If it's a boy

[BrokrnEyes]

Has anyone ever tried to harvest pollen and store it from a male plant? I've just started my third grow with some bag seed mainly to practice some advanced training techniques and if it turns out to be a boy, I might want to also take the opportunity to practice harvesting pollen if I ever desire to try to breed my own strain someday. So I was wondering if anyone could share any experience, tutorials, etc.

Do you realize that if it is a boy and I attempt to harvest the pollen i'm going to have to figure out someway of getting the pollen from the sack into a bag or test tube animals we have to scrub down the grow area pretty good but I'm looking for things like harvest method, storing, shelflife, etc.

 

[Weaselcracker]

Re: If it's a boy...

From what I can figure out- pollen doesn't store well. I'm not sure, myself, if anyone knows how to do it long term or not? Any dampness in the air and it will clump together and be useless for pollination. One thing you might try is to mix it with dry rice (I kept the rice in a warm dry place for a few days to make sure it was very dry). Worked for me but I only stored it a couple weeks. Good luck.

 

[Vestrimatrik]

I cant really tell you much about storing pollen but as for harvest method....

What I did to my boy was wait till he just started to drop his loads then cut all the tops off. Stuck the stems in a glass with plain water and set the glass on a big mirror in a room with no fans. Change the water every couple days or so and let the goods fall.

Collect the pollen off the mirror with a razor blade, sift out the flowers with a fine screen, and use or store however you wish! Be careful though, this stuff is fine like talcum powder and flies really far.

Just a couple pics from my journey

BTW, little pointer.... don't even think about doing it in a room next to your grow if you don't want seeds just yet (unless you have a carbon filter intake for your flower area). I only say this because I somehow managed to make seeds on my outdoor plants from rogue particles passing through my ventilation.

Good luck!
Vestri

 

[Thunderbrain]

I just tried this myself, but I haven't used it yet. Got some pollen from a DJShort blueberry, mixed a little flour in to keep it from clumping, then put it in a container with a desiccant and put it in the freezer. I'll try it on my next grow.

I only collected about 10-15 stalks from a single male plant, though, so it didn't take up a lot of room. I got a couple of empty plastic grated cheese containers, filled them with water, trimmed all the leaves off the stalks (even without leaves the pods kept opening and dropping pollen for a week) and stuck the stalks into the holes, then placed that on the glass. Trimming the leaves kept the stalks closer together and they didn't move around, so the pollen didn't spread out too much when it dropped.

 

[fanleaf]

Collect pollen like mentioned above. Let's say you get 1 gram of pollen. Take 4 grams of flour and bake it or microwave it to sterilize it. Put your 1 gram of pollen in with the flour. Seal up air tight and put in freezer. When you want to use it just use a paint brush to paint the pollen/flour mixture onto the pistils.

 

[BrokrnEyes]

Thanks for all the info guys, I started playing with the idea of (slowly) making my own strain and obviously I need to start collecting genetics to eventually pull that off and that includes dealin with the boys.

Out of curiosity, if anyone could recommend, or recommend staying away from, certain strains that eoulf be a good base for building up a Genetic library?

I have several white widow auto female feminized Seeds and bag seed but that's pretty much it. I'm planning on placing an order in a couple of weeks and was wondering if anyone could recommend any strains.