Donpaul.p's Latest 400 Watt HPS Grow

Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

it took me a while to find them pics, google was my friend, its hard to get good close up pics like that unless you got a top end camera and decent lighting, something my camera just wont do,

so not my own pics but luckily i found some on the net that should help show the bananas, so i got to thank google for the images, the pictures where from a grower on here a while back, when i clicked on the link in the pic it took me back to this site and to a journal that someone had started,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

cool, glad to help,

fingers crossed you will have some fem pollen soon,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

I'm late as usual 5 pages is not bad for me. glad to be here . Great read. So if you just leave the bananas in place their will be fem seeds soon right?
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

gonna try giving the strawberry blue a few days of dark with colder than usual temps to let her think its nearly winter time hopefully she will throw nanners out soon
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

bozzo420 said:
I'm late as usual 5 pages is not bad for me. glad to be here . Great read. So if you just leave the bananas in place their will be fem seeds soon right?
Click to expand...

IMHO.....yes! When the bananas diecse or whatever you call it, open up, releasing pollen.....you will get some seeds, you can put that pollen on other plants too if you get it at just the right time.
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

Great info DP... I've been reading up on breeding and have seen this mentioned a few times over the last week or so. One place, and I can't remember if it was one of the cannabis breeding books or a journal, sources tend to get mixed up in my head a lot, especially when I'm reading multiple things over the same time period. Anyway, this person said they harvest the top buds and leave 2 - 3 of the lower brances on the plant and let them grow out their bananas, then harvest the lower brances a few weeks later when the bananas are ripe.

Have you tried that method as opposed to letting the whole plant go? any pros vs. cons on the two methods if so?
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

hi all,

@bozzo420, in theory the answer is yes, how ever i dont self polinate the plant the bananas are on, i have got seeds from self polinated plants but not run tests to find out if all are fem seeds, but i can say up till now all the seeds planted from the pollen put on other plants have turned out fem with no hermie traits,

i mean at the end of the day to make fem seeds you use silver colidiol or what ever its called and stress the plant and force it to go hermie then collect the hermie pollen, this pollen is then put on fem plants and all seeds will be 100% fem or their abouts, i have purchased fem seeds that have turned out male so you do run the risk of having the odd male turn up, out of all the fem seeds i have purchased only 1 turned out male and that was the jack flash fem from herbies, i have let herbie know about this in case it was a dodgy batch of seeds,

so as for self polinating them i guess it should work the same, how ever the plant may then contain the hermie trait, maybe someone else can jump and advise as i have only used the pollen from the bananas to put on other plants,

when i ran my last fem experiment i put a fem plant in flower and at the start of flower i kept stressing it with light leaks during the dark period, this made the plant hermie, but it did not grow bananans it just grew the usual male ball type flowers, when i used this pollen i ended up with around 500 seeds off 2 plants, i grew a couple of seeds from each plant and both turned hermie a few weeks into flower, which was around the same time i stressed the mother plant, so i dont use them seeds,

but when i read its the pollen from the bananas that produce the fem seeds i thought id give it a try, i didnt want to go the silver route due to it making the buds not safe plus my dog eats any leaves he can get his hands on so if i turn my back for a few seconds to fetch water their is the risk my dog could eat a leaf with silver solution on it so i looked for a different option, thats when i was told about the bananas and instead of stressing the plant early in flower let it flower a few weeks longer and it will produce bananas, then this pollen will be the fem pollen i was trying to get, so far all seeds planted from 3 different plants have turned out 100% fem so far, so it looks like i have managed to get fem seeds,

it just seems like its the pollen that comes very late in flower thats needed, so maybe the seed breeders that use silver solution do it towards the end of flower, i have not tried stressing the plant late in flower to produce bananas just in case it increases the risk off hermies, but with my next round of plants im willing to give it a try, ill do a fem plant 12-12 from seed so it dont get to big then ill stress it towards end of flower and try the pollen from them, then i can tell you all if that works as well, but im a few months away from that yet,

but so far the best method i have found is stressing the plant by keeping it in flower to long, make sure their is no pollen around else the plant will reproduce and might not produce bananas, the plant produces these bananas as a last resort to ensure it reproduces, so all strains i think should have this safety feature, all i can do is try different methods and pass on what i learn, if i can get fem seeds and help others do the same then im more than happy to run tests and document my findings,

