I crossed some seed bank seeds last year and all plants are females: Why?

[Foto]

Hi,

My grow is small under 2 x 400 watt led in canna terra pro and has been this way for a few years.

Last year I had feminized Belladonna from Paradise seeds and feminized Girl Scout Cookies as freebies from Midweek Song and Regular Black Domina from Sensi seeds.

This beautiful male Black Domina grew (it was a really strong plant) and I pollinated the other strains.

But mainly pollinated the GSC which produced loads of seeds and the Belladonna only a few.

So this year I planted 4 Black Domina x Belladonna and 4 x Black Domina x GSC cookies and all eight of these plants are females.

I also crossed that Black Domina with a Jack Herer from Sensi seeds or another breeder and it produced lots of seeds but had to cut that plant early though and didn't enjoy it and so didn't plant any.

Is there a reason why I got eight female plants out of the eight seeds I planted?

It would seem to me that it would be a crazy coincidence to have this happen.

They are only 11 days into flowering and all have pistils .

Previously when I have used regular seeds I would get maybe two out of three as being female.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Is there a reason why I got eight female plants out of the eight seeds I planted?

Well, like most herd animals, with plants that (normally) have male and female flowers on separate plants, there is no need to have a 50:50 ratio of males to females, because the male of the species is fully capable of servicing a great many females. So you ought to be getting a minimum of 60% female - and probably closer to 75% or 80%, IMHO - anyway, unless conditions are unfavorable.

Any chance at all your female plants produced a male flower or two and that's what produced your seeds?

Otherwise...

With sexually-"unfixed" (IOW, not "feminized") seedlings, during the somewhat critical period (around the time the plant has three pairs of leaves, or shortly before, and for two to three weeks aferwards):

• A higher nitrogen concentration will give more females (a higher potassium concentration will produce more males).
• A higher humidity will give more females.
• A lower temperature will give more females.
• More blue light will give more females.
• Fewer hours of light will give more females.

See:

https://www.dutch-passion.com/en/grow-info/feminised-seeds/

 

[Foto]

Well, like most herd animals, with plants that (normally) have male and female flowers on separate plants, there is no need to have a 50:50 ratio of males to females, because the male of the species is fully capable of servicing a great many females. So you ought to be getting a minimum of 60% female - and probably closer to 75% or 80%, IMHO - anyway, unless conditions are unfavorable.

Any chance at all your female plants produced a male flower or two and that's what produced your seeds?

Otherwise...

With sexually-"unfixed" (IOW, not "feminized") seedlings, during the somewhat critical period (around the time the plant has three pairs of leaves, or shortly before, and for two to three weeks aferwards):

• A higher nitrogen concentration will give more females (a higher potassium concentration will produce more males).
• A higher humidity will give more females.
• A lower temperature will give more females.
• More blue light will give more females.
• Fewer hours of light will give more females.

See:

https://www.dutch-passion.com/en/grow-info/feminised-seeds/

I'm not a new grower at all.

None of the plants were hermaphrodite and none of these show any signs of being so either.

I do have some serious temperature and humidity swings that I don't bother monitoring.

Humidity as low as 27 and as high as 75 but I wouldn't know for how long or if for just a day here or there as I just use a very basic Temperature humidity meter.

I grow in winter and have minimum temps inside the tent of 12c and max 27c in one day and that continues until they finish flowering where temps can reach up to 28- 32 with minimums around 12-16 in a day.

There is a better judgment of temperature but again not something I try to control because I just decide on a time of the year where I can do this without controlling the climate indoors.

Lots of airflow.

Biobizz for nutes and I swing my ph between 6.5 and 6.1.

I suppose I am wondering if there could be a scientific reason for this or is it a combination of environment or as you mentioned does light spectrum have any play?

That would have to be tested though if light spectrum is part of the cause but using mh or hps bulbs I woudn't think it does. Maybe with the LED?

Plants have been a bit low on nitrogen from germination.

They were in fact all messed up as I sprouted them in a generic seedling mix from a store but after a week I realized that wasn't going to work.

I was wanting to do an organic soil grow where I didn't have to adjust ph etc but didn't invest the time in learning what was available to me in that area so saved the seedlings by going soil less again.

 

[Foto]

Feminised cannabis seeds | Grow Info | Dutch Passion

Hey TorturedSoul,

Did you copy and paste the info you bullet pointed from this link or are you affiliated with Dutch Passion?

How did they come about feminizing seeds?

Below is from the article:

The exact process of cannabis seed feminisation has been a secret for many years

Female plants can be stimulated to produce pollen in such a way that the pollen is regarded as ‘female pollen’.

How could that be possible when female plants don't produce pollen?

I give up there.

Is there something to do with pollinating a feminized plant with a regular male plant that could cause feminized seeds?

That is something I am more wondering about than environment.

