Empty pollen sacs on seed run

[TheMole]

I grew balls on a female autoflower for a seed run using colloidial silver, but I cant find any pollen. Flowers/pollen sacs are already dropping, but no pollen as far as I can tell. Am I missing something or am I doing something wrong?

Plan:
First grow, so I'm a bit of a noob. I picked non feminised Ganja Dwarf lowrider lowryder autoflowers wich should make it a very simple grow with plenty seeds for further grows in order to learn all about growing.

That sure worked out great. I figured I'd grow all ten seeds at the first grow, for maximum odds at both males and females, so no need to keep seeds when I should be swimming in those soon enough. Well, all 10 turned out te be female, so they must have been feminised anyway. Others would probably be very happy about this, but it ruined my plan.
So I decided to start spraying two of them with colloidal silver to get seeds in the end. By then they were already 4 and a half weeks old. It took the longest time before I spotted any pollen sacs, but I was pretty happy when I did about two weeks ago. Its about 11 weeks into the grow now and I still cant spot any pollen though.

Here's the hermie thanks to the colloidal silver:
At first there were only some pollen sacs on the lower branches, but it seems like they are popping up everywhere now.


The lower branches really look like all male:


I put tin foil underneath to catch any pollen, but so far its only catching sacs:


On my regular plants the white hairs were already starting to turn brown when I spotted the first pollen sacs two weeks ago. So it seemed to me pollination period was running out. By now is all brown on top:


However, lower branches still have white hairs:


I can't tell weather all is going well and seeds are forming, or if I'm going sensi.

Since I can't get at any pollen I havent done any pollination myself. All plants are right next to each other, so close enough for some spontaneous lovin...
I was hoping to save some pollen for later use, and ended up cutting a branch with sacs off, and stuck it thru a piece of tin foil on top of a small glass of water, and the whole thing is in a glas jar (no lid) in order to make sure the pollen would remain in the jar. After two days, still no luck. The flowers are dropping, and they have two small "bananas" in them, but thats it.

So I was wondering, any tips for this first timer on making seeds?

(I've been searching all over the web for info on this, but couldnt find anything about pollen sacks without any pollen to be found)

 

[TheMole]

Pollen collecting jar

Pollen collecting jar

Here's my pollen collecting jar.


As you can see, caught penty of pollen sacks, but no pollen. There's only a little ventilation, so I figure it should catch the pollen if there is any.

Since only some of the white hairs have turned brown, I have my doubts about whether there has been any pollination.

 

[TheMole]

Empty calyx

Empty calyx

So I removed a few calyxes from one of the plants to see if a seed was growing. No luck, nothing there. There was a tiny brown "skin" at the end of the brown pistils. I'd say that is probably a dried up seed embryo. So I guess there really is no pollination, BUMMER. (makes sense if I cant spot any pollen though)

Anyone any ideas here? If I'm being incredibly stupid then plz feel free to point it out (as long as I get something usefull out of it...)

I should be producing loads of seeds here right?

 

[ElfstoneStrider]

You should have posted this in the breeder subforum, where breeders hang out. Not in the noob forum! ;-)

 

[TheMole]

Well, good news, finally getting to that pollen. After a desperate search sifting thru colloidal silver guides I came acros this

It's not uncommon for the feminised pollen bananas to remain closed - if that's the case simply cut them off and manually open them (some people have used a grinder with success, although this may damage some of the pollen). You can then simply brush them against the pistils of the target female (manual pollenation).

and started cutting up them bananas. Some of them seem to have something that could be pollen inside, but it sure is sticky and only TINY amounts. Any ideas on what works best? I think I'll be busy for days scraping them bananas...
Think any drying will help before or after opening the bananas?

 

[TheMole]

You should have posted this in the breeder subforum, where breeders hang out. Not in the noob forum! ;-)

Ah, that might have given me a quicker response... Any admin care to move this thread?

Still, I'm showing some noob-ness here, so that part sure fits...

