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Florel soil drench to turn a male female?

J-Icky

Active member
So there is very limited info on reversing males to females using Florel, not sure of the actual chemical I’ll update with that later. There is also no info on its use as a soil drench on cannabis.

So long story short I got 2 males and rather than just cutting them I’ve decided to try an experiment while I wait for some other seeds to sprout and veg a little. Spraying Florel can be tricky according to the limited info as it will kill the leaves it contacts and should only be sprayed on the nodes where flowers form. I figured worst case I kill the 2 males I was gonna toss anyway, best c see I find and easier that more could use to turn males females to see their traits as breeding tools.

So since there is no real dosage info, even for foliar sprays I went with a middle dose according to the bottle. I used 2 oz of Florel to a gallon of water and watered it into the soil. This was on the 26th. The next day all the leaves were dropping but otherwise look fine.

Today I watered with normal nutrients and will see how they look tomorrow.

So for those still with me my plan is to water with the Florel once a week at 2oz a gal unless I see problems, then I will drop down to 1.5 or 1 oz a gal. I will continue this until I see signs of female flowers or until the plants die. If the plants are still alive but not changing after 3 weeks I will reevaluate things at that time. If the plants have just continued to grow as Normal and have continued to put out male flowers I will call it failure and chop the plants and call it a lesson learned. If the plants are still alive, not putting out female flowers but not putting out new male sacs then I may try upping the dose for a few weeks and see what happens.

Like I said this is just an experiment simply because I have the plants and until the new seeds pop and grow big enough I have nothing else to put into the space. It may be a massive waste of time and chemicals and utilities but this is just a hobby for me so there is no real “loss” or whatever commercial growers would consider it. My hope is that it works or at least shows positive signs to work with in the future and eventually future hopeful breeders will have an easier, less guest, way of seeing what a male has to offer and gets them away from the current trend of reversing the latest clone only and chucking its pollen on another clone only and calling it breeding.

Hope you all enjoy, unfortunately there will be no pics or very limited ones as I live in a not so friendly place but I will be happy to answer any questions I can and even hope others who may have tried something similar can offer me some advice.
 
S

sallyforthDeleted member 75382

Nice one, interesting to see the outcome...
 

J-Icky

Active member
Ok as promised the chemical in Florel is Ethephon and turns into ethylene gas which is the hormone the plant uses to signal female growth.

As for an update, wel things aren’t looking too promising for this method. Plants still have droopy leaves but continue the usual stretch of wary flower. They are also still putting out pollen sacs and producing new ones.

At this point I am debating whether I should just continue as planned or if I should continue as usual with one and change the other to foliar as a control to make sure The bottle of Florel I have hasn’t gone bad.
My only problem with changing over one is that I’m not completely sure what a proper foliar dose would be as Skunkman Sam used a more concentrated product so his dosage per gallon would be different than what I would use with florel.
 

J-Icky

Active member
Not the best with numbers, but after some quick math based on the concentration Sam the Skunkman used compared to what I have and him saying he would try a higher rate if he did try it again I could use 1-2oz a liter, not gallon. If I were to use it at the rate he did when he showed his initial results it would be 15ml to a liter.

So my dosage of 2oz a gallon for a soil drench would be on the low end of the dosage scale. That may be why I’m not seeing anything other than a shocked plant. But he had also said his clones had initially started to make pollen sacs before it turned.

So with my quick math and rereading Sam S posts I think I’ll just stick with my original plan. If I see nothing changing or even slight signs of change then I’ll take one and instead of foliar I’ll use a cotton swab to apply it directly and precisely where it needs to go to avoid doing any more damage that has already been done lol

Edit:
For anyone that is interested in using Florel or Ethephon to turn a male female you should know that you want to make your mixture acidic. Something in the range of 4.0-4.5 for it to be most effective. Any higher of a PH and it makes the Ethephon less effective and less stable. Yes the whole point is for it turn to ethylene gas but having this happen too fast will not allow it to be absorbed by the plant.
 
