Yayyy! My first colloidal silver generator (photo)

[PhenoMenal]

Get Mo,
almost certainly not, because to induce male pollen from a female we generally need to spray a good concentration (30ppm+) for a week or more, basically bombarding the plant ..... your residual colloidal silver won't do much, especially as it's already been exposed to light and would've started degrading.

But having said that, if you do use a recirculating system and put a CS'd plant back into your system then you should give it a thorough spraying and soaking of pure water first - afterall there's no need for that silver to be in the system if you don't intend it to be there.

 

[GET MO]

yep I just took it out of there, thanks yall for makin me think of that with some of yall previous posts.

 

[PhenoMenal]

Yep many people including yourself have obviously used rhodelisation successfully, and if I ever flower a female long enough for it to produce male flowers and i like the plant i'll often save the male flowers

(For those who aren't familiar with the term, rhodelisation is the name given by Soma to the process by where mature females towards the end of their life can sometimes throw out some male flowers, almost as if it had been CS'd, but naturally. Strange name I know!)

but rhodelisation isn't something i go out of my way to do, simply because of the disadvantages compared to the other methods, which are mainly:
1 - not all strains throw out male flowers
2 - you have no control over the timing of it
3 - it usually takes a long time, often requiring you to flower well beyond the optimal harvest window
4 - you can't force it to happen

CS, STS, GA etc all get around those disadvantages simply because they allow us to _force_ the induction of male flowers - on any strain, and at the time of our choosing

 

[mooseknuckle]

Pheno,if i may be so bold,In regards to an earlier question you answered for me,where i said that i had male sacs but with no pollen in them,you said i wasnt spraying enough/strong enough solution,is it worth me still spraying the plants,and then just check for pods with pollen,or is it too late now? the plants are covered in pods but just empty,cheers

 

[PhenoMenal]

mooseknuckle, I don't have a definitive answer for you on that one sorry, nor have I heard any reports of people trying it, so I won't bother guessing.

I'd say if you've got nothing to lose by continuing to spray it with a stronger solution then go for it (and let us know how it goes!)
Best of luck

 

[GMT]

Hey Pheno, sure I asked this ages ago but cant remember the answer. Why distilled water? Wouldnt normal tap water do just as well?

 

[GET MO]

Hey Pheno, sure I asked this ages ago but cant remember the answer. Why distilled water? Wouldnt normal tap water do just as well?

Tap water has other metals (ppm) and minerals that could interfere with the silver. This is just my guess.

 

[PhenoMenal]

Just some of the many lovely things you'll find in tap water, according to typical analysis ...

METALS, including aluminium, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, mercury, potassium, selenium, sodium, thallium, zinc
INORGANICS, including chlorine, nitrite, nitrate, fluoride, sulfate, phosphorus, percholate
PESTICIDES - far too many to even bother listing
VOLATILE ORGANICS - things like benzene, trichlorethane, chlorobenzene, ethylbenzene etc etc
RADIONUCLIDES, including alpha, beta, and Radium 228
MICROBIOLOGICAL - things like cryptosporidium

Compare that to distilled water, which is pure H2O.

The metals in particular can react when passing electric current through the water, and I'd imagine quite easily react with the silver we're charging from one piece of silver to the next, turning it from the silver element (which we need) into various alloys (most if not all of which would be useless in regards to our needs). The resulting colloid may even be toxic to your plants.

It also affects the quality of the electrolysis because instead of passing current through pure water and ending up with colloidal silver and silver oxide we're now passing it through 'soup', and ending up with god knows what else.

Distilled water is quite inexpensive, you can get it from any supermarket, and you don't need much of it - one large bottle is usually enough to reverse a few plants, so it just makes no sense at all to use tap water.

Anyway if you are _that keen_ on saving $2 by using tap water instead of distilled water then just don't be disappointed if you end up with no feminised seeds after all your efforts ...

 

[mooseknuckle]

cheers pheno ,i will spray them for another week ,and report back

 

[GMT]

American supermarkets must be great, I get told that everything under the sun is available to buy in them, but Im in the uk, in a very rural part of the uk, stuff like that just isn't available without a trip into the city. Our local supermarket is full if theres a woman with a push chair in it. Since I water the plants daily with standard tap water, I can't see it doing them that much damage, and I wouldnt dream of smoking anything I'd sprayed with silver anyway. I'm not really thinking of making CS as its just not in my plans I just wondered if there was a scientific reason for distilled water rather than tap water. Since the idea is that the CS poisonons the plants and its a reaction to that extreme stress that forces the reaction, I tend to think that a bit more stress would only help to be honest. I'm almost tempted to try it just for the hell of it now.
I know that the stresses I've put them under so far haven't produced any pollen sacks but they were only natural stresses.

