male and fem together

[sativaman514]

Last plant standing of the run is a Sativa A5 Haze cross from ACE. Other plants have been chopped a long time ago. She is finishing very slowly. About 2 weeks left.
I tough I would have enough time to avoid this, but the tent is now shared with a full blown male of a rare specie, that I want to grow to collect pollen. He looks like an early stud and first pre-flower have just opened this morning. ..beautiful but scary. This is the first ever male I let grow indoor.
Can I chop the Sativa in 10 days and avoid seeds? What will it look like?

 

[troutman]

Seeds take time to develop so even if female was pollinated right now. You could cut her down
a few days later without much difference. It also takes normally about a week before pollen gets
released from the time you notice the males showing sex. Keep an eye on the pollen sacs and
get ready to chop when the 1st one opens.

 

[GoatCheese]

If the sepals of the male flowers have opened, usually it takes 2-3 days till the pollen starts to drop – This is my experience with modern 9-11 week hybrids. ... i don’t know if it will take longer with 18-20 week sativas.

I doubt it will have a huge effect on the potency cause the plant is almost done (might have a little drop in potency, thou) –usually fully seeded flower is noticeably less potent than sensi-weed of the same plant – but it could make the smoke abit harsh if there’s some undeveloped seed-material in the flower ...unless you clean it all out of there when you’re preparing your material for smokes.

 

[goingrey]

Underdeveloped seeds are the worst. Even more of a chore to separate from the buds when preparing to smoke, and you can't even grow them out.

Can you not temporarily house the male somewhere else? I have successfully even used my shower and a floor lamp with a CFL for this.

 

[chilliwilli]

Imo some viable pistills left to catch the pollen. I had that problem too and got some premature seeds in a finishing plant.
Try to pick the mature pollen sacks if possible and turn down ventilation until the femal is ready. Maybe u can make some physical barrier between both plants.

 

[sativaman514]

Underdeveloped seeds are the worst. Even more of a chore to separate from the buds when preparing to smoke, and you can't even grow them out.

Can you not temporarily house the male somewhere else? I have successfully even used my shower and a floor lamp with a CFL for this.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I am thinking the same thing about premature seeds... can completely ruin the smoke experience. Housing the male somewhere else will be a challenge, but if this is what I need to do I will do it. Really I would have love to avoid this.... He is a pure Thai (ACE) so he have some special needs like strong light, a good breeze, and is also very sensible to stress according to dubi. Maybe I can fit him in a closet or maybe I'll move the lady....

So listening to GoatCheese I have an other 2-3 days to react as the first pre-flower have opened already... How about kindly removing the male flowers that getting ready to open for the next week? Will it stress the plant?

So like troutman explains it takes about a week from flower formation for pollen to start dropping, here he is at 9 days so I guess I need to take action asap...

Thanks everyone, and please let me know if you have more advices to give =)

 

[sativaman514]

Imo some viable pistills left to catch the pollen. I had that problem too and got some premature seeds in a finishing plant.
Try to pick the mature pollen sacks if possible and turn down ventilation until the femal is ready. Maybe u can make some physical barrier between both plants.

Obviously we both wrote at the same time! I appreciate your thoughts on removing mature pollen sacs. Thanks!

 

[sativaman514]

So if I understand this correctly, in the case of a plant where all pistils (or almost, since most plants keeps reflowering) would be brown, pollen is not a risk anymore?

 

[GoatCheese]

Yea, only white pistils will get pollinated. The brown ones wont work anymore.

Those flowers will start opening slowly at first, few per day, but after a week more and more will start dropping pollen. So you maybe able to manage the situation for few days by picking the open ones off ...maybe remove the female out of the tent when you start messing with the male cause the sacs may release some pollen.

It's a nice looking male. I'd collect pollen off that too

 

[HempKat]

On the question of removing the male flowers before they open and will it stress the plant? I can't really answer from experience because I don't keep males and females together and so I've never had to resort to trying to remove males flowers. Based on what I've seen others say that have tried to do this I don't think it will stress the male out much if at all and if I understood you correctly the strain that male is from handles stress pretty well. The bigger problem I've seen mentioned by people who try to do this is that they have trouble finding all the male flowers and if you try to give it the best environment with a good breeze you could end up with some accidentally pollenated female flowers. However given the time frames you should be looking at any potential harm done would be limited and if the female is a good strain and the male lives up to your expectations of it being special a few seeds on that one female might not be all that bad of a thing. Unless of course the female is intended for sale and you have picky customers. I'm thinking that if it were me I'd gamble on the female finishing before much if any harm could be done and if the gamble didn't work I'd be happy to have an interesting cross to play with and just keep it as personal smoke (which usually everything I grow is personal smoke) and deal with whatever seeds might develop as I prepare the buds to smoke them.

 

[revegeta666]

You can just top the male, every branch of it that's throwing flowers. This will force it to regrow additional branches before he's able to make flowers again. Rinse and repeat.

My friend calls this "the retarded male" technique xD