 

[HyDroid]

Something similar happened to me. I also found very little information about this.

I've done a few seed runs in the past, and it's always been super easy; there has never been a question as to whether it would work, it's always been about trying to AVOID getting seeds.

But then I popped a pack of Flo. I've had 4/4 germ rate so far, no problems, and the plants are pretty good looking. The first seed was a male, which was great; I planned on hitting everything in the garden with the Flo pollen for some nice offspring.

So the male grows, has excellent bud structure, good smell, and there were even visible trichs on the first set of true leaves. He goes to open his sacs and.... nothing. The even opened alright, but no powdery messes to explain to the missus, much to my chagrin.

That is, that male was sterile. I hoped and hoped (rather, tried to fool myself) that it was just my good ventilation in the room blowing the pollen away as soon as it popped, and that this meant that all my ladies were knocked up without a doubt...

I went on to the DJ Short forum and read about this happening on occasion... So apparently some males can be fully formed but not shed pollen. You might be able to find some more info there.

I dried some of the pollen sacs and opened them manually, then blew the dust on the ladies. As you mentioned, only TINY TINY amounts of pollen and it was not as powdery and dispersive as it has been in the past. I have gone through crappier airy fraction of that harvest and found 2 white (but solid) seeds and 1 very good seed so far. Maybe there are some nice ones lurking in the nice dense nuggets, but I'm not too hopeful.

I would dry the bananas until they powder or pop in your fingers. Maybe reveg some of the other ladies and try again from their clones?

 

[supermanlives]

i have had sterile males before. like 3 times i believe

 

[TheMole]

Found the magic powder

Found the magic powder

I decided to shake off all the sacs from my hermie

I was rather rough on her, I hope she doesnt mind. And that already turned up some pollen. So seems like she was just playing hard to get.
Result:

Cracking open the bananas inside is just horrible, so I figure I'll just rub a brush on em like this and hope I get enough pollen out this way. I can allways grind them up later if need be. Btw, there's plenty more green sacs on the plant, so I should be able to shake of more in the coming days.
Now to decide what to do next. Seeing as these autoflowers are three months old tomorrow, is there any point left in pollinating them now?
The lower branches still have white hairs left, so I'm thinking of cutting off all the top buds with no or few white hairs left and then pollinating whats left. Especially seeing as there is not so much pollen to go round. Plus this way the buds that are left will recieve plenty of light. It could be though that there actually has been some pollination going on, I estimate little if any. Most of the fan leaves have already shriveled up, so either the pants are at their end or the food has run out. I've put them in organic soil with food for 100 days (thats what it says on the bag anyway) with a strict diet of just water. My priority is seeds here, so any help is much appreciated. I'll be trying to find some more info on this (very late pollination). I may be ordering some fertilizers next week.

 

[HyDroid]

Awesome! Glad to hear that you got some pollen.

Go ahead and pollinate those lower white pistils if you feel like it. You could also leave some of the other bud in case it was knocked up. As long as you can keep the girl alive, her seeds should mature.

As far as keeping her alive is concerned, feeding her was a good call; seeds need nutes.

Hopefully this should be enough to keep her alive, but if she keeps withering and you get concerned, switch her to 18/6 light/dark so she'll start to re-veg. This should switch the metabolism to one that is interested in staying alive rather than in depleting itself before the freeze.

Re-vegging should NOT negatively affect seed development, as far as I know, but you should look it up before you try. The flowering hormonal cycle promotes differentiation of meristem, and once a flower is alive it's alive until it runs its course. If anyone knows differently, please chime in, but I have finished seeds while re-vegging and I've heard of others on this forum doing it too.

Good luck and post back!