I thank you for the help also.

Sincerely,

Foto.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm not a new grower at all.

I was assuming you had some experience, based on your post. Plus, a lot of "newbies" would probably think they hit the lottery with 100% females from a normal set of parental plants, lol.

I seem to get more males in the Summer than in the cooler months. I always assumed it was due to the higher temperature, but that's just a guess.

It is really rare, but I've seen threads from a few people complaining that they ended up with all males (in a five- to ten-plant grow). And, by rare, I mean a few threads here since I joined 9½ years ago. By inference, a 100% female crop would be possible, just highly unlikely.

I only started five regular seeds last year (at different times). I got one male. I did have one female start producing male flowers, but that was a feminized seed (and I stressed the <BLEEP> out of it).

I suppose I am wondering if there could be a scientific reason for this or is it a combination of environment or as you mentioned does light spectrum have any play?

That would have to be tested though if light spectrum is part of the cause but using mh or hps bulbs I woudn't think it does. Maybe with the LED?

I wish there was more publicly-available information, arrived at via scientific method, in regards to things like this.

I've started cannabis plants under MH, HPS, and (mostly) "white-light" LED COBs. I don't remember any extreme sex ratios, really. The metal halide lighting might have been a wee bit better (in terms of getting a higher ratio of females), but not obviously so. Actually, I think I got the most consistently highest percentage of female plants years ago when I was using 430-watt "enhanced" HPS lighting almost exclusively. The bulbs were... I might be misremembering (been a long time), but I think they were Phillips Planta-T Son-Argo, Son-Agro, something like that. Seemed like they had a separate "blue" element to them. The (430-watt core & coil / "magnetic") ballasts would kick on and I'd see lots of blue light, then a few seconds later the "HPS glow" would start and get brighter as the ballasts "warmed up." I kind of miss those things. I got great gram per watt numbers and it seemed like I had tighter internodes than average for HPS bulbs. I actually liked them better than running higher wattage high pressure sodium bulbs with about 25% metal halide mixed in. But I'm a lot older now and... IDK, maybe I'm remembering the past with a little more fondness than reality would strictly dictate?

Apologies for rambling a bit.

 

[TorturedSoul]

Did you copy and paste the info you bullet pointed from this link

Yes. I think it has been posted here in our forum a time or two in threads, and I used to have it bookmarked in a blog post, but all our blogs went the way of the Dodo (killed by humans ) with the forum software change. So I did a quick web search for the information and the DP web page popped up. That might be the original source (I assume so). It was the first "place" I ever saw the information.

or are you affiliated with Dutch Passion?

NO. I don't even think I have any of that breeder's seeds left in my collection (just a small sticker, lol, and that was given to me by one of our sponsors, The Vault). And Dutch Passion isn't a sponsor; that's why I stuck the link in between a pair of CODE tags instead of making it live and clickable.

I can't even swear that the information is 100% true. But the author's logic(?) seemed to make sense to me, and experience leads me to believe it. However, I haven't done any side-by-side testing to see how accurate it is in terms of influencing the ratio. If I had a quantity (50 or more?) of non-feminized seeds from an IBL strain and both the space and equipment (and money for utilities) to grow them all out together... But that is never going to happen. I would love to see someone do something like that, though; I love comparisons (especially if the grower only changes ONE variable at a time) .

 

[Foto]

I was assuming you had some experience, based on your post. Plus, a lot of "newbies" would probably think they hit the lottery with 100% females from a normal set of parental plants, lol.

I seem to get more males in the Summer than in the cooler months. I always assumed it was due to the higher temperature, but that's just a guess.

It is really rare, but I've seen threads from a few people complaining that they ended up with all males (in a five- to ten-plant grow). And, by rare, I mean a few threads here since I joined 9½ years ago. By inference, a 100% female crop would be possible, just highly unlikely.

I only started five regular seeds last year (at different times). I got one male. I did have one female start producing male flowers, but that was a feminized seed (and I stressed the <BLEEP> out of it).



I wish there was more publicly-available information, arrived at via scientific method, in regards to things like this.

I've started cannabis plants under MH, HPS, and (mostly) "white-light" LED COBs. I don't remember any extreme sex ratios, really. The metal halide lighting might have been a wee bit better (in terms of getting a higher ratio of females), but not obviously so. Actually, I think I got the most consistently highest percentage of female plants years ago when I was using 430-watt "enhanced" HPS lighting almost exclusively. The bulbs were... I might be misremembering (been a long time), but I think they were Phillips Planta-T Son-Argo, Son-Agro, something like that. Seemed like they had a separate "blue" element to them. The (430-watt core & coil / "magnetic") ballasts would kick on and I'd see lots of blue light, then a few seconds later the "HPS glow" would start and get brighter as the ballasts "warmed up." I kind of miss those things. I got great gram per watt numbers and it seemed like I had tighter internodes than average for HPS bulbs. I actually liked them better than running higher wattage high pressure sodium bulbs with about 25% metal halide mixed in. But I'm a lot older now and... IDK, maybe I'm remembering the past with a little more fondness than reality would strictly dictate?

