VI's - Subcool Based - 2 Worm - Multi-Strain - Mother Hunt - 2016

VI: I have a couple questions about how you harvest pollen. Now, I know that once the male flowers open, the pollen goes everywhere.

1) how do you catch the pollen?

2) Do you harvest just BEFORE the sacs open and THEN bag them? Or do you bag the branches with plastic bags until they open, then cut?
 
I will likely do it to show it in this journal.

But you start by cutting back unused nodes and every day you have to clean all those up so a major whacking up front is in order. But leave fan leaves. You can regularly damage nodes so they are healing and producing growth stunting hormones.

Then at the end of a branch you use zip ties (thanks Jody), and a sandwich bag and you can contain all the pollen. IT will get humid in there but that is fine if there are plenty of other leaves.

Place it in a low flow maybe even protected area so there is little air to spread the pollen and stunt it. There are a few more things to do to stunt it. You can even make it drop all the pollen when you want to all at once by stressing it the right way.


So after pruning it right and constant monitoring you can leave it and let it grow naturally and about 2 or 3 days before that one bunch you are allowing to grow is ready to burst you can bag it and then stress it and remove it from the tent and it will drop the pollen and you are good to go. Or you can bag it with a few days to go and just wait but keep cleaning up and cutting up areas that you don't want growth happening.

People freak about how much water builds up in the bag. Have as few of leaves in there as possible. Better to cut off a leaf if you can't fit the twisty in between.

If the area is wind sheltered and you are vigilant you can hang the bag in a way that you can see the pollen starting to drop and you close the bag then.
 
Day 42

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The smaller bushy ones are showing a little leaf tip yellowing from burn. So I need to back of the compost a bit in this size pot. I noted that when I planted that I went a little high.

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Nothing crazy to report though.
 
Far East Buds said:
That is something still I hate doing but have to all the time. Cull plants! I work so hard to get them all to root.. gentle.. transplant... talk to them... and then dump all but one into compost...UGGGHHH...


FE
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You don't have to throw all of it away. Clip off the leaves, let them dry, then crush them up for cannabudder, teas, capsules, herbal additives in food, etc. I powder mine by grinding through a jelly strainer. In fact, I have two containers, one for leaves and one for the larfy buds from the lower branches. Over time in the containers, the powder cures and doesn't smell so grassy.
 
Thanks. I have a few entries to make today if I can find the time. Here is a short one on something I know I have failed to explain properly.

To begin with a vortex or some sort of pumper tea brewer will avoid this problem. This is only because i am a cheap ass and after I move I will probably take the time to DIY a decent brewer.

When brewing the tea there is a battle going on between aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. If the pH is 7 and it is fermenting the good stuff is winning and at peak foaming you have the highest population of good bacteria.

Leaving it stagnate for long enough will fill the sludge with anaerobic bacteria and eventually it will slow down the breeding of the good stuff to a point that you can't see any bubbles.

This is easily remedied if it hasn't gone too long. The good stuff needs oxygen and sugar and to be pH'd UP. I would add some silica treatment as they are very alkaline to bring it back to 7.0. Then you start stirring but not kicking up the sludge at the bottom and the good bacteria will come back to life. When the breeding is good again you can start kicking up the bottom a bit and just keep stirring and kicking a little up once in a while until it is back to the good stuff winning. You may need to add sugar at some point if you are running low but that is rarely the case. Usually all you need to do is raise the pH back up to 7 and then aerate it and the good stuff will take over again.


When I got home from Easter yesterday I had what looked like a dead tea. This was about 48 hours into the brewing. I did what I explained above and got it working again. Then I filtered it out and put the air stones in the filtered side and kept stirring and let it go for a while. After some time it looked like this.

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I kept working it until it was thick foaming like this and then went off to prune and train the plants.


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Lets see if I can get a 2fer in.

So in the first few weeks I had a problem getting root bound which caused deficiencies. Some are the kind that don't go away. Often times people remove them which is the wrong thing to do. Take this for consideration.

Very early on burn from deficiency ruined some of the first leafs of this plant

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That was right after transplant and most of them bounced right back but a few had some permanent damage to the lower leaves.

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Anyway the point is many people cut off damaged leaves and that slows down the potential for the plant. That leaf is still working and producing. The plant will actually tell you when it is done with the leaf and it comes right off easily at that time.

But look at this leaf...bottom left over there is a bad one (Actually there are a few)

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But if I would have cut those off the plant would not have gotten the sugars grown there and would have had to heal from the cut. Two things that would inhibit growth.

Now the reason I bring it up was that one turned out to be a male.

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So I went around a clipped off all of the ends except a handful. I left 3 arms that I top mid way exposing a node with 2 healthy new branches.

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I made sure to leave as many fans as possible.

Then you use your thumb nail or the sharp edge of the pruning sheer and damage all the remaining sites that would spawn pollen sacs.
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Now you keep watching it and every 12 hours you clean off new pollen sacs and when the time is right you bag it. When I get there I will document it and post it and you can ask questions about that part then.

