Hi, I have a pure Afghan male that I temporarily put in my small 4040160 tent alongside two plants I had in veg. The problem is that my other 80*80 tent with feminized plants in flowering is just one meter away, in the same room… Yesterday, the male opened its first flower; the rest are still too small (I think) to open, as they are less than 1mm.
I only have 2 options for the male: one is the current setup, changing the small tent’s photoperiod to 12/12 and setting the (automatic) humidifier to 65 or 70% humidity, but I’m scared they will open anyway, and if they open, pollen will still escape the tent.
The other option is placing it indoors next to a window without ever receiving direct light, just weak, indirect sun from an interior courtyard.
I haven’t dealt with males before and don’t know how to proceed so it doesn’t pollinate everything. Does anyone know if high humidity actually controls flower opening well?
Don’t go from tending in one tent to the other. Also don’t have them bot open at the same time. As long as you maintain negative pressure and each tent has its own separate tent I think you can do it. I’d probably mist the air with water after going in the male tent to kill any pollen that may float around or that’s settled on some surfaces.
Hi! I think that if you don’t need the pollen, it’s best to cut that plant down. The pollen sacs are its flowers, so it’s not going to produce anything better.
If you’re trying to slow the male plant down I would suggest colder temperatures. It’s easy to get an accidental pollination indoors. No point in having a male plant unless you’re going to make seeds. I have two male plants outdoors that are as far along looking as yours with 4 females around them. That’s on the one side of the yard. The other side of the yard I just put some feminized plants on the table to flip. That was a few days ago I plan on pulling the males in less than a week because I don’t want to get them pollinated. The pistols are going to be forming soon. Worst case scenario I’ll get a few seeds there if I don’t time it right. Another option for you could be cutting off the top male flowers before they open more will grow.
Thanks, yes I’m taking as much care as I can, first I tend to the big tent with the feminized plants and I don’t touch the small one until I finish there, I’ll do that spraying of the male you mentioned so I’ll reduce the risk as well, up until now I only did it when finishing outside the tent.
I bought a plastic beer straining bag, it’s 25 microns, as soon as it arrives I’ll put it on the plant I think, I just think that it will help because pollen shouldn’t escape 25 microns, hopefully it doesn’t go wrong for me to be honest… I’m pretty scared
Hi Eli, I would like to do selective pollination. I left lower branches on the feminized plants specifically to pollinate them, my idea is to pollinate the best plants in the tent, like the Picchu, the Tropicanna Poison, a pure female Afghani, and I don’t know if any others, but I don’t want to pollinate the whole plant, just the lower branches, and if I can, save pollen for the future.
that’s going to be impossible hehe, here the ambient temperature easily exceeds 30º and at night it stays high, there’s nothing to do against the heat.
I do want to get seeds from several of my plants, but by manually pollinating the lower branches I left for that.
Sorry for the photos, they aren’t from today, but I have several plants as you can see, I really want to save the male to be honest, by the way the humidifier isn’t the one in the photo, there’s an automatic 4L one right now, but it’s in the dark period and I can’t open it
@3xt3nd3d If you have the option to put it in another room, that would be perfect. Since you are planning a targeted pollination, it doesn’t matter where you keep it as long as it’s not outdoors. Always go to the plants that should not be pollinated first, and only after that to your male plant. Take a dark tray with a smooth surface and a soft fine brush. Hold the tray under the male flowers and tap the pollen out of the flowers with the brush. Alternatively, you can also remove them with tweezers and tap them out. Sweep the pollen into a pile with the fine brush, and after you have showered and ideally a day later with fresh clothes, get the plants that are to be pollinated. Preferably in a different room, since you only want to targetedly pollinate a few flowers and not the whole plant. Take the collected pollen and your fine brush and pollinate the desired flowers, repeat this 3-5 times on different days. Afterwards, blow off the pollinated plants so that the loose pollen doesn’t spread in the tent. After that, it’s a matter of waiting until the bracts visibly open and then harvesting. If the plant is ready for harvest before that, cut it off above the pollinated shoots and let the lower part ripen further.