Apologies for rambling a bit.

I preferred MH over over HPS 20 odd years ago when growing in bubbling buckets lol.

Would love to chat with you to be honest but I have work in the morning and it's getting late.

I should add that I miss a forum that I can't remember the name of but it was prolific back in the late 2000's.

Just some of the best info back then and some very serious people willing to share.

Best wishes.

Foto

Thanks.

 

[TorturedSoul]

I'm lucky (not really) in that I have no work today. Never managed to fall asleep (it's mid-morning locally). So I'm about to try again now, and I expect to succeed. Need to not sleep so long that I won't sleep tonight because I DO have work tommorrow (yay!). Shouldn't be a problem - I can't seem to sleep more than four hours, maybe five on rare occasion, and usually not more than an hour or so before the body wakes me up, then try to fall asleep for a few hours, hoping I will. It got old years ago, to be honest, but what can you do, lol? The constant state of exhaustion might be why I tend to ramble so much, IDK.

Bubbling buckets? I do love DWC, but never really got into the bucket thing for it. Liked large reservoirs, single-plant grows if I only had a few hundred watts of light, multiples otherwise. Getting ready to do smaller plants for the variety, it's looking like a mixture of hempy passive hydroponics and some soil(ish) containers.

You might be thinking of "Overgrow," which apparently is around again, but I have no idea about continuity (might just be that someone reused the name?). I kind of miss the newsgroup days of alt.drugs.cannabis.cultivation or whatever it was called, been 20 years or more since I swam in those waters. Got to where there was as much crap as useful posts. If 420Magazine.com ever went dark, though, I'd be in serious mourning. Thankfully, I cannot see that ever happening.

Hmm... No, I think it was A.D.P.C, alt.drugs.pot.cultivation. Or... <SHRUGS> IDK, half my brain is already sleeping.

 

[DrDoob]

I gave a friend a bud with 22 seeds in it and he got 21 males I guess anything can happen, I have about 200 more of the same seeds but haven’t grown any yet to see for myself.

I also used to use the Sun-Agro bulbs they were the best!

 

[DaddyKush]

I can't seem to sleep more than four hours, maybe five on rare occasion, and usually not more than an hour or so before the body wakes me up, then try to fall asleep for a few hours, hoping I will. It got old years ago, to be honest, but what can you do, lol? The constant state of exhaustion might be why I tend to ramble so much, IDK.

Story of my life, bro. But there's always a silver lining to be found in every adversity. My lifelong sleep problems are what led me to cannabis. A few years ago I discovered that a bowl or two of good Indica before bed will let me sleep like a baby for the first time ever. Literally saved my life because I was at my wits end. Yup, I had some pretty dark days before cannabis saved me. Apologies for taking the thread in a different direction but I just wanted to say that.

 

[Foto]

I gave a friend a bud with 22 seeds in it and he got 21 males I guess anything can happen, I have about 200 more of the same seeds but haven’t grown any yet to see for myself.

I also used to use the Sun-Agro bulbs they were the best!

That's crazy.

I wonder if environment had something to do with.

 

[Foto]

I'm lucky (not really) in that I have no work today. Never managed to fall asleep (it's mid-morning locally). So I'm about to try again now, and I expect to succeed. Need to not sleep so long that I won't sleep tonight because I DO have work tommorrow (yay!). Shouldn't be a problem - I can't seem to sleep more than four hours, maybe five on rare occasion, and usually not more than an hour or so before the body wakes me up, then try to fall asleep for a few hours, hoping I will. It got old years ago, to be honest, but what can you do, lol? The constant state of exhaustion might be why I tend to ramble so much, IDK.

Bubbling buckets? I do love DWC, but never really got into the bucket thing for it. Liked large reservoirs, single-plant grows if I only had a few hundred watts of light, multiples otherwise. Getting ready to do smaller plants for the variety, it's looking like a mixture of hempy passive hydroponics and some soil(ish) containers.

You might be thinking of "Overgrow," which apparently is around again, but I have no idea about continuity (might just be that someone reused the name?). I kind of miss the newsgroup days of alt.drugs.cannabis.cultivation or whatever it was called, been 20 years or more since I swam in those waters. Got to where there was as much crap as useful posts. If 420Magazine.com ever went dark, though, I'd be in serious mourning. Thankfully, I cannot see that ever happening.

Hmm... No, I think it was A.D.P.C, alt.drugs.pot.cultivation. Or... <SHRUGS> IDK, half my brain is already sleeping.

