Cinderella 99 - observation

[BudToaster]

i got one seed in an eighth oz from the dispensary (in MD) last August 2021. This rooted, grew female, and gave me 10 cuttings that rooted. i got maybe a dozen seeds from the first mother plant.

the following 8 plants have put out a fuckton of seeds. the high is less than that first plant.

in the following 8 plants i think i over fertilized. my standard routine during flowering is 1 tablespoon of dry organic fert - used Agricola 4-8-4 until they don't supply/ship anymore - plus 1 oz of organic blackstrap unsulfured molasses diluted 1:1 with well water. plus 1.5 to 2 liters of water. this is per plant, twice per week. growing in 2 gal of organic re-cycled soil.

and i am thinking the molasses is the "too much" factor. it had been 6 months since i had flowered a plant and i forgot to add the molasses to that first plant until the last couple of weeks in flower.

for the following, now 8, plants i remembered the molasses and applied it religiously - i can be a bit OCD - and bingo! seeds. i may have seen one male flower so far.

C99 definitely likes water. but when it sees this much fert/molasses - i am assuming the molasses acts to enhance the brix? - the plant is so surprised and delighted, it generates some seeds to take advantage of the hospitable environment.

the 9th plant is only 4 weeks into flower so i am stopping all fert for a while and no molasses. the 10th plant is still in veg - i only top dress with worm castings in veg. and one of 12 cuttings have finally put out some roots. so i can test this theory over the coming months.

am i crazy thinking this way?

 

[BudToaster]

finding a few more male flowers buried deep in the cola.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

When you find a few seeds in commercial cannabis it is more often than not a hermie formed seed. You will continue to have hermie problems with these genetics, so getting non- hermie genetics would be advised.

 

[BudToaster]

thank-you for your comment

so this is different from "feminized" seeds? in the past the few seeds i would get would always grow into female plants. i thought that was how they were feminized.

 

[GrowControl]

being hermie is a trait, like being purple, or being resinous. those properties also can be triggered with the correct strain and the correct environment.
tldr: having seeds in weed without intention is a genetic defect for me for sure

 

[BudToaster]

thank-you. yes. i agree. the seeds are a pain. i am trying to puzzle out why the mother was so different from the 10 clones.

finally getting some new cuttings to put out roots - up potting continues tomorrow.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Feminized seeds are most often created by stopping the production of ethylene, which results in 'feminized' pollen. Hermie is a term given to female plants which also produce male flowers and pollen which ultimately means seeds.

 

[LostTribe]

I have never found a pure c99 that went hermie ever. That being said hard to say. If it was a seed from a dispensary sack it might have been from hermie pollen from another cultivar. Hermies give rise to more hermies but not always of course. I doubt that molasses would have any affect on it.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

C-99 is worth buying good beans, as are many strains reviewed here on the boards.

 

[Creeperpark]

To reduce the hermaphroditic tendencies just use regular male pollen a few times.

 

[BudToaster]

this is what i am getting at ... from Wikipedia article on Cannabis:

Based on studies of sex reversal in hemp, it was first reported by K. Hirata in 1924 that an XY sex-determination system is present.[29] At the time, the XY system was the only known system of sex determination. The X:A system was first described in Drosophila spp in 1925.[32] Soon thereafter, Schaffner disputed Hirata's interpretation,[33] and published results from his own studies of sex reversal in hemp, concluding that an X:A system was in use and that furthermore sex was strongly influenced by environmental conditions.[30]

so, i am suggesting that when the environment pleases the female plant, it will produce a couple of male flowers - i am seeing no more than one male flower per cola, and not every cola - and thereby self-fertilize, and thereby producing feminized seeds - at least all the ones i sprout from this situation turn out to be female.

nothing in biology is binary (well, except for alive/dead) - it is all on a range of responses. my hypothesis is that if the environment - i.e. soil conditions - are subpar, the plant goes male to try to pollinate any possible nearby female plants, since there is not enough nutrient to support seed growth.

so, unlike say, Jamaican, the C99 is not a heavy feeder. i stopped the molasses on the one in flower. it will be at least 4 more weeks before harvest.

very crafty plant

 

[Wuachuma]

Hermi seed is when a plant fertilizes itself to make a seed

Feminizing is when a clone of the same plant is reversed to pollinate the plant that was cloned.

Ive grown out many bagseeds and herms were very rare in progeny.
Some of the best smoke Ive grown were plants pollinated by another plant that hermed. Very potent, very resinous, very smelly. And stable, even when clone were grown in a variety of environments

 

[BudToaster]

just cut the 9th C99 clone from the seed from the dispensary 1/8th oz. much less fert and the plant looks it. my analysis is C99 likes to be fed. now to find the happy medium between what i was doing and what i did last. going back to 1 TBS of Good Earth Organics - flower + brix - twice a week maybe with molasses. i can put up with the seeds to get that magnificent bud.

the 10th plant is still in veg providing cuttings. i think i put too much perlite in the soil mix because it dries out horribly 2 days after watering. also, tried to do a hempy bucket, but i think the holes are too low - tried a new pot tek that is less precise. only one cutting from this girl has rooted and started growing. as a backup, 4 out of 8 seeds have popped, waiting for roots to show to put into pots.

