What up crew? First off thanks for the great show! I am currently working on a mephisto grow and just got done reversing a Walter white and an alien vs triangle. My question is how many weeks into flower should the females that are receiving pollen be? Is it the same as a photoperiod plant? I figured since they were autos they might need to be dusted sooner?? Thanks in advance for everyone’s time.
Stay irie!✌️✌️
From my understanding and very little experience with pollination, it should take about 30 days to actually make viable seeds once the pollination has happened. I’ve dropped pollen in week 3 with great results. And it doesn’t take much pollen at all to seed a 4×4 area. If in fact you pollinate something accidentally then spray her down with water immediately and that should render the pollen useless. According to what I recall Rasta Jeff saying, he puts his males in earlier than the females so by the time the females are ready the male is really dumping pollen out which tremendously increases your seed count. Since you’re doing this with autos I think if you’re skeptical on when to dust then dust them more than once. You should at least wait until you have buds forming rather than budlets. You’ll know when pollination has happened due to the pistils turning a brownish color like they do near finish. Hope this helps
If you are hand pollenating, you ideally want to hit them with the pollen when the flowers are like little poof balls of white hairs and are just starting to get a little bud structure to them. Usually this is like day 21-30 of flowering but this varies by strain.
Basically the more white hairs you tag with pollen the more seeds you’ll get. so dust them while they are at their hairiest.
If you wait too late, the seeds won’t have time to fully develop. Make sure you have at least a month or more before harvest to allow time for nice healthy seeds to develop.
Great info above! to recap:
Pollinate when the buds look like Einstein’s hair.
Water will ‘kill’ the pollen, so don’t try making a pollen smoothie for easy application… Sounds messy anyway
The Pistils (which should’ve been white and erect) will turn brown and shrivel once they’ve been pollinated
I’d consider spraying some water on the walls/floor to kill off any straggling pollen grains that may find their way into something you don’t want seeded.
When the seeds are ready, the Bracts (the green tear-drop shaped cover that the seeds are in) should open and drop the seed very easily, be aware of this when processing and/or moving the plants/branches/buds
Playing Barry White won’t help the process, but won’t hurt either.
SOUP explained it very well, the buds should look like little “poof balls”. It’s too early when the buds only have a top with white pistils coming out, and too late if the buds are starting to swell and become more dense. 3 to 4 weeks and it should be enough time. After you apply pollen the pistils will turn brown – then you know it was successful. Look for mature seeds in 30 to 50 days. On many strains you can actually see the mature seeds poking out of the buds. They should be dark colored at that time. When you squeeze a bud it will feel like it’s full of seeds. I find that that cutting down at 7 or 8 weeks is sufficient for good seed formation. When I manage to pull off the seed run effectively, I’ll get top buds about half the size of a golf ball with 25 seeds each. Could be a good idea to cover off some branches so they don’t get “as” pollinated. Good seed runs will leave you with buds that are mostly seed weight. No wonder they invented sensimilla! But hey, the trichomes still have the good stuff in them 🙂
Also I’m an idiot because I forgot we’re talking about autoflowers here. Very sorry about that confusion. I would let the males pollinate as soon as I get 5 to 10 white pistils on each bud (I’m just guessing on this, but it’s what I would do). Maybe 2 to 3 weeks after bud set begins. There aren’t any rules that say you have to chop the plants down when the trichomes start going amber, so maybe if the seeds aren’t done yet, just let the plant keep living until you’re happy with the seed size/quality.