A few noob questions on making seeds

Hoping to make my own seeds this run, going to try to collect pollen and start saving it. I had a few questions though that I was wondering about, was hoping someone could help me out:

- If I just let them open pollinate, from 1 male outside with my females, will the seeded bud be too weak to smoke? Or really hard to smoke cause of all the seeds?

- If I have pollen from multiple males and I'm pollinating a female with 15 bud sites... could I pollinate 1 bud site with strain A, then a 2nd bud site with strain B, etc... and leave other bud sites unpollinated to smoke once they are harvested?

- I read that you have to let the seeds mature before harvesting them... does this mean we would be chopping a plant far beyond when the trichomes are amber and such? (Was wondering how to make seeds, but still harvest part of the plant for flower... not sure if that's possible).

Thanks in advance for any help

Basically yes to all of the above, but in answer to q1 you can seperate the seeds but the bud will only be a tiny bit less potent n less tasty.

I can remember hauling out up to 10 grams of seeds from ounces of Colombian Gold back in the 70’s...to this day, some of the best, tastiest pot I’ve ever smoked!

Bud_Man10 said:

I can remember hauling out up to 10 grams of seeds from ounces of Colombian Gold back in the 70’s...to this day, some of the best, tastiest pot I’ve ever smoked!

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I like seeded weed for the nostalgia but that smell when you miss one, like cheap bbq briquettes .. eww. Lol.

Yup, I hear ya! LOL

If I just let them open pollinate, from 1 male outside with my females, will the seeded bud be too weak to smoke? Or really hard to smoke cause of all the seeds?

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Question 1: A lot depends on strain and how heavily pollinated the flowers get. I've had fully seeded flowers that smoked great and were fully potent but it's very rare. Once the plant diverts it's energy to making seeds the terpene content takes a huge hit. It'll still get fully mature resin glands but the taste is almost never the same. The yield is absolutely crushed, most of your weight will be seed instead of bud. Plenty of joint rolling material but not stuff that's good for bongs and pipes.

If the plant is lightly seeded you may not notice a difference. If it's medium seeded the yield and taste will be effected but not as much as if it's fully pollinated. It's important to note that cannabis was grown and used for thousands of years fully seeded and in hash making areas plants are still fully pollinated. Since the resin not the buds is the focus and the seeds have a great deal of value.

Question 2: Yes you can pollinate a branch or branches with pollen from different males on the same plant. You need to clearly label everything and do it carefully. I harvest my pollen and store it in loose in labeled brown paper bags. It doesn't keep long this way, around 2 weeks to a month. (do some searching and you'll learn how to store pollen for several months) Then I dab the pollen onto the buds I want seeded. I label the limbs with the names of both the male and female strains. When the seeds are mature I harvest, dry, and collect the seeds.

Question 3: Yes this is usually the case. After the main harvest I'll leave my seeded branches on the plant anywhere from a week to up to a month to wait for the seeds to mature. You can harvest seeds anywhere from 4-8 weeks after pollination but the longer the better. Some strains mature seeds quicker then others. I've had mold issues outdoors when I had to harvest seeds at 4 weeks and some of them still sprouted despite being lightly colored; you'll get better germination rates and healthier seedlings if you let them fully mature brown with stripes. A good test is to lightly squeeze a seed. If it crushes it never would have sprouted, if it's hard it's good. Mature seeds will be visible in the caylxes on the plant.

Thanks guys for the responses!

therevverend said:

Question 2: Yes you can pollinate a branch or branches with pollen from different males on the same plant. You need to clearly label everything and do it carefully. I harvest my pollen and store it in loose in labeled brown paper bags. It doesn't keep long this way, around 2 weeks to a month. (do some searching and you'll learn how to store pollen for several months) Then I dab the pollen onto the buds I want seeded. I label the limbs with the names of both the male and female strains. When the seeds are mature I harvest, dry, and collect the seeds.