 

[Hempy McNoodle]

thank-you for your comment

so this is different from "feminized" seeds? in the past the few seeds i would get would always grow into female plants. i thought that was how they were feminized.

It depends on whether the pollen flower was male or female. The female pollen flowers which create feminized seeds are the 'bananas' and the male pollen flowers are droopy. If a male pollen flower (on an otherwise female plant) drops pollen, then theoretically you wont be able to get non-hermie females from that seed.

...According to my limited understanding.

So, my guess is that she was self pollinated by her own hermie-male flower.

 

[goingrey]

so this is different from "feminized" seeds? in the past the few seeds i would get would always grow into female plants. i thought that was how they were feminized.

It is different from good feminized seeds where the breeder selects a parent that doesn't easily make pollen by accident, only with chemicals applied, so that the children don't easily make pollen by accident either.

 

[HempKat]

I'm no expert on hermies or feminized seeds but here's my take based on my understanding of hermies. The hermie response is from what I've heard a stress response so for the seed produced from hermie pollen the female also needs to be stressed to trigger the hermie response. If however the plant is given an ideal environment free of or very low in stress the hermie response is not triggered and the resulting plant for all practical purposes is a feminized plant. So perhaps the reason why you got the differing responses was because with that first plant you managed to keep the environment relatively stress free, you did indicate you got about a dozen seeds so maybe it did experience a bit of stress but late in flowering and so not much pollen was released? The condition causing the stress seemed to be more pronounced or started earlier and so the following 8 plants ended up producing a lot more seeds.

Now the way you explained the plant going "male" due to poor conditions has always been my understanding of the hermie process in the wild. A plant senses it's not going to make it given the conditions on where it's growing are poor which stresses the plant and it hermies to try to advance it's genetics any way possible with the hope that the pollen it releases finds a female growing in better conditions. In your first post you seemed to be making the opposite arguement by suggesting it was the environment being so good and rich that the plant hermied to take advantage of it. This seems incorrect to me though. I've never heard of any cases where a grower suspected conditions were so good the plant made an extra effort to produce seeds. Since most growers strive to give their plants as ideal an environment as possible if really good conditions were responsible for a female to put out some male flowers then we would be hearing virtually every grower reporting hermies. I've heard it said that the most common stress to trigger the hermie response is light stress so maybe that one plant that only produce a few seeds experienced so light leak late in flower and that's why you only got a few seed but whatever the source of the light leak was maybe it persisted and that's why the following 8 produced a ton of seeds? I've also heard it said that heat stress is the second most common stressor to trigger the hermie response so maybe the first plant had ideal temps up until near the end but maybe the other 8 the heat was a bit off for a longer period and that's why they became so seeded?

 

[BudToaster]

@HempKat - thank-you for your observations - temp and light were identical - the only difference was the much higher amount of molasses for the following 8 plants. that may have been the stressor. the first plant surely didn't need the molasses to be a superior plant.

 

[HempKat]

@HempKat - thank-you for your observations - temp and light were identical - the only difference was the much higher amount of molasses for the following 8 plants. that may have been the stressor. the first plant surely didn't need the molasses to be a superior plant.

Okay well since you're right there seeing things first hand you're best positioned to judge the situation, if it was the molasses though that's the first time I've heard of molasses stressing a plant. Usually molasses is mainly credited with feeding the microbiome well and that in turn results in positive outcomes for the plant.

 

[Brother Nature]

Where did your recycled soil come from? And have you ensured it's holding the proper PH range prior to re-using it? In my experience, even hermie prone plants won't do it if the environment and feeding is on point. I've reused soil in the past, with out conditioning it, and had a lot of problems late into flower, which is why I ask. It may or may not help, but the best advice I've ever had in regards to growing anything organically is to remember that you're feeding the soil, not the plant. Are you able to give details as to how your environment is setup?

 

[BudToaster]

i have been recycling the soil for about 10 years. after a harvest i let the dirt just sit in a bag until the Rubbermaid bin is empty, then refill the bin, amend with a formula from 3 little birds and add perlite. i can fill a dozen 2 gal pots from the bin. soil sits for over a year before it is recycled in the bin. i always have several bags of soil resting.

the first C99 and all the clones were soil from the same bin. my pH meter broke a while ago but for about 10 years it was always the same at around 7.

environment is a cabinet in unheated/uncooled basement. cab has two 2'x2'x4' sections - one for veg, one for flower. horizontal 250w MH for veg, two stacked vertical 250w HPS for flower - kind of like a vertical SOG. vortex fan running 24/7 in both sections. gets too cold in winter and anything growing slows down. gets too hot in summer but only for about a month. this is the worst for flower. east coast - mid atlantic. i started making a new 2'x2'x5' cab with a peltier air conditioner, but can't get the time to finish it. too many other projects and what i have works well enough to keep the jars full.

i was just amazed by (1) how great a strain C99 is, and (2) how the clone were so much more seedy than the mother. my previous fabulous strain was some bag seed from Jamaica (from destination wedding). i always thought my tek was mediocre until i got some good strains. lesson: invest in genetics. i appreciate growing better than dispensary bud.