 

[PhenoMenal]

GMT,
I guess if you're out in the country so to speak then it might be harder to come upon, but I think you may be surprised, and may've simply overlooked it -- if I was you I'd just ask somebody who worked at your local supermarket. It is afterall simply pure water, and a lot of people have various needs for it, including using it in their irons to iron clothes, so I would've thought even small supermarkets would stock some.

I wouldnt dream of smoking anything I'd sprayed with silver anyway.

Yes, we're only using the target plant to obtain feminised pollen. Everything else from the plant should be discarded, and not smoked. It's a bit of a waste of buds, but if you've ever seen silver-drenched buds ...... erk
And we're usually only sacrificing 1 plant, so it's no drama.

Since the idea is that the CS poisonons the plants and its a reaction to that extreme stress that forces the reaction, I tend to think that a bit more stress would only help to be honest. I'm almost tempted to try it just for the hell of it now.

NO my friend! CS doesn't use stress! Please allow me to expand on that ...

Yes - stress on females can produce male pollen. However, ideally (for breeding purposes - be it for feminised or regular) we try to select strong females that are stress-resistant ... females that don't even produce pollen as a result of light poisoning or rhodelisation. Females that basically refuse to become hermaphrodites. (This is the same process that regular breeders also use - looking for strong, hardy females).

That's why we then FORCE the female (even if she's stress-resistant) to produce pollen by using colloidal silver.

Colloidal silver doesn't stress the plant, that's one of its beautiful attributes ... it is an ethylene inhibitor/antagonist, and that is what achieves our desired result - not stress.

 

[Satte]

So when I said my CS'ed AK-47 pollen was white, it was actually kinda yellow But I still questioned the viability of the pollen...so I went ahead and dusted whatever little pollen I had on my C99. And a few days later, the pistils started turning brown. Is that a tell-tale sign that the pollination worked and that the pollen was viable?

I don't know if this has been done before but I think I came across an easier way to "extract" the pollen from the bananas. I was high as hell one day and started to stare at things in the kitchen and I happened to lay my eyes on the food processor... After some debate, I gathered some pods (roughly 30-50) from the AK-47 and dumped them in and set it on GRIND/CHOP. After 30 seconds of the buzz-killing noise, I had a thin layer of dust (pollen) on the walls of the food processing container. I then proceeded to use that on my C99s. I have no idea if this process will affect the pollen but its just my two shiny pieces of metal. Let me know what you think

 

[Vinski]

GMT: battery water should be available in every gas station, I think it works as well. Pheno, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[GMT]

oh right thanks Pheno, although if it was a pure inhibitor, shouldn't the pure female simlpy refuse to flower rather than putting out male organs? This is a side that I've never done any research on before so I'm a pure newbie again when discussing all this.

 

[PhenoMenal]

This thread has a good writeup about the science behind it, it's from a University of Delhi study. It's from 1982 but still just as relevant

 

[GMT]

disclaimer, every word of what i now type is bollocks or if you want to be classical about it, then sophistry.


The only way this makes any sense to me is if the following were to be true, rather than the xy chromosomes containing male and female sex genes as in the mamal world, both sets of instructions are present in the x chromosome. The Y being a set of instructions to produce female inhibitor chems and the x containing male inhibitor instructions. The Y being the stronger and possibly also male inhibitor inhibitors. In this way the use of CS may inhibit the production of male inhibitors in famale plants and inhibit the production of female inhibitors in the males. This is the only way I can see male pollen (and vice versa) being produced on a female plant through the use of an inhibitor substance.

 

[Bazarocka]

You Do

You Do

Silver What~~~~I Dunno About That

What about the ole staggering of the 12/12.
Works 4 me everytime

Im too tired to find the link........

Good Night Every Body

 

[PhenoMenal]

@Bazarocka,
"Light poisoning"
Yep that also works, though seemingly not on all strains (especially stress-resistant ones, as this is a form of stress). Generally if I'm going to make feminised seeds I'll look for a stress-resistant mother, and _force_ her to produce male flowers using colloidal silver.

Also, depending on your grow setup and light schedules it may not be easy/practical, and if you take the plant outside to use the sun you risk bringing back unwanted bugs etc into your chamber - either that or buy another lightbulb to use inside, it wouldn't have to be too strong, a 130w CFL would be sufficient.

 

[GMT]

I'm working with indicas, and not only my own line but also readily available indica seeds from other breeders, and have just completed a couple of months of stress testing a few girls, and none of them are showing signs of putting out pollen sacks. I have to conclude that light poisoning, starving, droughting, heat stress or extreme cold is only really an issue with sativas.

 

[GET MO]

Does anyone have any pics of plants they grew out from seeds made using this process? Id like to see some of the results!