it wont be long before i know enough to write a grow book, maybe a few of us should get together and come up with a 420mag grow book, im sure with all our different ideas and skills we could write one of the best grow books out their, i have read several grow books which dont cover certain ideas or different methods of growing,

maybe thats something for the future and possible something 420mag might want to consider at some point, im sure with the amount of top members this site as got it would be one of the best grow books around,

a bit long winded but hopefully i answered your question bozzo420, if i missed anything else or you want to ask anything else then ask away and ill do my best to answer.
oh one more thing, once you see the bananas you need to wait for them to open to release pollen, then it takes a couple of weeks for seeds to develop, once they have developed do not pull the seeds out of the buds before they have dried as they continue to grow during the drying period,

@tm420, if you want to go down the stress route to try and force hermie quicker then i found light stress is the best method, exactly like you mention by giving it plenty of dark, but during the dark give it random hours of light, so wait few hours then give it 1 hour of light then back in the dark, make it random, the plant will think the world is ending and go hermie, but i did this early in flower and it produced regular male flowers and the seeds turned out hermie as well, i will try stressing late in flower with my next round of plants, if it produces bananas then it might be quicker than letting it flower for 2 or 3 weeks longer which does work, light stressing usually takes 3 to 5days, just make sure you let the bananas ripen, i usually wait till i see one slightly starting to open then you can harvest the plant, hang the buds up with some dark shiny paper under neath then everyday give the stems a gently flick and the pollen will fall out onto the paper or place paper back over the buds and tap pollen into that, i usually prefer dark shiny paper so i can actually see the pollen,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

I don't want to cross any. Just to see what happens , I will leave the lower branches of my greenhouse plants and see if any seeds form from any bananas that pop up.
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

welcome runewulfsong.

exactly what you wrote is what i did, i harvested most of the plant leaving about the bottom 1/4 to 1/3rd of the plant, basically all the popcorn buds, i did leave 3 or 4 bigger buds just in case the smaller buds was not as ripe as the bigger buds, but i harvested all the main buds and left all the lower growth on the plant, then just placed it back under 12-12, i made sure i left fan leaves on lower down the plant so it could continue to take in light and co2, then it was about 2 weeks later i noticed the bananas so left it in flower a bit longer until i seen one of them starting to open, then i harvested and left to dry and tapped the pollen out every couple of days,

so thats exactly the method i used, i think doing it to a whole plant would be a bit difficuly as you risk getting pollen everywhere as their is no way your going to be able to inspect every bud and node for male pollen, they grow anywhere and i found they tended to grow under leaves and in shaded areas, at first i never noticed any so i pulled the smaller branches down to have a good look and it was only then that i noticed them, they grow out the buds and their tiny to start off with, but they will appear it just takes time,

if you have other plants in the flower room then its important to inspect the plant every 2 days as these bananas can start growing inside the buds and only poke out when their ready to open, so its best to inspect as much of the plant as you can, these bananas dont tend to grow at nodes they usually grow out the buds, but if it was me and i had them growing at nodes and off the buds then id only collect the pollen from the bananas on the buds, chances are the pollen at the nodes might contain the male gene as its not actually growing out of a female bud.

im no expert and i can only pass on what i have learned and tried myself,

i found stressing a plant in the first few weeks of flower just produces regular male flowers, i did not get no bananas i just got plenty of regular round male sacs, i collected this pollen and pollenated 2 plants and get 500 plus seeds, i planted seeds from both these plants and all turned hermie very early in flower, so i thought maybe that was a wrong method or it might of just been the strain that was prone to hermie, i did not grow out the mother plant to know if it was hermie in the first place, it went hermie when i stressed it with light and dark period, basically i gave it 36 hours of dark then 3 hours of light then back in the dark for 12 hours then 1 hour of light, basically just random but gave it more dark period than light,
i thought any schedule might prolong the hermie to happen so making it random i thought was best method, it worked but seeds grew out as hermies.

