Sativa lovers: Starting a home line, advice on strategy sought.

I didn’t understand cannabis until I experienced top-shelf sativa- and haze-dominant flowers.


I like the idea of putting down seed for every harvest, as well as having genetics "in the bank" as insurance. I like the seemingly unlimited potential for craftsmanship that breeding allows the engaged and interested mind. So, I'm gonna do it. My arrangement is indoor, soil. Ability to keep male plants long-term is limited, only single-flowering bloom-out and pollen collection is a realistic option in my circumstances.


I really don't have any interest in maximizing production and bag appeal, or minimizing finish time. This isn't going to be tailored for anyone else's interests. My target is purely effect. I'd like the line to move along towards happy, uplifting, blissful, thoughtful and focused. I'd like it to inspire and facilitate BIG-picture, high impact thinking and acts of primary creativity in which you can become completely lost.


Yeah, it's probably too specific, but I'm not worried. Right now, for me at least, this bud only exists as a dream in my head. Any guidance you could provide based on the information provided below would be incredibly helpful. I have a background that includes significant amounts of instructed study on Mendelian plant genetics, but I have never bred Cannabis. So, I am tabula rasa for you experts.


Here are the materials I have available for use in first-batch seed:


Two females and one male (actually an odd, male-dominated true hermaphrodite, with some sporadic calyxes on the same nodes as pollen sacks): Jamaican Landrace originating from female Jamaican plants that were open pollinated by a sole Jamaican male.


Five females and four males: Burmese Orange, which is an F1 Burmese Landrace male by an African Orange female. African Orange is Agent Orange x Malawi.


Two females of Pakistani Chitral Kush. One is the deep purple phenotype, the other is a bright aquamarine and smells cleanly of grapefruit. Both are heavy heavy resin producers. Interestingly, I didn’t find them to be particularly strong, but several close friends who have partaken were clearly and reproducibly stoned AF.


Should I be saving as much pollen as I can every time I come across a male? Is there a way to reliably store Cannabis pollen long term/what is the viability time for harvested pollen?


I've learned an incredible amount browsing in this community. Thank you!

good luck to you...

I truly miss the pure (or almost pure) Sativas that dominated the market in 1969 (when I first toked) and the early to mid 70's...

There is lots of info here about saving pollen for later use..
Basically, collecting it on glass, carefully getting out junk and the teensy little pollen bugs.
Store it in handmade paper envelopes in a tupperware container in your kitchen freezer....I've had it remain viable for 3 years.

PS. the ganja I smoked in Jamaica in the early 70's was some mind soaring stuff...
The entire island had been pretty much contaminated with indica pollen by the time I visited there last in 1994...

I have personally done a lot of breeding in a tiny space, collected and stored pollen and learned a few things through trial and error.

My most reliable way to store pollen was to harvest it and mix with a tiny bit of corn starch if necessary (when there is a very tiny amount of pollent) but usually no cornstarch if there is a lot of pollen, put it into a small hand-made paper envelope / flap (like how coke dealers make packets from magazines back in the day) made from very pure printing paper, label and immediately put it into a jar in the fridge that has some dessicant beads in the bottom to cooly dry it out for 24 hours, then into the freezer in another mason jar with dessicant beads in the bottom.

Ideally you want each tiny packet of pollen to be disposable, just enough for one pollination because it's unlikely to survive repeatedly coming out of and going back into the freezer jar so spread that out over many packets and pull one when you're ready to pollinate, use it all and dispose of the packet afterwards where it's not likely to connect with your other female plants you don't want to pollinate.

Moisture is your enemy when it comes to pollen so the critical bit is the dessicant beads which will bring down the moisture fairly rapidly and preserve them for longest possible viability.


Also some things you should know:
1) The more pollen you use to pollinate the more likely you will get females in the resulting seeds. I first read about this in a breeding book but personally can attest it's a fact because the lightly pollinated resulting seeds (small batches) are very obviously more male leaning than the heavily pollinated batches with lots of seeds which very reliably lean female.

2) you can isolate male pollen in the same growing cabinet by using a trick I developed where you take small envelope (the kind they make for saving stamps or coins) and cutting a hole in the bottom, slipping it over the growing male plant with the tip about to start pollinating and sealing around the hole in the bottom with freezer tape.