Question 3: Yes this is usually the case. After the main harvest I'll leave my seeded branches on the plant anywhere from a week to up to a month to wait for the seeds to mature. You can harvest seeds anywhere from 4-8 weeks after pollination but the longer the better. Some strains mature seeds quicker then others. I've had mold issues outdoors when I had to harvest seeds at 4 weeks and some of them still sprouted despite being lightly colored; you'll get better germination rates and healthier seedlings if you let them fully mature brown with stripes. A good test is to lightly squeeze a seed. If it crushes it never would have sprouted, if it's hard it's good. Mature seeds will be visible in the caylxes on the plant.

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Thanks for that - regarding labeling the branches, anything in specific you'd recommend to do that with? I was gonna just use masking tape but figured I'd ask.

Also when you say you harvest only part of the plant - do you do that by just chopping lets say, half of the plant off, and leaving the other half (with the seeded buds)?
I heard doing any trimming or LST or anything during flower is a bad idea, so I never harvested only part of a plant, I would always chop it from the stalk and hang it all in one go. Is that true? I wasn't sure how it affected the other flowers negatively, but heard that it did somehow.

You can get coloured labels that pull round a stem in pink and blue. Thats what i use. For roses i think?

Just tie your labels loosely with string to your individual pollinated branches. If you pollinate the lower half of the plant you can cut the top half of the plant when ripe leaving the lower pollinated branches seeds and flowers to properly finish up.

Make sure all your fans are off if you're going to try to pollinate a bunch of different buds accurately and also make sure you don't sneeze.
Seeds weight about 0.02g - 0.03g each, it seems like a pretty good rule of rule of thumb to subtract that much bud for every seed you make if you're trying to balance the seed to smoke ratio equation, but I think that its only a rule of thumb and not completely accurate because I'm pretty sure that a fully seeded plant delivers more weight than an equally sized sinsemilla plant does.

A wealth of info regarding breeding can be found here.

Breeders Lab subforum
https://www.icmag.com/ic/forumdisplay.php?f=65578

One note I'd like to add is that if you do plan to pollenate be ready for all bud to be seeded unless you isolate your male the pollen is microscopic and spreads way more than you might imagine. Cleaning up after a male has done his thing is also something you will need to take into consideration or future grows will potentially be pollinated.

Welcome to ICMAG
LT

If you want the best seeds you must allow them to mature well past the bud maturity.

In other words, you have to sacrifice the buds if you want the best seeds.

- regarding labeling the branches, anything in specific you'd recommend to do that with? I was gonna just use masking tape but figured I'd ask.

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If you use masking tape be sure to tie it on so it won't fall off if it loses it's adhesive. I've had that happen with duct tape, it lost it's stickiness after a couple of bad storms. You also want to use ink that's waterproof. You don't want to find your labels on the ground with the ink smeared. A friend uses green stretchy tape, ties a ribbon around the branch. This way it can't fall off.

Also when you say you harvest only part of the plant - do you do that by just chopping lets say, half of the plant off, and leaving the other half (with the seeded buds)?
I heard doing any trimming or LST or anything during flower is a bad idea, so I never harvested only part of a plant, I would always chop it from the stalk and hang it all in one go. Is that true? I wasn't sure how it affected the other flowers negatively, but heard that it did somehow.

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I do quite a bit of second and third harvesting. A lot depends on the size and shape of the plant. Often I'll take the main tips and/or branches first and leave much of the secondary growth to finish. Sometimes it increases yield, sometimes not but it's useful when different parts of the plant mature at different speeds. Like Troutman stated, most of the time the seeds won't fully mature until the plant is past peak potency and the buds are starting to degrade.

The reason you've been told not to trim or LST in flowering is because the plant won't be able to produce new growth halfway through flowering. If you top a plant it won't recover and produce a new set of tops. However I tie plants over in flowering quite a bit since they tend to lean towards the sun and shade the limbs on that side. I like to tie my plants back towards the north because it opens up the side facing south.

When harvesting most of the plant and leaving the seed limbs I like to leave enough small limbs and lower growth so the plant doesn't die or stunt out. You can easily harvest 3/4 or more of the plant as long as you leave a few lower limbs to keep producing energy to help the seeds finish out. Late in flowering each branch is basically finishing itself with it's own energy and is no longer drawing a lot of energy from the rest of the plant, if that makes sense.