I hope this helps you, best regards
Hi her, thanks for replying. Truth is I can’t move it to another room, I urgently bought a 25-micron mesh, but it didn’t arrive until today. I searched desperately in the local area but nothing, Amazon was the fastest, and it took a couple of days.
I would have really liked to keep it, but I chopped it. The risk was huge and the humidity wasn’t enough to prevent them from continuing to open (this plant didn’t show sex until almost 2 weeks after 12/12, and exploded from one day to the next). Seeing that I couldn’t control it, separate the tents, nor did I have the mesh fabric, I opted not to risk it, and chopped.
The tents are right next to each other, and turning off the intake is not an option, I’m over 30°C. The brief moments I turned it off to handle it, you could notice the excess vapor, hot vapor, and plant smell (I guess ethylene due to the extremely high humidity and heat). Shame the mesh didn’t arrive sooner… in theory pollen can’t get out because it’s 25 microns. Even so, I’ll keep the bag, and shortly I’ll germinate regulars again to get a male, although this time they won’t be Afghan, they will be seeds called Nepal, landraces as well.
Thank you so much for the advice, I’ll apply it in the future.
If you put your plant in the 25 micron bag would it trap moisture in it when the plant transpires? And what are those dots on the stem on the male plant, some sort of insect.
The mesh is breathable, air goes in and out, I already checked it when I received it and air passes through normally so it can breathe, even so if the humidity is very high it is possible that more will accumulate than if it didn’t have the mesh and were open, but enough for it to live without problems, I think…
Regarding the little dots you mention, I’m not really sure what you mean, but no, I don’t have any kind of pest, you might be referring to aborted flowers (which are brown dots) and the plant aborted them due to stress, if you mean green, white, or similar dots, those are pollen sacs that haven’t opened yet.
it looks useful, I mean, air passes through effortlessly, they claim to have 25 microns under the microscope, I’ll use it with the Nepal landraces., air and humidity don’t worry me, it’s quite breathable, but light doesn’t seem to pass through well, maybe change the top part for a circular clear plastic screen.
These small plants are from an accidental pollination I had by pulling my selected female out of the tent at the beginning of the lights on period and replacing her just before the lights out period. I should have used the leaf blower on her like was mentioned above.
I have a variety of micron bags for making water hash that I got a really good deal on Amazon Haul. But I think 45 micron was the smallest I ordered.
The reason why I asked about the humidity is because I have multiple controllers in my tent so some of the sensors end up in the canopy. There is quite a bit of difference in the RH.
Anyhow these are the plants I don’t want to pollinate. They are a good 60 feet away. Definitely not far enough but they are just going into flower and I will be pulling the males this weekend.
oof, well yeah, you have a lot of plants, it would be horrible if they got pollinated, I think I read that it can travel up to 30km! I’m really glad to see your plants, thanks for posting them.
I know which bags you mean! I only smoke weed, very rarely hash, which here in Spain is of excellent quality, but I prefer weed.
Even so, I did consider buying them, on Amazon I saw 20-micron ones for making rosin, it was my best first choice because since they’re tiny bags, it’s enough to just put the pollen clusters into the little bags, leaving the rest of the plant receiving light and breathing better, and that same little bag could be used to pollinate lower branches.
I don’t doubt for a second that I’ll do it, but I’ll try with the big bag since I already bought it.
Unfortunately for you it needs to be 25 microns or less, which is how big pollen is, I hope everything turns out well for you and they don’t ruin your ladies
It would be nice if they didn’t get pollinated, but I took two clones of each of them and they are rooted and in need of transplanting. I’m looking for a mother plant. Which ever one is the best I’ll keep and pop some more beans from that pack to see if I can find a better one.