the method above with late flowering is the method i have used and i have found so far that all seeds are fem, so i can only say that in my experience that the late flowering method works, when i sprout these next seeds ill go 12-12 with one then towards the end of flower ill light stress it and see if that produces bananas then i can test the seeds and check if their fem, if they turn out fem then that might be quicker than letting them flower longer than normal, but i cant say for sure if that will work as i have not run tests on this yet, if anyone else has then im sure someone will jump in and offer some advice on this.

so id say using a whole plant would be a big mistake unless its the only plant in the flower room as its impossible to check the whole plant every couple of days for bananas, it would only take 1 or 2 of these opening to turn the whole room to seed, but i guess if you noticed seeds growing then you could harvest the late flowering plant before more pollen spreads then collect the seeds from the other plants, you dont get as much pollen out the bananas as regular male flowers so you might get lucky and end up with plenty of seeds along with plenty of seed free bud,

for me i think harvesting the plant first and leaving the bottom buds on the plant and letting them flower would be the best method, in my oppinion at least,

i have not tried stressing a plant after harvest to produce fem pollen but if tm420 is trying this then he can let us know how he gets on with this, it might be a quicker way to produce bananas, i was in no rush so didnt mind leaving them to flower late,

another thing i will add is that these bananas will grow even after harvest, so say you let the plant go 2 or 3 weeks late so you got plenty of amber trichs then during the drying process these bananas usually develop, again ive not tried and tested this method but i have read about this method in a couple of places, but your taking a risk if you want the pollen and harvest before seeing the bananas, you just never know with this method, at least if you can see them then they will be ok,

im pretty sure that when you see the bananas you can wait about a week then harvest and hang the plant to dry with all the buds on the stem, during this drying time these bananas will continue to develop and should be ripe by the time the plant is dry,

i hope that answers pretty much all the questions but if anyone has anymore or any suggestions or ideas then feel free to post them here, im always interested in new ideas and techniques, who knows it might even end up in a grow book one day
420 magazines elite grow book,

i found bananas on the last buds i just harvested on one of my plants i took down yesterday, i harvested a plant about 6 days ago and left the bottom 1/4 on the plant to fatten up as the top buds was ready according to the trichs but when i was harvesting the plant the lower buds still had white pistils and trichs where clear so it went back in flower just to finish off, now i never noticed bananas on the plant while it was flowering and i checked every couple of days to prevent spreading pollen, but when i harvested it i found about 3 bananas and possibly more once the buds dry a bit, now these buds was not 100% ready but i needed the space so harvested so then i found bananas,

so im thinking when the top of the plant is ready to harvest and then if it dont get pollen it produces these bananas on the lower and imature buds as these still have time to produce seeds, again this is just a guess but from what i have found this is the way it seems to work, so anyone doing this needs to make sure they check all buds and nodes, you really need to pull the small branches about so you can see the bud all the way round, they will grow it just takes time,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

@bozzo420, sounds good mate, just remember that fans will blow the pollen all over the place so if you have more than one plant in flower then the pollen will get on all plants, if you only have one plant in flower then let it keep flowering until these bananas grow and open, it will then self polinate,

i have grown plants that have not received any sort of pollen but i then find 1 to 5 seeds in the whole plant, this suggests the plant never got pollen from an outside source and actually self polinated, these seeds did turn out fem, i grew out a regular auto that was female and it self polinated i only ended up with 2 or 3 seeds but they turned out auto and fem,

so it should also work for you as long as the pollen is from the bananas and not regular male pollen sacs, if you see the round male balls growing at the nodes then id wait as long as you can and try and see if bananas grow, if you see bananas then if it was me id pull off the round male pollen sacs and just let the bananas pop open and produce pollen, now these bananas dont produce much pollen compared to regular male pollen sacs, so what i would do is when the bananas are ready to open or when they have opened id place some dark paper under the pollen sac and tap it to collect as much pollen as possible, then use que tip or small paint brush and spread it on as many pistils as you can, from 1 pollenated small bud you can end up with 20 to 50 seeds possibly more depending on size of bud and amount of pollen,

keep us posted on how you get on, it would be great if it was legal to ship pollen, i cant see why its illegal when its no different to sending seeds through the post, but until it is possible i guess we just have to run our own tests,

