Pollen and humidity

BigTexan

BigTexan

Well-Known Member
I have a male girl scout cookies inside a homemade isolation chamber, I was going to try it without designing a fan into this first run, its completely sealed, I do have an air pump giving it fresh air @5 LPM.

My main question is since its sealed up, the humidity tends to get out of control when I water him, He is about to start throwing pollen and I was wondering at what levels of humidity does it start to render the pollen useless? If humidity even has any effect. Don't want to collect it all and find out its bunk when I go to do selective breeding.

Also what kind of storage methods will give me the longest shelf life?
 
moondance

moondance

Well-Known Member
Hey how are you today, I would say normal humidity would be best, can you keep it in the open air, under another light while you are collecting the pollen by chance, I realize it may be a space issue or stealth issue. I collect my pollen sacks into a small glass jar, that I keep under my veg light in between collections, they are not all ready the same day. When i am done collecting I will let the pollen dry for 2 to 3 days, till it smoothly slides around the jar without sticking usually works. Then I label it and freeze it until I need to use it. Peace, be safe MD.
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
moondance said:
Hey how are you today, I would say normal humidity would be best, can you keep it in the open air, under another light while you are collecting the pollen by chance, I realize it may be a space issue or stealth issue. I collect my pollen sacks into a small glass jar, that I keep under my veg light in between collections, they are not all ready the same day. When i am done collecting I will let the pollen dry for 2 to 3 days, till it smoothly slides around the jar without sticking usually works. Then I label it and freeze it until I need to use it. Peace, be safe MD.
Click to expand...
You take the whole flower/pollen sack and put it in a jar till it opens then separate the pollen after 2 days??
Am I reading that right?
I want to harvest the pollen from 2 separate m plants 2 pollinate 2 separate f plants.
I am trying to figure out how to do this in one 3x 3. I figure if I can catch the sacks b4 they burst I have a good chance of control.
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
BigTexan said:
I have a male girl scout cookies inside a homemade isolation chamber, I was going to try it without designing a fan into this first run, its completely sealed, I do have an air pump giving it fresh air @5 LPM.

My main question is since its sealed up, the humidity tends to get out of control when I water him, He is about to start throwing pollen and I was wondering at what levels of humidity does it start to render the pollen useless? If humidity even has any effect. Don't want to collect it all and find out its bunk when I go to do selective breeding.

Also what kind of storage methods will give me the longest shelf life?
Click to expand...
I'm curious about your isolation chamber is it within a larger grow room or its own sorta cab?
 
moondance

moondance

Well-Known Member
esh dov ets said:
You take the whole flower/pollen sack and put it in a jar till it opens then separate the pollen after 2 days??
Am I reading that right?
I want to harvest the pollen from 2 separate m plants 2 pollinate 2 separate f plants.
I am trying to figure out how to do this in one 3x 3. I figure if I can catch the sacks b4 they burst I have a good chance of control.
Click to expand...
Once you do a few you will notice they open at different times, one will open this day another 5 will open tomorrow, and so on. you can cut a plate and slip it around the base to collect the pollen, or something else stiff with a slit in the middle. I try and get them a day before they open or just as they open, and using a steady hand and long nose tweezers will grab them by the stems and not shake lol, hold the jar as close as possible, and i jar them. It takes a few males to tell when they are about to open, I collect the open ones more often times and loose a little pollen in the procces but I never do around any fems that are flowering ever, uness I am making them go on a date LOL. I leave the jar under the lights to dry out the sacks till they look crisp, I take the same tweezers and smack things around in the jar to see if I got all the sacks empty and freeze it with a disedent pack. I worry about the sacks later on when I cut the pollen with flour to make it disperse better and adhear, also makes the pollen go farther, but toast the flour a bit to get it as dry as possible if you do that. I hope this helped.
Moondance
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
That is helpful. I will try this. I'm in sort of a dilemma as I want one to date one but not the other. I started a thread called isolating pollen from 2 males for 2 fems
 
moondance

moondance

Well-Known Member
Also males will always flower before females at least for me they always have, so if I want to do a run with a certain male and a bunch of females I will veg the male till I am ready with the females and then flower them together.
Moondance
 
moondance

moondance

Well-Known Member
I have learned to get them 1 day or a few hours before its all about the look of them, as they swell and open the whole look changes like 3 times durring the pollen growing in the sacks. So time will teach you better than anyone can, so for now I would use a pan method for collecting that way it just drops to the plate and you gather from there, no fans on please LOL.
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
Yeah I put em in together. Could I take the male out put in 18 hour light for a few days now? The sex appeared pretty much btwn yesterday an today been about 2 weeks in.
Supposing i let it go when would you turn the fans off?
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
It's so easy to get pollen if you have a shelf in a closet somewhere. All you need is a branch off a male plant in a glass of water and one or two 2700K CFLs. Use a glass that will allow the branch to stick out at a sharp angle, closest to horizontal is best, and stick that in a cardboard box that you lined the bottom with tin foil for the pollen and spent flowers to fall on. Keep the light(s) on 12/12 and flowers will bloom and open.