Oh and it gets way less water now. There is probably enough in there to get the pollen I want already.
 
VI: What is the purpose of all this pruning on the male plant? Dont you just tie down the branches, bag the whole thing, and let the pollen drop to the bottom? (Not meant as a criticism, as I haven't gotten that far yet. Just in learning mode)
 
Man I wrote a big reply and it just went poof.

I can't stay long so I will cut it short because I sated I would explain it all later. I can say I learned with a long time ago from a horticulturalist. There are likely a thousand more ways to do it then I know about. This is just what I do. I try to keep it easy.

There are multiple reasons to stress the plant You want to go full NOOB on it which is actually hard to do. You don't have to but you want to slow it down to a crawl. Otherwise the male sacs will grow uncontrollably fast and you might will have a mess everywhere.

Also when it is cleaned up, as I show, it is easily less than 5 min to search and scrap any new growth off. Only a few branches with 2 or 3 nodes left to clean.

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So I can get in an out fast. Also a little pollen goes a long way. And if there were a problem I took off the tallest ones so the pollen wont spread far. Often times I remove even more of the top and just use the bottom of the plant.

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closer in of the top

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That has 3 tops

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which I cleaned up After cleaning up the rest of the plant. There was virtually nothing and it was my first real check in a few days. When I check I actually scrap away and rewound the nodes.

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The famlly photo Day 46,5

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I got 3 males to remove. But some of those clones I made a few weeks back will slide in tomorrow and take their place. I will chop down the 2 other males this weekend and only have the one that is worth catching pollen from in the corner.

The Female WW clone sprouted roots a few days back and would have been in soil already. Oh well there are always more seeds.
 
Always throwing the info VI, thanks for being such a good teacher. I totally agree on the ugly leaves, what people don't realize is that the plant is cannibalizing that leaf and if you pull it the plant will just move on to the next leaf. So I do as you do. Correct the issue, and let the leaves go until they look absolutely spent. Then I pull of the brown ugly leaf or clean the ones out of the soil that have fallen by themselves. The only exception for me is in late flower. If a plant has used up a large amount of a top leaf and it is full on yellow and starting to go necrotic I will pull it in this case to allow some more light to get further down.
 
Yeah in bloom certain rules change slightly but must show restraint when it comes to pruning.

But yeah that is said much better shig. I probably didn't ever splain it in here really did I?

They come off when ready.
 
I will do a bigger update tomorrow but at begining of the 7th day into bloom I have decent flowering.


The 2 seed plants that ended up being female are looking good.

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I always recommend you inspect root balls when a plant is done. 2 days back on day 48 I pulled these 2 males out and on day 49 I pulled them from the pots to get the worms and inspect the roots.

Worms are happy just like the previous ones I reused. I reused these again in the final clones.

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The two males looked healthy not not yet root bound.looking roots. I broke up the ball and looked inside and it was not too dense. It still had lots of space to fill in.

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Each one...

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It is close but the plants are going into bloom where they stop growing roots anyway. Not a bad root ball for 49 days.




I moved in the clones from the RC I took a few weeks back. They only have 1 week of veg so they wont be much but better than nothing.

Here is the whole group, now that the males are gone... but the one.

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This is a better pick of my NYPD girl...that is 1 week into flower.

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Amazing like always VI, cant wait to hear more about how you collect the male pollen. On my blueberry growing I might get a male theres a possibility since they are regular seeds. And if i do i wanted to collect pollen the less messy way and a good way. Im still tuned in!
 
Pollen is almost ready, maybe today. I have so far seen no sites grow back yet that I scuffed up with my nail when I chopped it back. Damage to the site releases a hormone that stunts growth.

So the other day I cleaned up the plants and bagged them and took pics but I haven't had a chance to post. In a few days max the pods will be ready and I will have them. Just depends how much I want to let it go for.

I will be done collecting long before the other plants are really getting started so I could even breed this WW male with the WW female now on this grow and finish this journal out and be done journaling because there it all is. :P


:laughtwo: :laugh:
 
I told you earlier when I first brought up tea brewing to go look on youtube at vortex brewers. I think I am going to build a small 5 gallon one. The real terminology is an air lift pump vortex brewer. It self mixes.

This is a cool DIY
Poseidon 4 compost tea vortex style hurricane brewer 32 gallon. - YouTube

This is some cool experiments but he doesn't know what he is doing.
Design of a compost brewer with a vortex - YouTube


If you get air stones in there then there is more surface area and it supposedly works better.

If the pipe is too big (As in the second video) it takes more air to get enough water to move. Smaller return pipes would make it easier I think to get away with smaller air or longer distance. All the vortex mixing is where you get the real air for the tea from.

There is a cool weekend project here I see in my future.

Something more like this....But the Air inlet is in the wrong spot.

DIY 5 gal Vortex compost tea brewer - YouTube


What I really want is a used water tank that has a funnel bottom like this. With the outlet at the bottom so I can drain it. I just need to go buy a jug of water and get over it.

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420 Mag should have competitions for best DIY 5 gallon brewer for under 50 bucks.
 
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