How I pollenate

[Olderfart]

Well peeps, for amusement of some, and perhaps a useful suggestion or two for others, here is how I now pollenate plants when I make seeds. I have tried several ways of doing the job, but this works the best for me because it is effective at isolated pollenation of a single branch with virtually no stray seeds from anywhere else. I usually get hundreds of seeds from a single branch by using this approach.

First, I collect individual male flowers from the dad, be it a male (haven't done one of them yet), or a reversed female. To collect the flowers, I pluck them off with a fine pair of tweezers. Grabbing the tiny stem and twisting or pulling usually does the job. Here is the result of the first collection from my WDA she-male today:

To apply the pollen, I isolate the target branch by enclosing it inside a cloth bag, and inject pollen into the bag. The bag is moistened before using, so any pollen falling on the inside of the bag material will be killed, which makes for less risk later when removing the bag. Here is the bag that I am now using:

This time around, I have permanently mounted a large syringe to the bag. In past efforts, I used a smaller syringe and a needle pushed through the bag material. That approach works, but risks pulling the needle out of the cloth and spraying pollen everywhere. The bag has a cord attached which allows it to be supported vertically during use. Here the system is set up to insert pollen:

To inject airborne pollen, I give the syringe a good shake the then pump the plunger vigorously back and forth while moving the tubing around to aim the air stream in varying directions inside the bag. I keep pumping and shaking for a few minutes.

And here is the syringe after pumping it to inject pollen into the bag through the tube:

Once injected, I leave the bag in place for ~3 hours to let the pollen "germinate" on flowers. After 3 hours, I spray the bag and entire plant down with plain water before very gently removing the bag while misting the emerging branch to kill any loose pollen on leaves. Then the girl goes back in the drobe to continue business.

So far, this technique has been very effective for me, hundreds of seeds from the target branches, and none so far that I have noticed from anywhere else. I don't need thousands of seeds, and don't want to dedicate an entire plant to them, so doing one lower branch at a time works perfectly for me, and I still get a fine crop of bud from the same plant.

I have successfully stored extra pollen for over a year by freezing harvested male flowers after drying them in a silica gel chamber. The flowers kept inside one of the small glass jars in the picture, and this jar goes on top of a layer of dehydrated silica gel in the bottom of a larger jar. In the past, I have then put the entire thing into the freezer, but I think it would work fine to just seal the small jar after drying and put it in the freezer. For my purposes, I will stick with the double jar going into the freezer because it helps ensure no possibility of cross contamination if more than one type of pollen is being handled and stored. I like to know what my seeds are when I plant them.

Any questions, fire away peeps. But try to keep the laughter under control eh?

 

[Olderfart]

I forgot to mention that the open end of the bag is snugged around the stem of the target branch, and before injecting I mist the entire area around the bottom of the bag in case any pollen escapes where the bag is tied off. I tie the bag around the branch with a small velcro tie, but anything will do the job, even a piece of string.

 

[Mozzy]

That's beautiful, thank you

...would you say the flowers in your example generally look about right for trying this, timing-wise?

 

[Olderfart]

That's beautiful, thank you

...would you say the flowers in your example generally look about right for trying this, timing-wise?

yup, I think that they are about right. The ones in the picture of the jar have been knocked about a bit because I dropped the jar (with the lid on thank goodness) before the pic, so some may not have been as quite as far open as in the pic. I pluck them either just after they start to open, or just before they will. You can tell when they are just about there by their plump symetrical shape. As the pic shows, you don't need a lot of flowers to make substantial amounts of pollen. There are only about a dozen flowers in the syringe, and I think it still has lots of mileage left after a vigorous application to the first target. OTOH, I will add more flowers as they mature, so the next application will have more flowers in the pump. Really, I suspect that all you need to get a few seeds with this technque are one or two mature flowers.

There are lots of ways to do this, but so far I have not found anything that works better if only a couple hundred seeds will suffice. If many more are needed, I would just use a larger bag to cover an entire full sized solo plant. I will be doing a 24C solo this way shortly. I normally would not bother with a whole solo plant, but I have a nice small one going that I don't need bud from, so I'll knock the whole girl up and see what happens. I am interested in the 24CxWDA cross as a potential sleep helper.

 

[Olderfart]

A minor update from my current mischief with pollenation. Rather than bother spraying the whole plant down to kill any pollen that gets loose while removing the isolation bag, I just place a garden garbage bag over the entire plant other than the target branch. I then spray the area around the base of the bag, and spray the emerging branch as the bag is gently removed. Once the bag is clear, I give the target branch a heavy misting both top and bottom of leaves, and let it sit for a half hour or so before returning it to the drobe. Here is the first time I tried this, but it won't be the last:

Getting the garbage bag over the plant would be helped by suspending it first the way I do with the cord on the isolation bag, but with care I got it in place without hurting anything. I will likely suspend it for the next round which will be in a few hours.

One final note is that one must remember to label the branch to identify it as pollenated, and record the strain/cross if more than one cross or duplication is being done. I twist tie a label to the branch. It is surprisingly easy to lose track of a particular branch, especially on a big plant.

Happy seeding peeps.