Make sure all your fans are off if you're going to try to pollinate a bunch of different buds accurately and also make sure you don't sneeze.

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This is a good idea if you're placing an entire plastic bag of pollen, for instance a bag for roasting a turkey, over a branch. I have a friend who does this with main limbs to produce hundreds of seeds. It helps to have a hose ready to go in case pollen poofs out at some point. Since water immediately neutralizes pollen. It's even better to have a partner holding the hose pointed at the plant. This way when you remove the bag if any stray pollen floats out you can knock it out of the air and hose down any flowers or leaves that it lands on.

Smoosh your finger in a thin film of pollen and rub a bud of choice. I've been having success with making very small quantities of seeds using this method. Pollen is microscopic and you don't need to see it on your finger for it to work.
I'm going to attempt a multi controlled pollination of one female plant, using this method to see if any of the combinations are worth perusing with a wider pollination.

Cactus Wes said:

Smoosh your finger in a thin film of pollen and rub a bud of choice. I've been having success with making very small quantities of seeds using this method. Pollen is microscopic and you don't need to see it on your finger for it to work.
I'm going to attempt a multi controlled pollination of one female plant, using this method to see if any of the combinations are worth perusing with a wider pollination.

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That sounds like a good technique, I do something similar, I collect the pollen on glass table and then I scape some up with a razor blade that has hash oil residue on it, enough pollen sticks that I can use the blade edge to pollinate a small bud without getting the pollen everywhere else. With a steady hand you can pick out which individual pistils you want to touch.

I usually use q-tips but at a certain point the end starts to fall apart and it can only hold so much pollen and touch so many hairs. I've switched to using finger dabbing quite often. The trick is to barely brush the hairs, you don't want to squeeze or injure the flower. The pollen will easily stick to the oils on your finger and then easily transfer to the hairs on the flower. I've found it's more effective at pollinating every single hair on larger bud clusters. When you want more seeds then a q-tip can hit but less then you get from putting an entire bag around a branch.

therevverend said:

I usually use q-tips but at a certain point the end starts to fall apart and it can only hold so much pollen and touch so many hairs. I've switched to using finger dabbing quite often. The trick is to barely brush the hairs, you don't want to squeeze or injure the flower. The pollen will easily stick to the oils on your finger and then easily transfer to the hairs on the flower. I've found it's more effective at pollinating every single hair on larger bud clusters. When you want more seeds then a q-tip can hit but less then you get from putting an entire bag around a branch.

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Thanks Reverend, some things to try out for sure. Regarding the bad method, how long do you have to leave it on for the pollen to do it's thing?

RenaissanceBrah said:

how long do you have to leave it on for the pollen to do it's thing?

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You should see signs of pollination in a few days when pistils start changing color.

Regarding the bad method, how long do you have to leave it on for the pollen to do it's thing?

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The pollination itself takes a few seconds. How long you leave the bag on is up to you. Some people will tie the bag on and leave it there for 20 minutes. Others will leave it on for a few hours or overnight. This isn't essential since the pollination itself happens so quickly. I'll put a bag over a limb, shake it. Then let it rest for 20 seconds and shake it again. I'll spend maybe a minute at each branch. If I tie it on I'll leave it on for about 20 minutes, shaking it a couple times to spread pollen.

I try to do my pollination late in the day, when there's no chance of dew or moisture ruining the pollen. The timing isn't as important as making sure conditions are dry.

I agree with Therevverend. I found the Neanderthal finger method is very effective and I like it much more than q-tips or brushes for pollinating

I have been talking with Solar Logos in this thread https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=374390 about the water killing pollen. I use only fresh pollen. I see you people use dry pollen and it seems to be 2 different materials which behave differently. In my experience, water dont kill fresh pollen. I dont know about dry one because I never tried nor I never dried pollen. I just collect it fresh and use it right away. I spray mist the pollinated bud immediately after fingering it with fresh pollen and water certainly is not killing fresh pollen, it only makes the pollen heavy so stays in the place and dont fly away

It seems water kills dry pollen, but certainly not fresh one. It seems to be two different products which need to be treated differently