There's an article here on making colloidal silver which implies the stuff you buy won't work as well. It's said to tend to damage the plant. I can only say, I made my own and it's damaged no plants.
Thanks guys for the info. I'll try giving the ladies some darkness next round.
3000:1 male seeds anyway? So one in 4 plants maybe will produce one?
Here's how many seeds I'm getting out of a White Widow (see pic if they're serving them). All of the buds are fully seeded. This is from fluffing a plant next to it, when that plant was at the prime of making pollen. A big yellow cloud came off.
I tried using a brush on another, but that plant only has a few seeds per bud. I'll be lucky to get 50 off that plant.
Looks to me like, flowers don't share pollen. That was one question I had. Can you put pollen on a few hairs, and the ones below will get some too? Seems like a no answer. Apparently the pollen hydrates on the white haird, and grows a little shoot which penetrates into the hair, and goes down to find the potential seed at the bottom.
After the poor brush results, I tried dropping pollen into an enclosed trashcan with a fan in it. Closed the lid, left the plant in there a while.
Still didn't work as well as having massive amounts of pollen fluffed over the plant by my hands.
This white widow was in a 24/0 cycle the whole time, though since it's gotten so many seeds I turn the lights off a few hours at night. With the advice from this group, I might make it longer.
U.C. Davis (the arguably most prestigious agricultural university in the USA), is rumored to have a Marijuana department coming along. Maybe they'll quantify and measure things, so we know the optimum scientific grow conditions for all common varieties. They already provide most of the grape and rose stock in California. Perhaps they'll provide pot plants too. If you're old enough to notice that California wine has gotten very very good over the last 30 years, that's largely thanks to U.C. Davis's scientific fermenting techniques. So set them loose on marijuana!
This white widow with seeds grew entirely on LED bulbs. One 24W, one 54W. I worried a bit about whether it needed some white light. Had curled leaves at times. But it grew anyway. And just before I snapped this photo, it had a ton of yellow and brown fan leaves. I guess that's normal?
About LED grow bulbs: If the LED bulb on ebay says it's 24W, it's probably no more than 11W. If it says 54W, you'll get 29W if you're lucky. But sometimes, a less than $22 chinese bulb rated at 54W is only 12W.
The LED bulb makers get away with horrible exaggerations.. Probably they don't even have the means to measure.
Maybe I'll measure and import some low cost single plant bulbs from Taiwan, so people can trust the ratings. In the long run, there's no reason for 24W grow bulbs to cost more than $10.
NO! (S1 male's are a male version of the females genetic structure - minus the "female" part.....1:3000 is the given ratio of males to females in selfed seeds)
