As someone who is doing almost exactly the same as you (and in the same time scale), it's been an especially interesting to follow your journal. Great work on the journal and lovely harvest Jim
You asked me to update you so here's me:
Seeds taken at day 41 after pollenation
Close up of Mother SLH (day 42 after pollenation)
A bud from the sinsimilla females
Close up of same bud
I harvested around 20 seeds yesterday from the SLH mother and they look good but I think I will leave her another 10-14 days until the calyxes have split and the seeds are visible. Give 'em an extra week or two to grow fatter/darker/stripier
Remember that I said I think I had pollenated the entire crop? Well, it seems I haven't exactly....
I separated one of the females, put in a different grow area to flower, and turned with Silver thiosulphate to produce pollen. I then moved another female in with the "male" and pollenated over the period of around 4-5 days. I trashed the male (carefully) and sprayed everything in the "breeding area" thoroughly with water to deactivate any pollen. I did this twice over two days and the pollenated female was moved back into the flower area with the other females. A week after this to my horror, I started to see (what I thought was) early signs of seed production on the other females; pistils turning red & swelling of seed pods - that was the first week of June. Three days ago I took a flower from each female and fast dried them to test. To my surprise (and delight), they were
extremely strong and no seeds were visible at all! Again I took a few of what I thought were seed pods from each plant and checked - again no seeds. It's almost as though it were some type of phantom pregnancy - the
appearance of seeds, but no seeds. So the regular females will be chopped tomorrow morning (Day 72 from 12/12).
I am not sure why this has happened (never seen it before) but I have two theories:
1) The females weren't pollenated at all but were suffering from very high temps (around 86-90 celsius). I see some foxtailing which is a result of heat...but could it be possible that the heat caused the swelling of "seed pods" when there were no seeds?
2) The females
were pollenated, but in a half-assed sort of way. What do I mean? Well the pollenated mother was placed back with the others and she did have some seed pods which had been crushed over her to pollenate. Despite the fact that I thought I had deactivated any active pollen on her by spraying with water twice, maybe some of the crushed pods dried out and pollen got in that way? I would've expected the pollen to be deactivated and not be able to pollenate a flower after soaking with water....also I moved the mother back with the other females on 1st June so by now I would've thought there would be
something inside those "seed pods" - there isn't. Although the pods from both the mother and the regular female look similar, check the seed pods in the mother SLH (pistils have completely disappeared/retracted where there are semi mature and mature seeds) - now see the "seed pods" in the SLH regular female. Although they have turned deep red, the pistils are still clearly visible and unretracted...but more to the point, when I open one of these swollen pods, there is no seed inside!
Finally, compare the trichome production of the Mother in the second photo with that of a regular female in the third and fourth photos. Trichome production in the females is MUCH better than in the mother (like a regular grow in fact) so I know they were not properly pollenated.
Bottom line is that they are fine and I panicked thinking I had seeded my entire sensi crop...so everything is O.K really, but can anyone shed some light on this "phantom pregnancy"?
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you okay? Taking a long rest?