Then close the top of the envelope and seal with freezer tape also but so you can easily open it as you will be doing that several times over the harvest of pollen and pollen won't fly around but will be contained inside the coin envelope as the plant grows and produces pollen. when you want to harvest tip over the branch with the coin envelope open at the top and the pollen can be basically poured out and collected that way.

Ensure you trim off all other pollen sacs so it's all confined in the envelope(s).

I've successfully grown multiple male strains without cross contamination or unplanned pollination in the same small grow cabinet as flowering females using this method.


3) Seeds can be stored for years, I've just hatched some from 2010 100% germination still, if you follow similar procedures and allow them to dry out in a cardboard box naturally after harvest for a few weeks then put them into brown paper coin envelopes and into mason jars in the freezer with dessicant beads in the bottom of the jars.

4) I'm not sure how long pollen can be viable but it's likely not a long time no matter what you do. I think I managed one year as a test if I recall correctly but I don't have good records of it and I never intended to store pollen as the genetics are best stored in the seeds which *do* last seemingly forever.

5) Keep meticulous notes, and learn about genetics and what you can expect from f1's f2's ibl's etc. If you do it right you can definitely preserve genetics in seed form and get it back out again when needed.

6) Water de-activates pollent: when you pollinate, remove the female to a separate location where you can spray water around. Pollinate the hell out of it with a small paintbrush or q-tip. Wait about an hour then spray the whole plant and anywhere that pollen might have landed with water in order to kill any loose pollen left so it won't accidentally breed your other female plants when you put the pollinated plant back into the grow cabinet with the others.

7) Water can be used creatively to pollinate several strains on to a single female plant: You cover the branch you want to pollinate with plastic, spray water all over the plant then remove the plastic, keep that branch dry and pollinate it safely without the other branches catching. Then repeat on another day with a different branch and be sure to label each branch with freezer tape.

In this way you can have many strains coming off a single female plant.

Bud Green said:

good luck to you...

I truly miss the pure (or almost pure) Sativas that dominated the market in 1969 (when I first toked) and the early to mid 70's...

There is lots of info here about saving pollen for later use..
Basically, collecting it on glass, carefully getting out junk and the teensy little pollen bugs.
Store it in handmade paper envelopes in a tupperware container in your kitchen freezer....I've had it remain viable for 3 years.

PS. the ganja I smoked in Jamaica in the early 70's was some mind soaring stuff...
The entire island had been pretty much contaminated with indica pollen by the time I visited there last in 1994...

Click to expand...

Truly, it seems I was born too late for my taste.


Maybe I should just make an F1 from the male and female Orange Burmese, and maybe make Jamaican x Jamaican, and see what the phenotype spectrum looks like?


Alas, I'm not naive enough to think the statistical distribution of genetics in the modern Jamaican landrace looks anything like it did even a few decades ago. These particular plants are interesting. I've attached some images. I'm not remotely experienced enough to make any comment about the leaves. We are about to enter week six of blooming, and they are only now starting populate with trichomes and the buds are starting to fatten, fairly slow going. The color is what I have read about belongs in Jamaican ganja; it is practically glowing neon. The calyxes are more than a centimeter in length, on the large side. One of the plants has started to smell very very very piney, almost like sticking your nose in an over-hopped craft IPA.

Sorry, that should have been F2

I save as much pollen as I can when I come across a male keeper and I then store it in my fridge. There are many methods of collecting and storing pollen. My advice is to research and use a method that works best for you.

Here are some good pollen guidelines that I use. They aren’t canon so find a method that works for you and keep using it...
1. Keep your males in a separate location. I used to keep my males in their own grow tent (2x4x4) complete with a hepafilter and carbon filter blowing air outside of my house, that way spare pollen stays mostly in my male tent. I meticulously trim off each pollen sack, let it dry on a small sheet of glass and place it in small airtight containers with a silica dissicant. Some people store this in their freezer, but I keep mine in my fridge section. The temp is typically 35° - 36° degrees. It seems to work just fine as I recently used exodus cheese pollen from 2012 with a Purple Kush and it worked great. I now have a friend that runs the males that I like and collects the pollen for me.