Last edited:

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
So there is very limited info on reversing males to females using Florel, not sure of the actual chemical I’ll update with that later. There is also no info on its use as a soil drench on cannabis.

So long story short I got 2 males and rather than just cutting them I’ve decided to try an experiment while I wait for some other seeds to sprout and veg a little. Spraying Florel can be tricky according to the limited info as it will kill the leaves it contacts and should only be sprayed on the nodes where flowers form. I figured worst case I kill the 2 males I was gonna toss anyway, best c see I find and easier that more could use to turn males females to see their traits as breeding tools.

So since there is no real dosage info, even for foliar sprays I went with a middle dose according to the bottle. I used 2 oz of Florel to a gallon of water and watered it into the soil. This was on the 26th. The next day all the leaves were dropping but otherwise look fine.

Today I watered with normal nutrients and will see how they look tomorrow.

So for those still with me my plan is to water with the Florel once a week at 2oz a gal unless I see problems, then I will drop down to 1.5 or 1 oz a gal. I will continue this until I see signs of female flowers or until the plants die. If the plants are still alive but not changing after 3 weeks I will reevaluate things at that time. If the plants have just continued to grow as Normal and have continued to put out male flowers I will call it failure and chop the plants and call it a lesson learned. If the plants are still alive, not putting out female flowers but not putting out new male sacs then I may try upping the dose for a few weeks and see what happens.

Like I said this is just an experiment simply because I have the plants and until the new seeds pop and grow big enough I have nothing else to put into the space. It may be a massive waste of time and chemicals and utilities but this is just a hobby for me so there is no real “loss” or whatever commercial growers would consider it. My hope is that it works or at least shows positive signs to work with in the future and eventually future hopeful breeders will have an easier, less guest, way of seeing what a male has to offer and gets them away from the current trend of reversing the latest clone only and chucking its pollen on another clone only and calling it breeding.

Hope you all enjoy, unfortunately there will be no pics or very limited ones as I live in a not so friendly place but I will be happy to answer any questions I can and even hope others who may have tried something similar can offer me some advice.

G `day J

A buddy of mine reversed a male using a cup with banana peels !

There is a thread here called reversing males to test smoking ?
Skunk Man thang .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

J-Icky

Active member
I'll watch. :) The plan is to make some seeds, yes?

No, at this time I don’t plan on making seeds, just to see if Florel will work to reverse as a soil drench rather than a foliar. It’s been established that the foliar will reverse the male but you need to be careful spraying only the nodes as the chemical will damage and most likely kill any leaves it contacts.

G `day J

A buddy of mine reversed a male using a cup with banana peels !

There is a thread here called reversing males to test smoking ?
Skunk Man thang .

Thanks for sharin

EB .

Yeah the Skunkman thread is my starting point for this thread. Sadly though that thread offers very little info on what dosages to use and what info is there is for another, more concentrated product.

I’ve heard of the banana peels but I already have enough issues with fungus gnats, adding a cup of decaying banana peels would turn a minor annoyance into a major issue real fast.
 

J-Icky

Active member
Just watered in the second dose of Florel, still at 2 oz/gal. The plants have still been producing pollen sacs although I have yet to see any signs of pollen. Even the more mature looking sacs that I have plucked don’t seem to be producing any actual pollen.
But I don’t want to say for a fact that the first dose seems to have sterilized the plants. I will wait to see what effects the second dose has. After the way the first dose made the leaves drop and they haven’t bounced back I’m honestly expecting the second dose to kill the plants. Again I’m hoping I’m wrong but even without the hormone, watering in anything at a ph of 4.0-4.5 isn’t gonna be very good for the plant.

I will update in a couple days to let everyone know what effects, if any the second dose has had.
 

redlaser

Active member
Veteran
I’ve never tried to reverse a plant with Florel but have used it working at greenhouses and tree care company’s

We used it to promote branching with different plants starting at 250 ppm -4-500 ppm range.

