collection than the bottle. I use a pair of tweezers. get the bottle up under the sac or sacs, basically go under the sac, touch the stem with the bottle and move it up to the sac. if it doesn't fall in on it's own, usually just a touch with the tweezers will knock it in. sometimes you need to tug, it's likely premature then but will still have some pollen in it. more often than not they will fall off just as you approach with the bottle.

if you have a lot of "ready" sacs, you could just take branch cuttings, even a section at a time. and use a glossy heavy bond paper, like a catalog cover or some such thing. fold it in half to create a sharp crease before you start. re open it, flatten it. lay our section of branch on said paper and get the sacs off on that.

now, I've seen others make a cone like deal out of paper and stick the branch in there and give it a shake with good results. if I were to do that I would find some old magazines with nice glossy paper to do it with. reason being, your normal printer or copier paper has too many loose fibers in it which will trap your pollen to the paper, thereby reducing your take of pollen greatly. super fine stuff it is.

I've seen guy's close up pics where they are collecting pollen, on a piece of paper, using a brush to collect it all up, and you can literally see brush strokes all around the pile they have created. it sticks to paper. but i'm on a laptop with a touchscreen, so zooming in on pics is just like your smartphone, pinch or spread. makes the bud shots here incredible to look at.

so, in summation,

1: ensure there are no willing females ANYWHERE nearby ie: a breeze, a fan, a door opening, a cough or sneeze will put the pollen on her. hell, just the movements of your hands and arms will stir up enough air to move the pollen about

2: you can defol if you wish but it is ill advised if your pollen is already freefalling, as you will lose it to moving things about.

3: a small pill bottle works good to collect with. and a pair of tweezers.

4: you will need to dry the pollen/veg material (the sacs) and get the sacs out to store your pollen. if using immediately, I can't recollect who it was but he even just drops sacs on ready buds, and that works too. I think tho, in my mind that would create a possible loose pool of pollen, able to blow away onto other branches you are trying to not pollinate. I use a q-tip with one end cut off. cut so it fits in my pollen bottle. with sacs and all in the bottle, stir it about getting pollen on the q-tip. rub up yer females buds.

zoiks!!! sorry for the book here, lol

remember,
have fun eh

 

[newbgrower316]

Yea my 2 photo females are with them but I didn't switch to flower yet. I really don't care too much if they get pollinated those photos are not too much of a concern to me. My main goal is to breed auto's and to store their pollen for use in the future with the auto's I do. I'm thinking to start the breeding process after I collected the pollen from the 4 auto's I'm reversing. 2 are almost ready while the other 2 are still in seedling stage, so I'm assuming that after the 2 photos are done flowering the other 2 reversed males that are seedlings now should be ready to collect their pollen. Then clean the tent really good and start the auto's I'm ready to breed. I should be going through 4 breeding process this is how I kinda want it to look.

BCA X BCA, PKA, JMA

PKA X PKA, BCA, JMA

JMA X JMA, BCA, PKA

GSCA X GSCA

 

[newbgrower316]

Unfor sorry for all the questions , but i feel comfortable with you! How long does an auto stay in these stages Seedling ,Veg, and Bloom? I have 3 nutes for all stages but am having trouble knowing when to feed one witch. Is it 2 weeks seedling nute , 2 week veg and then Bloom nutes after that?

 

[unforgiven]

hmmm idunno lol

unor tunately (lol) I let the girls tell me. yep that's my answer to a lot of things. because its true. on my autos right now, you should have already noticed that they go from wk 1 veg to wk 1 bloom. that is because I wait a bit...whatever amount of time....for them to look comfortable enough in their own skin, for me to force feed them like the lil piggies I want them to become....snort snort sqeeeaaaal. now who in the holy hell doesn't like them some good pig?

so I am going wk1v wk1b wk2b wk3b wk4b wk5b wk6b clear wk7b if needed, then clear. the first clear was just because the girls told me to this week. so, I did it. and they liked it.

so here's an example, dunno if you saw my thread yesterday, but in the am I did some defol. I put up pics of "punchy" from young to now with a pretty heavy defol. she told me to pick her up & where to snip.


so here she is after defol yesterday round 9 am.

and here she is today at 5 pm.

so, in 32 hours that is what she looks like.

now i'm no freakin genius!! but it looks to me like she is. if she hadn't been waving her arms at me calling out for a trim she would still look a mess. wish I had taken a before pic, but again, I aint the genius here. and she don't have thumbs to take selfies.

that, my friend is the power of listening to your girls. mostly appearance, but weight, smell, feel, it all comes into play here. idunno, maybe even a bit of karma, lol.

does that make any sense at all, or does it make me sound kinda like some loopy hippie vegan? idc cuz the girls like it and that is what matters.

hope I helped
remember,
have fun eh

 

[Canna Montana]

Hey canna, I was re-reading one of your earlier post and you said you try to use all the plant possible. What do you do with your fan leaves? (The one's you pick off in veg when their blocking potential bud site's ,the one's that have no sugar ) I was burying them. Should I save them to?

We use our fan leaves in the worm composter. It adds nutes back into the worm castings. Sorry I haven't been here lately. I was not feeling well.

 

[newbgrower316]

Lol sounds kinda crazy but it makes sense @ unfor

You don't have to apologize canna..i was wondering what happened to you, I hope you're feeling better! @ canna

 

[newbgrower316]

Thunderstorm just knocked out all the damn power..how long can my girls go in the dark without getting messed up?

 

[newbgrower316]

when collecting pollen should you pull the flowers as they bloom or is it best to wait for the majority of the plant to bloom?

