Letting a male plant live

4 Mango Kush regular seeds germinated. Popped 2 plants in the bloom tent on Jan. 1 and determined a mated pair after just 12 days @ 12/12



Male
Female

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The male is developing way faster than expected


15 days flowering

17 days flowering

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Last 2 plants went on 12/12 3 days ago. If I can get another male I’ll cull that one and give the girls in the neighborhood more time to develop

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The female is going to produce alot of seeds if you leave them together!
if that is what you want you are on the right track

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More growers should be making their own seeds for personal use. Self-sufficiency is good.

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You can save pollen from the male you have and apply it on your own schedule.

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I was curious about when the pollen is viable and if you could even cull the plant in that state before it starts blowing around and still harvest the pollen to apply yourself

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With this run we’d get a pollinated female Mango Kush, as well as an ILGM Super Skunk. Mango Kush x Super Skunk = “Stinkfruit”? Cramming a lot of experimenting in this last year

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Pollen is viable before the sacs open, but I can’t say if it’s more or less so compared to pollen from open sacs. The challenge is usually maintaining viability. I’ve cut it with sterile rice flour, but I’m not enamored with that anymore. Florist’s silica gel is useful, and so are dark jars stored cold.

If you cull the plant early, eventually it will release pollen from unopened sacs as they dry. Dry it a bit, and then place it in a glass tray. Leave that out of the way, and in a week or two it will give up a lot of pollen.

Each sac makes about 300,000 spores, so you shouldn’t worry about having enough.

I dip a painting brush into the pollen, and flick that at the flower sites. Works pretty well.

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Remember, you are not the combined height of both of your parents (probably. I don’t know you.)

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This is good stuff, thanks! So i wouldn’t be trying to save the pollen for future runs, just to apply later on in smaller doses when this runs females are more mature. What about applying the pollen on a female plant that is near harvest? I would imagine you’re more likely to get fewer seeds and they’d develop more on the exterior if the bud is dense

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It can take 8 weeks for seeds to mature. If I was within 4 weeks of a harvest, I wouldn’t even bother. I’d pollinate as soon as possible.

Note that seeds can mature a little after harvest, and will often lose the dark brown chaff (not sure of the proper term) due to handling. Immature seeds look malformed.

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And just like that, he dropped pollen overnight, just a couple sacs.

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Goodbye Mr. Mango. Looks like a great pheno to breed

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You’ll want to place that material on a plate or something. I have used black plastic seedling trays, posterboard, and glass bakeware. It will probably grow mold if you leave it in a plastic bag.

One tip, and this is to be used with caution: you can switch to an 18/6 light cycle in the last few weeks of seed production to get a better viability rate. But this can be tricky to gauge on your first seed run. Keep in mind that your plants may produce pollen, but it won’t have time to produce viable seeds. However, if you have other plants in flower with 4+ weeks to go, you could end up with seeds from stress-induced hermaphroditism.

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I have learned so much from this post. I have purple kush regulars on the go just now. Guaranteed there will be males among them, might just give this a try. Thank you @GaryWary and @KeystoneCops for the informative post :sunglasses:

Brilliant way of highlighting the vagaries of genetics.

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