one thing i have read and dont really agree with is keeping pollen in the fridge, it might be ok but pollen is not viable when it gets damp or wet, so if your pollenating one plant in the flower room then after you remove that plant make sure to spray the grow room down to remove any viable pollen else the next plants you put in flower may get pollenated in the fan picks up any off the walls or floor so give everything a good spray or wipe with damp cloth,

anyway back to the fridge, i read its best to keep pollen in the fridge, now the reason i dont do this and dont think its a good option is because of what happens when you take anything out of the fridge, you go get a cold can of pop or a cool beer out of the fridge and then what happens, it condensates so i think this would kill the pollen due to the moisture, so not really sure how they keep it viable in the fridge, it might be ok while its in the fridge but taking it out would be the only problem i see,

all i do is collect the pollen on dark shiny paper or a paper bag then use what i need to use, then any that i have left goes into one of them 35ml film canisters, their black and no light can get in, then i just keep this in the bottom of a cupboard in my living room, i did this and used the pollen a few weeks later and after about 2 hours of putting it on some pistils they had started to wither showing me the pollen was still viable, it produced seeds so i have a small amount of pollen for future grows,
the seeds i have grown out are nothing like the mother plants i put the pollen on, the buds are covered in thc, pretty much white, way more trichs than the mother plants had so ive not taken clones from these fem plants as the results are pretty amazing,

the only option i have to keep the strain would be to self polinate and produce seeds, the seeds produced from the female pollen wont be stable yet and i can clearly see 2 different strains from the resulting seeds, i got 2 seeds from the same fem plant growing and both are totally different in growth, leaves are different buds are totally different, if i was going to try and make it stabe then i know exactly which mother plant i would use out of the 2, so i will carry on with my quest and try and make some more stable genetics but im no expert and learning as i go along
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

Now ill stop boring you all with my long comments, my problem is i type quicker than i speak so before i know it ive wrote a 10 page essay in about a minute,

so now for my plants, just a quick update on these,
my own fem seeds that are in flower look amazing, the one is pure trichs, i pulled a branch over to inspect the bud and it just hit me how covered the buds where in trics, the buds are solid, the leaves are covered its by far the best trich i have had on any plants ive grown so if i could make this stable im pretty sure it would be a strain many growers would like to grow, ill borrow a good camera tomorrow and show you all what im on about,

if anyone knows more about making stable strains then id be grateful of as much info as possible as i have read plenty of the net but most of it is general info and not actual experience, my problem is this, i got about 700 to 800fem seeds, might be more than that, i got these from 3 plants, i have grown out seeds from 2 of these plants and they all seemed slight different all though the seeds from one of the plants was pretty similar but this other plants the buds are totally different, one plant has thick dense buds you cant squeeze covered in thc. the other plant has longer buds not so dense and leaves a a bit different, so i want to try and make the thc covered plant more stable, so do i self polinate or is it best to find a male that i like and cross it with that then i know i need to backcross with the original plant to bring the genetics back, im not looking at selling seeds but i dont mind handing them out to friends but id like to try and make the genetics i like more stable,

i have a good strong male i can get pollen from its the ken estes gdp, crossing it with this would give me regular seeds allowing me to grow out male and female for crossing with each other, i am really not up on crossing so any help will be good, if not ill just experiment and see where i end up,

ok back to the plants,
the fem unamed with crazy thc is not far from flower, even the lower buds are about the same as the top buds, pistils are around 50% brown and shrivled, trich are pretty much 75 to 85% cloudy with the odd amber one here and their, not on all buds but say every 3rd bud has an amber tric or2, id like the pistils to pertty much all be brown but ill keep an eye on the trichs,

now the other fem plants has got me a big concerned, both have received bpn at the same rates, same amount of water, now this plant has 100% cloudy trichs with about 3 to 5% amber trichs, but the problem is that not one of the pistils have turned brown, i cant find 1 brown pistil on the whole plant, so not sure whats going on with it, buds are nice and fat but all the pistils look healthy and not shrivled back to the bud, so ill leave it longer if thats what it needs and maybe the buds will grow some more,

but this is how different the 2 plants are, so not sure what to do, ill leave it to go more amber but the pistils dont seem to be changing, the leaves seem to be coming towards the end of flower as their starting to get ligher in colour but no change with the pistils,