 

[unforgiven]

depends......

is he still in the same room as the girls?

if yes, then I would grab them as fast as I can.

if no, and there is no possibility of pollination, then you can wait, and shake branches instead of picking your nutz.

lol

 

[newbgrower316]

Yea I don't think I can do the pick off thing,my god I tried it last night and picked one of by a time put in in little vile and shake for an hour after about 6 hours in and 6 sacs down with little pollen collected I said hell no I can't do it this way lol I'd rather wait and get as much as possible at one time and then vile it up! I'm going to steal one out your playbook unfor and say...this shit is nuts! Lol @unfor

 

[newbgrower316]

Sorry for no updating had to take care of some issues, but here's the update...
PKA and GSCA are giving pollen like crazy. What I'm doing to collect pollen is...I ordered some microcentrifuges took my wife's tweezers, all of them and labeled what tweezers I'm using for witch plant. Pick about 7 or 8 pollen sacs into the microcentrifuges and flicked it with my finger until pollen comes out,i pick out the empty flowers throw them on a paper hit the flowers with tweezers and anything left on the paper I empty into the microcentrifuges witch I took the flowers out of..I do this with 2 different paper's since I'm collecting from 2 different strains and I label everything. I then take the microcentrifuges with the pollen throw 5 grains of rice in them then I take a black candle and wax the tops shut make a label and put clear tape over the label and tape it to the centrifuges then they go into a zip lock bag of rice and straight into the freezer with the others.

JMA and BCA are doing well I kinda fucked up a little but hopefully it won't hurt me too much so this is what happened I finished giving them veg nutes for the first time and I started spraying them with my Colloidal Silver as I started massaging the CS into them I heard on the BCA a rip..and I'm like OMG..it sounded like I hurt a root nothing on the seedling ripped as in leaves,so I'm checking BCA like crazy.

CSS and OGK are doing great I keep doing what I learned from unfor about the defoliated and controlling the grow and also topped each branch so now I have 4 shoots instead of 1 some I messed up on but that's just like 3 or 4 branches and it was the beginning when I started and was trying to figure out how to do it so no big problem and just like unfor said in a controlled environment defoliated works great! Thank You @ unfor

As for the windowsill grow it starting to grow hairs and must have accidentally got pollinated but looks like how it should for a Windowsill grow with not much care or light it's about 12 inches tall. So that's my update guys my pics should be coming after the 11 th or 12 th I apologize about this because I wanted pics to document this in case anybody else would like help so hopefully I'm not done collecting pollen before those days. But anyways all is well over here. How are you all doing?

 

[newbgrower316]

Tip for collecting pollen*
What happened just now was I collected the pollen sacs into my microcentrifuges and left it to update you guys..well that doesn't work out too well I would have got more pollen if I would have extracted it right after..I do not know why but it's not a good idea to wait try to extract as soon as you collect them.

 

[newbgrower316]

Update* went back into grow..took a PW clone and am going to sex it. I also went to my Windowsill grow witch is an auto and took a very small clone from it that didn't have hairs yet, I know you can't clone auto's but this auto is way over 4 months and is now showing hairs so I assume I slowed the growth some how and was really wondering since it's a 3month strain start to finish if I could take a clone that didn't have hairs yet and revert it back to a veg state and possibly turn it into a photoperiod , but I doubt it but I'm also wondering if it would be possible to regrow it to turn into a big plant instead of having that timeline to die and continue to take clones from it before it wants to flower..I know this is a long shot but it should have been done a month ago and with its slow growth I'm assuming within 2 more months or even 3 the mom should be done witch means I took a 3 month strain and took it as far as 5 or 6 months..so that's what I'm up too.

 

[newbgrower316]

Getting kinda scared even though I took measures to protect myself and family..things seem to be going to right..that's what's scary and it's no paranoia..it's just that things are going to good..and that's what scares me.

Update*

CSS and OGK I'm continuing with unfor's process and they are well.

PKA and GSCA collecting pollen..today they didn't give any and I'm upset about it.

BCA and JMA are growing good..I don't believe that rip I heard hurt BCA too much because it continues to grow.

PW is very beautiful plant I can't wait to take pictures of her

PKA Windowsill is growing it's buds now and looks like how a Windowsill should look.

11th or 12th I should have pics up

 

[newbgrower316]

So this thread will be a lot of pages because I won't leave until im finished documenting and I have a long way to still go..I summed it up to 3 process..
1. Collect pollen
2. Breed 4x
3. Have fun and distribute my seeds for free.
4. Sit back and watch grow journals of my genetics

 

[newbgrower316]

Update
Have a mold and algae issue with promix hp.. so what i did was disturb the soil..things are growing well...i know this issue is due to overwatering..i dont know wether its better to under water or over water, but now im assuming overwatering is not good. The thing is i dont water too much and im wondering if this is happening because my lights are too far away. I dropped my lights closer now. My ffof plants in the same tent same temp no mold no algae. Hmm. I dont know all i know is i have to collect pollen from these last two strains and if i didnt already have to figure this out later..pollen is a must i spent too long on this and i have to get this done 2 down 2 more to go! Then breed 4x. Im assuming that 12 months after i collect pollen because autos are usually 3 months from seed. So im looking at a long time. I had 2 years of failure..so im in it to win it and i learned alot from my mistakes.

 

[unforgiven]

hey newbgrower, sorry to hear of the issues. sounds like overwatering, so yep you hit it on the head.

these girls do tend to prefer things a bit drier. which also helps to prevent the mold/algae issues.

methinks the 2 years of failures will go down in history now bud, no worries.

 

[newbgrower316]

Yea unfor I believe to that's history. But I couldn't believe how I would not foresee this problem I'm probably in now, so I have 2 Reverse fem auto that's giving pollen right now and I was going to do 2 more auto reverse but I didn't think about what would happen if the other two strains I'm planning on reversing gets pollinated and than reversed...would the seeds that come from the plant be a cross and the pollen be from the original strain?