Here is the rundown. I grew a plant from bag seed and I like the results (pic below). I pulled 6 clones from this plant, and gave three to a friend, leaving me with three. I would love to keep this strain alive, but don’t have the time/space to keep a mother plant, so I thought maybe making feminized seeds was the way to go.
First question: Will colloidal silver work to create feminized pollen? Or should I use Silver Thiosulfate or Gibberellic acid?
Second question: If my friend uses one of these techniques on one of the female clones, to produce pollen, will it be feminized pollen?
Third question: If I use that feminized pollen and fertilize one of the other female clones (both are the same plant), will it a) produce feminized seeds, and b) will the genetics of all of the seeds created be identical to the original plant?
If I’m correct, this will create hundreds/thousands of feminized seeds that are a stable genetics, meaning every seed will produce exactly the same plant and they will be mostly female. Does this all check out?
Thank you in advance.
Silver thiosulfate is the current industry standard, colloidal silver has been known to work, and the GA is often added to the silver thiosulfate to increase success rate. That being said some ladies are tough to reverse and different strategies might need to be used.
Any pollen from a female plant will produce pollen with only female chromosomes. Occasionally a plant will have a third genetic marker(intersex) but not a normal thing to run across.
Any pollen from a female will only produce female seeds that’s how they make only female(feminized) seeds.
Will not be an identical match. Possibly better or nothing worth a damn. Very tough to find exactly the same plant. For every hybrid gene you’ll run into multiple outcomes. Takes a while to breed out but you can get close with good genetic expression selections and continued breeding work. But if your only choice is to make seeds then it’s better then nothing.
Do you have a brand recommendation for Silver Thiosulfate? So to get the stable genetics, I would need to keep pulling the best plant/trait from each generation and then create pollen and breed back to the original, correct?
I realize this might be too complex for a thread. If you have any books/info you can point me to on this topic, I would appreciate it.
Thank you.
I wouldn’t recommend buying STS – for about what it costs, you can buy the raw ingredients to make more than you’ll EVER use. I did some research a few months ago and talked to some well known breeders (Including some that have been on the show) and they all recommended making your own because a ‘fresh mixture” will work more effectively. You make STS in two parts and then you mix them to create your final solution , that you’ll spray on your plants. Making your own means you’ll KNOW your STS solution is fresh and hasn’t been degraded from long term storage or poor handling. Also, you’ll know it’s full strength and not over diluted. All the stuff can be purchased on Amazon.
Here’s the best (that I could find) instructional video on making your own
https://youtu.be/2pT_TunWZL4
JustCoolin’s response was spot-on! You’re not going to create a clone from any seed. Personally, I prefer regular seeds from 2 phenos over fem seeds for trying to backup a strain for the future – it offers more opportunities to find the pheno you fell in love with or to back cross to recreate and stabilize it. But, I guess you didn’t get any males from that bag seed? For what it’s worth, you CAN maintain a clone in a very small container – even a solo cup or a 6” plastic pot. They don’t have to take up hardly any room and you can keep cloning the plant every month or two to keep it very small. But, there IS a convenience factor to making fems. You won’t get exactly the same plant every time with fems but you’ll probably get something relatively close, most of the time. Depends how pick/discerning you are. IF that plants has a ‘hermie’ trait hidden in its genetic lineage, that negative trait could pop up in some of the fem seeds; just like other genetic traits (those visible AND those that are hidden) that the plant acquired from its parents.
Hope this helps some! She’s a beautiful plant, for SURE! If she smokes as pretty as she looks, I’d be wanting to keep her as well! Good luck!
To add on what these fine gents said, you don’t necessarily have to breed the perfect match, if you make enough seeds you pheno hunt the plant you want to keep and start a new mother from that plant.
To get the best results, you need to turn one of your females into a herm with STS and let it pollinate other plants. The seeds and plant matter from the plant that is given the STS is usually thrown away. That seems to be the industry standard. Just a heads up if you dind”t know already…Stay lifted
Just to be clear, the plant that you apply STS to is ONLY for the generation of pollen that contains the male chromosome. The application of STS renders that SPECIFIC plant un-smokable. I didn’t think about mentioning it earlier but this is a great point and I forgot that not everyone knows this. The problem arises from the plant’s absorption of the STS which really only makes it safe for pollen collection. In other words, you wouldn’t want to STS 3-4 colas on the top of a plant and let that pollen drop onto lower, untreated, buds and then harvest THOSE seeds OR SMOKE THAT FLOWER – that’s a big non-no! So, your best bet (assuming you only have a single growing female plant of this variety) would be a scenario like this:
1. Take a couple of clones of of the female plant you’re trying to ‘save.’
2. Grow the clones until you’ve got 8-10 nodes, at least. This will give you time to make/acquire your STS
3. Apply the STS to your 2 clones and flip THEM to flower. Ideally, you’ll want them a week to 10 days head start on your males. So there will be plenty of pollen production in full swing as your keeper plant goes into flower and starts really producing pistils.
4. Collect pollen from your two STS treated clones; and apply to the branches on the mother/keeper plant you want to seed. I would save and store some pollen for other breeding but that’s not necessary- just had to add it in here, lol. If you’ve got a dedicated tent/room for pollination, then you could pollenate directly by placing your STS treated clones in with your mother plant and shake the clones every day over the top of the keeper plant that will produce your seeds.
5. Discard the 2 STS treated clones. The seeds from the mother/seed producing plant are totally safe.
An alternative scenario would be to take, say, 4 clones of that keeper. Then, treat 2 with STS and use that pollen on the 2 OTHER clones. The advantage here is that you could keep your mother until you are certain that everything worked and you have seeds in-hand before you discard the original plant.
Great catch by PurpTerp-PhenoGod!
Thank you everyone for all of these excellent responses.
I found this product on Ebay, and its a kit to create STS. I think I may go this route. Outside of keeping plant genetics, I’m also just interested in this process, and like the idea of having a bunch of feminized seeds. I’m just a home grower for my own stash, and I will often grow a few plants and then not grow for a year or two. So having a bunch of feminized on hand makes it easy to start a plant and know that it will a) be female, and b) know that it has decent characteristics. Saves a lot of time and money not having to buy seeds, and chop males.
https://ebay.us/20LEfz
That is a good looking plant!! If you want to keep that thing around I’d recommend just cutting clones off of clones and not worrying about a single mother. A friend of mine got 47 plants clone from clone from one fem seed and I didn’t notice any decrease in quality. Seeds would def be cool too to explore the genetics, but cloning seems like the easiest way to keep that specific plant.
1- use STS, most breeders report its more reliable than coloidial silver.
2- yes, if you reverse a female with STS she will produce pollen that should make only female seeds.
3- NO! Selfed seeds will NOT be identical to the parent plant. There will likely be some similarities, but you are also likely to see other traits popping up from deep in the family tree. Seeds are ALWAYS a roll of the dice, and each seedling is always a unique individual.
Selfing is a great tool for exploring the genetics of a plant, but it does not create exact copies of the original parent plant. Instead you get a “reshuffling” of all the genes available in that family, and each seed will be a grab bag of those traits.
If you want to keep that original plant around and want to preserve those genetics…. cloning is the way to do it. If you want to preserve those traits in seed form, it will likely take several generations of breeding work or back crossing to make it happen.