2. Applying pollen: I use a fine tip small paint brush and open my pollen jars in the fridge, dab the brush in the pollen, and gently apply it to the buds around week 3-4. After I apply the pollen I bag up the branch / whole plant using an oven bag .Then I spray down the whole plant.

3. After being bagged for 24 hours, I remove the oven bag from the pollinated branch and mist the whole branch with water.


Good luck on your breeding endeavor. Be careful with any herm pollen, I had a turkey bag full of a freshly pollinated Hong Kong x Hong Kong (I know, it’s a herm strain please don’t judge me, lol)- drop and slightly open the turkey bag I had on the plant and it pollinated my whole grow. A whole run of about 6 strains wasted just because I wanted to back up one herm strain that I really liked. I now have Super Lemon Haze, Blueberry, Querkle, Mendo Purps, Columbian Gold and SFV OG Kush x Hong Kong herm seeds mixed with stuff I actually want. Which sucks. The other strains were pollinated with other strains first, but I’m not using the seeds for any breeding projects now as they may possibly have hermaphrodite genetics mixed in with my legit planned desired crosses. The moral of that sad story is do not, I repeat, do not accidentally drop a freshly pollinated and bagged plant ever.

centr1fuge said:

I didn’t understand cannabis until I experienced top-shelf sativa- and haze-dominant flowers...

Here are the materials I have available for use in first-batch seed:...

Two females of Pakistani Chitral Kush. One is the deep purple phenotype, the other is a bright aquamarine and smells cleanly of grapefruit. Both are heavy heavy resin producers. Interestingly, I didn’t find them to be particularly strong, but several close friends who have partaken were clearly and reproducibly stoned AF.

Click to expand...

So if you will be breeding to try to get some crosses that provide that nice sativa high, why bother with PCK? If you instead grow out and smoke some Destroyer, you may find a better high to work with in your future sativa breeds.

Good luck. Im trying to perpetuate a sativa for the first time in a small grow area. Only grew it outdoors before.
Did you get the burmese cross from Equilibrium Genetics? What did you think of it?
I got African 75 from them and wasnt impressed. It flowered really quick, was tight, and smelled good but the high was lacking. I was expecting a stonger sativa high due to the influence of the Malawi and Nigerian.

centr1fuge said:

Sorry, that should have been F2

Click to expand...

I recommend starting with reading. You aren't going to find any pure sativa in any jamaican. Save for 1 line which is not easy to locate I believe made by Rohan or something like that either way Jamaica is not were I would look for pure sativa.

Columbians, Thai and Africans are what I would look to.

Messing with genetics as you are a beginner is likely the wrong path. I would focus on selecting proven easy to grow varieties learning to grow and keeping a mom.

Lolo94 said:

Good luck. Im trying to perpetuate a sativa for the first time in a small grow area. Only grew it outdoors before.
Did you get the burmese cross from Equilibrium Genetics? What did you think of it?
I got African 75 from them and wasnt impressed. It flowered really quick, was tight, and smelled good but the high was lacking. I was expecting a stonger sativa high due to the influence of the Malawi and Nigerian.

Click to expand...

The seeds did come from Equilibrium. I have no opinion yet, they are in about week 4.5 based on my notes, and have quite a ways to go. 10/10 seeds germinated, one runt that I chucked. Other than that, strong, easy growers.

brickweeder said:

So if you will be breeding to try to get some crosses that provide that nice sativa high, why bother with PCK? If you instead grow out and smoke some Destroyer, you may find a better high to work with in your future sativa breeds.

Click to expand...

I think this is on point and makes complete sense.

I would recommend getting seeds of a good sativa line like Destroyer or Golden Tiger and just doing an open pollination with all the males and females. This will preserve most of the genetic possibility in the line and give you thousands of seeds to work with. As you get to know the different phenotypes in the line you will then have a better idea of what to look for in a male when it becomes time to make the F3s.

Breeding takes a bit of practice but making seeds is easy. You should start by making seeds in a way that will keep as many doors open as possible for future exploration.

You've stated your goals and it sounds like a long road to travel but the journey should be fun.

Take your goals and write them down and work diligently toward them selecting only the best* and discarding the rest.

*BEST being subject to what YOU desire...