I've heard of old timers saving hermie pollen to use on other plants. You will get no true males from those seeds. Only females and hermies.
You can breed the hermie out of a strain too. I did it years ago with some Afghani Kush seeds a buddy got when a hermie knocked up most of his crop and the crop was about 2 dozen of those plants.
I'm outdoors, so it's harder to keep an eye on large numbers of plants. That year I had 9 females, 2 males and Herman. All of them were f1's of Jack Carlos Cross, a cross my BIL made in 1988. I made seeds from most of the females, but have only grown out a few of the crosses.You can breed the hermie out of a strain too. I did it years ago with some Afghani Kush seeds a buddy got when a hermie knocked up most of his crop and the crop was about 2 dozen of those plants.
I sprouted 40 of them and grew 36 that survived in two DWC tubs. Ones that showed balls early got chopped and a couple of decent males had branches taken so I could collect their pollen to dust the lower branches on some of the best females. I just stuck the branches in a glass of water under a couple of 2700K CFLs on 12/12 and let the pollen fall onto a sheet of tinfoil in the bedroom closet. Ran the pollen thru my 180 micron sift screen to clean it and put it in a vial.
Used it on about 10 good females. Of those about half showed 'nanners before they were ripe so the seeds from those got tossed but saved the seeds from those that didn't. I must have sent those seeds out to half a dozen forum buddies and none had any hermies but got about 80% females from the seeds.
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I had to explain that to someone the other day, crying about breeders, breeding with hermies. There's hermies in every line ever created, it's up to the breeder to not release seeds with a high percentage of herms.All cannabis has the ability to go hermie but the normal ones only do it very late in flowering when they haven't been pollinated so try to do it to themselves as a survival trait. Early fem seeds were produced by keeping a female in flower past her due date to make her produce 'nanners. Those were collected and used on other plants to make fem seeds.
Some get a genetic quirk that causes them to do it in early flower and that is an undesirable trait so should not be propagated by growing out seeds from such a union. More prevalent now with all the inbreeding and mixing of strains to produce all the mongrel strains sold these days.
I've been pollen chucking for almost 20 years but I reject seeds from any female that goes hermie. Got a shot glass full of those and all they are good for is tossing around in town for shits and giggles. We used to do that in the Richmond Mall's big plant pots from all the mexi pot seeds we had to clean out before smoking it. Think late 60s.
I'm currently getting into serious breeding to establish some stable lines crossing hi-CBD plants with each other and some of my favorite regular strains. Going to have to make my own sodium thiosulfate and silver nitrate so I can make silver thiosulfate to spray on a female and force her to produce male flowers as some of the strains I have growing now are from clones and/or fem seeds so I don't have a male to get pollen from. I have almost everything I need except aluminum wire to hold the silver coin so I can control how fast it gets reacted in hot nitric acid. Don't want it to boil over.
I've got some studying to do myself to learn more about selecting the right plants to cross and when to inbreed to finally get seeds that grow uniform plants. So many seeds now are sold as F1s which any old pollen chucker can produce but sold for the same outrageous prices as seeds that have been stabilized through breeding multiple generations by people who know what they are doing.
I've heard that too
Same here lol.
I'm taking a crash course in fems via STS right now. Learning from someone who's been doing it for a lot of years too. From what I've learned STS is the way to go. You don't have to spray the plant near as much compared to colloidal silver. If you've seen plants that have gotten the CS treatment, they usually look like hell. I think the little things make a difference when it comes to reversing plants.
I just made a couple liters of colloidal silver but want to use the STS for reversals. Bought a nice new silver coin from the post office. 8g of .9999 silver will make enough silver nitrate to last for a long time. The sodium thiosulfate is easy to make with elemental sulfur and sodium hydroxide. Bitch finding aluminum wire tho. Think I'll check with my neighbour as he has a huge shop and all sorts of stuff like part rolls of old wire so might have some from back in the 80's when it was used for house wiring. Some of that is copper clad but I can remove the copper with some conc sulfuric acid. I have both acids from my days working as a chemist in a hazardous waste facility. Just have to wrap the wire around the coin to be able to control the reaction. Aluminum doesn't react with nitric acid but does with sodium hydroxide.
I've got most of my good genetics from RIU'ers myself. A friend crossed Cindy's Blue Cheese and a bagseed of Grapish with a Donkey Kong male.. Those strains are Ass Cheese and Gorille de Raisin.Same here lol.
I grew my first buds from bagseed in '78 then small grows here and there over the decades until moving here in northern Alberta in '01 with 6 hash plant clones. Since then not a day has passed without plants in the house. Outdoors sux for regular plants as they don't start flowering outside until the middle of Aug and we often have frost by the end of Aug or before mid Sept.
Health issues have impeded my growing the last few years and I lost a lot of interest so just grew a couple crops a year to keep me in pot. Hoping the breeding will keep me going but have to be careful not to get too carried away.
Years back I was growing Kali Mist and it was great for my depression but a bit too much would give me an anxiety attack for the first 15 min. I crossed it with NL#5 and the right pheno from that works great without the anxiety. I want to cross that with hi-CBD and get something that works on the depression and the arthritis. Ended up naming that cross Northern Mist at the suggestion of a friend.
Another good cross I have that was made by another forum pal in Texas is L.S.D. and Blueberry both from Barney's Farms about 10 years ago. Lost touch with him but he is an inactive member here called OldGrowerDude. He named those Lone Star Blue Heaven and was working to stabilize the strain.
Bought some pot at a dispensary in BC about 3 years ago called Sweet Skunk CBD. Got 5 different strains of a gram each and liked that one so bought 10g to bring home to make cocobudder with. Best medicine I ever used so far.
Another forum pal back east used 3 DJ Short's Blueberry males to mass pollinate 5 Island Sweet Skunk females and sent me 5 batches of those seeds about 200 of each. I have 4 of them growing now but will likely sprout more. No side branching at all with those so far and they are 16" tall. Haven't showed sex yet either. Hoping to get something like that Sweet Skunk CBD I liked so much. Tilray has one with the same name but it's ISS x Cannatonic with THC at 7% and CBD at 6%. The one I had was lab tested at 7% THC and 12%CBD so screw Tilray!
Too many strains, not enough time.
I've seen full on reversals from CS, don't get me wrong, it does work. I just tend to lean toward STS from what I've learned so far.I just made a couple liters of colloidal silver but want to use the STS for reversals. Bought a nice new silver coin from the post office. 8g of .9999 silver will make enough silver nitrate to last for a long time. The sodium thiosulfate is easy to make with elemental sulfur and sodium hydroxide. Bitch finding aluminum wire tho. Think I'll check with my neighbour as he has a huge shop and all sorts of stuff like part rolls of old wire so might have some from back in the 80's when it was used for house wiring. Some of that is copper clad but I can remove the copper with some conc sulfuric acid. I have both acids from my days working as a chemist in a hazardous waste facility. Just have to wrap the wire around the coin to be able to control the reaction. Aluminum doesn't react with nitric acid but does with sodium hydroxide.
Supposedly just a couple of sprays and lots of male flowers are produced with STS. With CS you have to spray every day for a couple of weeks and if it does work you just get a few 'nanners from all I've seen.
Need to get downstairs and finish cleaning up the grow room for plants but got pooped out playing with the pup.
I always worry about some stoner smoking the bud with CS on it. Not a good outcome from what I hear.
I love swapping genetics. There's a lot of really nice crosses coming out of home growers gardens these days.
No that can't be good at all. I bet it burns pretty bad too.
You are right. Some are as good as most bought strains.
I forget what it does, but the health effects are adverse.
Hype and scarcity marketing at its best, lo .