my 2ltr dwc hempie i planted 2 days ago has broken out the soil so thats in the process of starting, this will be lollipopped and might get a week or 2 of veg at the most before it goes 12-12 with the bpn goodness bubbling around its roots, its a delicious critical sensi star,

im sure their is more to tell but its 3m and i got to be up at 8am, so ill try and get some pics in the daytime and get the added to the journal,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

when i was told i can use that method i thought their is no harm giving it a try, i had other plants in flower anyway so the plant was not taking up any room i needed so keeping the bottom of the plant in flower longer was no problem at all, plus if it helps us all produce some fem seeds then it benefits us all and its so much easier than using that silver colidiol stuff,

i can understand it been a pain if you needed the space or you only had the one plant in flower and was waiting to flip lights to veg, then it could be a pain but its just a couple of weeks longer than normal, i know most growers harvest their plants slightly earlier than they actually should do, i myself have been guilty of this many times, but the rule i follow now is if the plant looks ready to harvest then give it 2 weeks longer, after following that rule i soon found my buds pretty much put on over 1/4 to a 1/3rd extra weight on,

its the last couple of weeks when the calyx's swell, for growers who dont no their plant parts that well like when i first started growing it was all new to me and a bit confusing, but basically the parts that the white hairs grow out of, these are the seed pods, its in the last couple of weeks that these seed pods swell and end up looking like that got a seed in them, even though they dont have a seed in them they still swell up, if anyone wants to know what they should look like then just look at the pistils at the nodes, you will then see the calyx and how swollen it gets, at the nods lower down the plant you will just have 1 or 2 calyx and its usually where the plant first shows sex, well the buds are made up of these and leaves, so harvesting before these swell up really affects yield so waiting for these calyx to swell really pays off,

so now i check my plants, when they look ready i hold off harvesting for another 2 weeks, try taking a picture at the point you wanted to harvest then take another pic 2 weeks later and compare the growth, im pretty sure you will see how much extra growth the buds have put on, experienced growers will no this and will know exactly when its best to harvest but like me i tended to harvest early just to get myself some bud, which im pretty sure we have all done at some point, but letting the plant reach its max yield really pays off,
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

Thanks for that tip and the explanation DP. That's something I will definitely be keeping in mind. And since I have average to long running strains in the same setup, leaving a few bottom buds even after harvest shouldn't be a big deal.
 
Re: Donpaul.p's latest 400watt hps grow,

no worries both, i have learned so much from other members since i started growing, my first real grow was started on this site and i asked many questions and got great answers, so after everything i have gotten out of this site i feel i at least have to help others and pass on everything i can learn and test about these plants,

forcing a plant to hermie at start of flower did not produce fem seeds, it just produced seeds that turned hermie and produced male seeds also, so clearly early stress is not the best method, but this new method i have tried worked, produced bananas like i was told it would then use that pollen, it worked and every seed so far has turned out fem, ive planted at least 10 seeds from all 3 crosses and all have been fem, if i get a male ill let you all know, but so far its all good,

right a quick update, im just uploading the leaf prune test pictures so will post them in my next post,

my ken estes gdp male has finally produced pollen and the only plant i have got in early flower is the big buddha purple cheese auto, so i pollented the lower branches, hopefully the purple genes of the gdp and the purple genes of the purple cheese will end up giving me some very nice plants when i grow the seeds, hopefully ill end up with more regular seeds than auto seeds so i can then continue to experiment with different strains, id love a true purple strain that turns purple under regular temps so thats what im starting to work on now,

so the resulting seeds will either be crossed with each other after i have grown a few of them so i can then pick the best of the bunch with the traits i like and produce more seeds with these traits, ill also keep a clone of the best plants also so i can back cross and try and make a more stable strain, im not looking at selling seeds but if i can get good results and regular good results from the seeds then im more than happy to pass a few seeds onto friends so they can try my new strains and possibly work with them further to produce some amazing plants,

its a long slow road but while i continue to grow ill continue to try and improve on what i have got,

pics will follow in few minutes, its just the heavily pruned plants, i also harvested another plant today but camera went flat so battery is on charge so will take pics in the morning,
 

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