No fancy set-up, fans, ventilation or $$ invested needed to get plenty enough pollen to make 100s of seeds.

Pollen.jpg
:peace:
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
i think i just read that i can take a cutting and flower it separately. yeah? so when would you recomend taking the cutting? will it make it all the way through flowering? will it grow more this way? will it root in the water?
OldMedUser said:
It's so easy to get pollen if you have a shelf in a closet somewhere. All you need is a branch off a male plant in a glass of water and one or two 2700K CFLs. Use a glass that will allow the branch to stick out at a sharp angle, closest to horizontal is best, and stick that in a cardboard box that you lined the bottom with tin foil for the pollen and spent flowers to fall on. Keep the light(s) on 12/12 and flowers will bloom and open.

No fancy set-up, fans, ventilation or $$ invested needed to get plenty enough pollen to make 100s of seeds.

View attachment 3818467
:peace:
Click to expand...
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
I've had them root in the water after a couple weeks. They do fine to finish flowering in some water and dump their pollen. They live off their leaves. You can clone and grow a male like a female. Autos excepted of course.

You could take a male branch at any time to use it to get pollen. Take one that's getting balls really good and more will grow out of it yet and open.

Can just store the pollen in some tin foil if you don't have a small jar or vial. Put some rice in a larger jar you can seal well. Small mason or jam jar will do. Then nuke the rice a bit to heat it up and drive off any moisture then cap it to let it cool down and stick your container of pollen in there to desiccate so you can store it for a few months. Make sure to pick out all the tiny bits of plant material as they are moist. I screen mine thru my 180 micron kief sieve to clean it quick. :)

Then you just dust a bit on buds on a couple lower branches, fans off, let it sit there overnight then spritz the area down with water to deactivate any loose pollen. I'll take a plant upstairs and cover the whole thing with a garbage bag but the branch I want to dust. Used 4 different strains of pollen on the same plant that way once. :)

:peace:
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
I've had them root in the water after a couple weeks. They do fine to finish flowering in some water and dump their pollen. They live off their leaves. You can clone and grow a male like a female. Autos excepted of course.

You could take a male branch at any time to use it to get pollen. Take one that's getting balls really good and more will grow out of it yet and open.

Can just store the pollen in some tin foil if you don't have a small jar or vial. Put some rice in a larger jar you can seal well. Small mason or jam jar will do. Then nuke the rice a bit to heat it up and drive off any moisture then cap it to let it cool down and stick your container of pollen in there to desiccate so you can store it for a few months. Make sure to pick out all the tiny bits of plant material as they are moist. I screen mine thru my 180 micron kief sieve to clean it quick. :)

Then you just dust a bit on buds on a couple lower branches, fans off, let it sit there overnight then spritz the area down with water to deactivate any loose pollen. I'll take a plant upstairs and cover the whole thing with a garbage bag but the branch I want to dust. Used 4 different strains of pollen on the same plant that way once. :)

:peace:
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I wonder if it's like with grafting or if you get genetic crossing or like getting twins from two different dads. So will the seeds on the Berry bush be berry x male one on one side and berry x male 2 on the other side, if you do it this way, or will they be sorta berry x male one and 2?
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
When you graft plant b on mother a ,plant b will continue to grow as plant b from the graft point on, mother a will stay mother a every where else. Folks that know say there is no genetic drift .
I wonder if this is the same . Where mother a stays mother a and her seeds are mother a crossed with only what male's pollen touched it where it touched it..

Do you get a three way cross if you pollinate half a plant with one strain and half with another or do you end up with 2 two separate two way crosses?
 
OldMedUser

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
2 separate crosses from using two different pollen strains on one plant. Seeds from each pollen type will have a common mother but each will carry the genes of a different father.

When grafting a different strain to another the graft will produce it's own strain while the base plant will grow it's particular type. When one type of apple is grafted to a different tree the grafted branch doesn't inherit any genes from the base plant and still grows it's type of apples. It's basically a parasite to the base plant and only receives nutrition, Same thing with pot.

:peace:
 
esh dov ets

esh dov ets

Well-Known Member
OldMedUser said:
2 separate crosses from using two different pollen strains on one plant. Seeds from each pollen type will have a common mother but each will carry the genes of a different father.

When grafting a different strain to another the graft will produce it's own strain while the base plant will grow it's particular type. When one type of apple is grafted to a different tree the grafted branch doesn't inherit any genes from the base plant and still grows it's type of apples. It's basically a parasite to the base plant and only receives nutrition, Same thing with pot.

:peace:
Click to expand...
You answered my question, thanks and wondering about the apples ; the tree doesn't benefit from the light brought in or any nutrition brought in by the grafted branch? ? I wonder if the plant can stay healthy with only grafted branches
 
BigTexan

BigTexan

Well-Known Member
Well I guess I figured it all out anyways lol, I had a male girl scout cookies in a clear tote just off in my bedroom away from other girls. within 2 weeks he dropped his sacks onto a foil plate I made and I was able to get a good chunk of pollen. The humidity did get up to 100% several times in the tote but I have already pollinated a few girls and the all took. So it seems RH will not affect the viability as long as the humidity doesnt become dripping wet.
 
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