 

[TheMole]

Tnx for the reply Hydroid.
Well, my ladies are getting 24hrs of light, they're autoflowers. I'm not sure what to think of revegging autoflowers, seems to me that you can just keep em going for a while longer but if there's a way to truely reveg them? it's 5 days since big time pollination.
I used a brush on my clones and they still have mostly white hairs. Some of the hairs were already turning brown, and some clones hardly have any brown hairs. Not sure if they are pollinated or not.
At the end I decided to bump my hermie into the older plants. So I put them all together as close as I could and kinda spanked them with the hermie. I didn's see much difference the next day, but by now it seems there are hardly any whites left. However I'm not sure if thats from pollinating them or weather my ladies are just getting too old (menopause?). I suppose time will tell. My clones (of the same autoflowers) will get another round of pollen soon.

 

[stihgnobevoli]

pollen is a dry yellowish powder, it's not supposed to be sticky.

that powder is the pollen

 

[auto guerilla]

i had the same problem and with no luck in the end. i wish someone knew more about this. sucks to be restricted to regular but it's better than nothing

 

[HyDroid]

Well, my ladies are getting 24hrs of light, they're autoflowers.

My B, forgot

 

[MrSterling]

HighCountry suggests just grinding the pollen, sacs and all, and applying that with a paintbrush.

 

[TheMole]

pollen is a dry yellowish powder, it's not supposed to be sticky.

The powder seems kinda light green to me, but the color seems close enough to me. The stickyness I referred to was what I could scrape out of the "bananas" wich were in the pollen sacs. Those sacs didnt release any pollen. So I'm not sure any viable pollen is in those. When shaking up the hermie now there is what I think to be pollen coming off. So I will be shaking that and the dropping pollen sacs all over my clones to get those white hairs brown.
Any suggestions on what I could have done differently to improve results or what could still be done?
I dont know the results yet, but it seems like this is not going as smooth as it should. Does that have anything to do with them being autoflowers?

 

[HyDroid]

When shaking up the hermie now there is what I think to be pollen coming off.

...

Does that have anything to do with them being autoflowers?

Sometimes people say not to use hermies but I've always been more grateful to be able to make more seeds in an emergency than regretful over the occasional unwanted seed. What are your feelings on this ? I've been very happy when a strain I thought was lost turned out to have seeded itself. Better than nothing; sometimes a LOT better.

With regards to this having anything to do with autoflower, I don't have any experience with autoflower but I do have a little with DJ's stuff, which is pretty inbred. Considering that it takes a bit of hassle to breed auto into a good line, I would say that there's a chance that these seeds are a little inbred as well, and perhaps inbreeding has a tendency to pass on this kind of characteristic (sterility). Hazarding a guess, though.

 

[TheMole]

I'm hoping to get plenty of seeds for a next grow and to throw some in the dirt outside next spring. All my 10 seeds turned out to be female, so I had to go and make feminized seeds or none at all. I was already planning on using colloidal silver anyway, so I just had to move that up to this first grow.
If it turnes out this strain is a b*tch for making seeds, I may switch to another strain. Anyway, time will tell. I'm just a beginner and learning. It sure is a fun hobby!

 

[TheMole]

Dusted clones

Dusted clones

I laid my clones over a tray. Then I held my hermie over them and made her dance (shaking and nudging at the clones).
This is what it looked like:

 

[idiit]

i read a post on using q-tips for applying pollen and i like it much better. try q-tips. lots more control, much less random pollen dispersed that could screw up other females in the flowering room.

i use a ramekin

A ramekin or ramequin, also known as a bouillon bowl, is a small glazed ceramic or glass serving bowl used for the preparation and serving of various food dishes

to collect the pollen in. i then use my fiskars trimming scissors to mince up "just starting to open and not until they start to open pollen sacs".

i then use a q-tip to mop up yellow pollen the q-tip works great on applying the pollen precisely compared to the paint brush technique per my experiences..

i've found that cs can kill a pollen sac before it can ripen up enough to produce pollen so i quit spraying cs onto female flowers after the pollen sacs appear. you can continue to spray other branches until they exhibit reversal into male pollen sacs.

i also like the idea of storing pollen soaked q-tips in labeled separate baggies after the pollen dries out a little. you can later go to the freezer/refrigerator and just pull out one q-tip to work with at a time on future projects.