I never got into news groups and I am not sure if it was "overgrow" I think the web site may have been connected to hightimes mag back in the day?

DWC (swoon) Huge tub with two plants and lots of bubbles from bubble wands and a decent air pump but the water needs to be kept cool etc; you know the deal.

Fastest growth I have experienced ever and easy to fix problems quickly too but easy to fuck up as well, I suppose, I never fucked up though.

All about the temps with DWC and it can't be done where I am without air conditioning.

I would like to do hempy but I need a simple setup like I have now so I can pack everything up quickly.

Not fond of NFT or flood and drain but have tried both when I was younger and learning.

Got busted 10 years ago and it was horrid experience but I was being a bit greedy and now I grow just for the body pain, mind and fun

I gave up smoking for 7 years after being busted but started to miss it and grew a bit stronger inside and decided to grow again as I wouldn't know where to or be bothered buying weed

Decisions were made that morally I am not hurting anyone and risk assessment was thought about it.

KISS.

Unfortunately I have had some really bad quality seeds over the last few years from certain stores and packages just not turning up etc.

There have been strains that I have ordered and the original order never showed up and I explain to the store that our customs inspectors know that packaging. I ask to get it sent packaged differently but the stores won't help out.

When they re send it's really old seed stock, not even worth planting.

The stores get their money though.

Used to be able just order from the breeders without a worry a long time ago.

It's a ridiculous world to me

This grow will hopefully last me a year and I think I will try and keep two bonsai mothers until next year and if that doesn't work out I have my seed stock to fall back on.

I should share some photos some time as I am a really good photographer as my hobby and have been taking photos for a long time.

Maybe lady luck is looking after me?

With regards to your sleep; have you ever done a sleep study?

Is that a thing you can access ?

I like the quotes in your signature too.

Peace.

Foto

 

[Foto]

Story of my life, bro. But there's always a silver lining to be found in every adversity. My lifelong sleep problems are what led me to cannabis. A few years ago I discovered that a bowl or two of good Indica before bed will let me sleep like a baby for the first time ever. Literally saved my life because I was at my wits end. Yup, I had some pretty dark days before cannabis saved me. Apologies for taking the thread in a different direction but I just wanted to say that.

A decent Indica and a good nights sleep I am missing so much

A few months to go.

 

[DaddyKush]

This grow will hopefully last me a year and I think I will try and keep two bonsai mothers until next year and if that doesn't work out I have my seed stock to fall back on.

If finding quality seeds is a problem, definitely go with clones. Find a strain and a pheno you like and keep those genetics around.

 

[DrDoob]

That's crazy.

I wonder if environment had something to do with.

I'm sure it did they were outdoor and seem to be getting not a lot of light. I haven't tried any of the seeds yet myself but when I do I'm going to start like 20 instead of my usual 5 or so.

 

[Foto]

If finding quality seeds is a problem, definitely go with clones. Find a strain and a pheno you like and keep those genetics around.

I plan on keeping two mothers from this grow but that's not going to be easy and that's if I like the result of crossing the Black Domina with the other plants that I liked the effects of. I only had a male Black Domina that was just an amazing looking and very healthy Indica.

The fan leaves were huge compared to the other strains and it showed no sign of problems when the others did and Black Domina has a reputation as being a knock you out for the night but also a different effect depending on the phenotype.

It could turn out to be really too stong of a high for me considering the strains that I crossed with The Black Domina seeded and my understanding is that seeded flowers are not as potent as sensimilla and they were very potent for me.

I have grown quite a few strains in my lifetime.

Have had no problems with cloning in dwc 10 years ago but it's going to be difficult now as I am soil less.

How am I going to keep two mothers for six months that I can hide away every three months?

I am thinking I will have to use soil which in itself is a problem unless I mix my own or spend dollars on the only organic soil available to me as I won't have the time to mix nutes and adjust ph.

Next thing I suppose is fluorescent lighting which I know nothing about and a small tent with ventilation or to just hang a light over a couple of pots in my spare room.

Temps in summer reach 38c/100f and very high humidity which shouldn't be a problem, I suppose as long as there is air flow.

I am sure it can be done but there is just so much to research and things to decide upon.

A couple of six month old bonsai mothers will sure look interesting.

I have all these seeds to fall back on but I think as TorturedSoul said it may have been an environment that I wouldn't be able to recreate that got me 8 females out of 8 seeds.

At least they were freshly produced viable seeds that will last a few years

I'm more inclined to think that life is just looking out for me in this regard as to the plants being female.

What I do know is that I haven't smoked in a few months as I ran out and my lower back has been in pain ever since.

But because I have arthritis I can pop some pills that ruin my stomach and rid me of the back pain but that's a really lame trade off to me so I put up with the pain at work and pop the pills if I want to go hiking or scramble up a mountain.

Peace.

Foto