Sprayed many sweet gum trees in early spring to prevent fruit set, couple times, a week apart.
The only soil application I’ve seen is for reducing plant height in spring flowering bulbs.
 

J-Icky

Active member
I’ve never tried to reverse a plant with Florel but have used it working at greenhouses and tree care company’s

We used it to promote branching with different plants starting at 250 ppm -4-500 ppm range.

Sprayed many sweet gum trees in early spring to prevent fruit set, couple times, a week apart.
The only soil application I’ve seen is for reducing plant height in spring flowering bulbs.

Yeah it doesn’t seem to be doing much on the reversal front. The plant is still alive after the second application. It’s still putting out pollen sacs although I have yet to see any signs of actual pollen. I turned off the fan in the tent after the first application just so it wouldn’t blow pollen all over. With no fan all pollen should just fall and eventually some should accumulate on the leaves and soil and so far nothing.

Like I said I’ll stick with this for another couple weeks. I’ll do another application next Wednesday and give it another week to show any signs of change and if nothing by then the plants will be chopped.

I do have a clone of each plant and I am thinking that once I put my current seedlings into flower I will put those in too and try a semi-foliar application with those. By semi I mean I won’t be spraying and it sure won’t be going on any foliage. Instead I’ll use a cotton swab to apply it at the nodes starting the very first day I put them into flower.

This current experiment was run with plants that had already started putting out pollen sacs, and while I’m sure it didn’t help anything, I’m not convinced it doomed the experiment either.
 

MintyMick

Member
I’m going to subscribe to this thread. I have been wanting to try florel out on a male for quite some time and was curious if a soil drench would also work to reverse a male. Thank you for doing this J-Icky, this type of experiment is much more beneficial than most of the threads I see on here. Well, at least there is more observing and less arguing.
 

J-Icky

Active member
Well folks today I can officially say that Florel as a soil drench will not stop a male plant from producing pollen sacs and pollen. The pollen has officially began flying. While I didn’t get the results I was shooting for I still can’t say that this experiment was a failure. I can’t really call any experiments failures when you learn from them even if the results weren’t what you hoped for.
With this latest development I will be chopping the plants to limit the spread of pollen. Even though I have no current females in flower I don’t want to risk having stray pollen in or around my tent even though it would be highly unlikely to remain viable long enough to do anything.

For those that are still interested In Using Florel to reverse a male I will continue to use this thread in the next few weeks as I try my semi foliar technique on the clones I have of these males rather than start a new thread. I also don’t want to post in the existing threads as they are old and the one that would fit the most is so long the info would be lost easily to anyone looking.
 

redlaser

Active member
Veteran
Always worth a shot, be interesting to see how it goes at beginning of 12/12, plus the focused application instead of spraying the leaves.

When spraying trees to prevent fruit set like sweet gum, it would work to prevent new fruit from forming but not stop or abort fruit already in development.
 

J-Icky

Active member
Always worth a shot, be interesting to see how it goes at beginning of 12/12, plus the focused application instead of spraying the leaves.

When spraying trees to prevent fruit set like sweet gum, it would work to prevent new fruit from forming but not stop or abort fruit already in development.

Hmm interesting so maybe the fact that they had already started meant they had passed a point of no return. Sadly it didn’t stop the plant from continuing to put out new pollen sacs though so maybe the soil drench just wasn’t a good method.

I know Skunkman has successfully reversed a male using ethrel which is just a more concentrated form of Florel. He was also the one that said to avoid getting it on the foliage as it would burn and kill the leaves. That’s my reasoning for going with the direct application next go round. Rather than trying to be pin point with a spray I figured direct application would be the best bet. Really the next gonround will be more about finding the right dilution rate.

There is another user on here saying they were successful with preventing herms with 1oz/gal but I think I’ll stick with the 2oz rate to start as that better coincides with the rate used by Skunkman.
 

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