My latest Vert garden

Castroman

Well-Known Member
It was my first ever seed order and I can't wait to start popping some beans. I picked up his Sweet Skunk, C99, Skunkberry, and the SSxC99. I think I'm just going to pop 1 strain at a time, and veg them until I can take a clone from each, then I'll use that to determine sex. I'll get rid of my males and I'll take clones from the remaining females, in case I want to keep a certain pheno, and then I'll flower out the moms.
If you are going to run just one strain, I'd keep the best males and open pollinate with them to make some beans!
 

PKHydro

Well-Known Member
If you are going to run just one strain, I'd keep the best males and open pollinate with them to make some beans!
Sorry, I don't think I was very clear. While I plan on popping just the one strain of seeds, these are just to flower out in dirt, along side my other strain that I have currently running in my hydro system. So I'll be running two different strains, one in hydro, one in dirt.

I did toy with the idea of getting a small tent or building a small grow box for the males, so I could collect some pollen and hit one of my violator girls with it. Violator Kush x Sweet Skunk sounds pretty fucking good to me.
 

Castroman

Well-Known Member
I did toy with the idea of getting a small tent or building a small grow box for the males, so I could collect some pollen and hit one of my violator girls with it. Violator Kush x Sweet Skunk sounds pretty fucking good to me.
No need for a tent or grow box, just cut a male branch and put it, unrooted as it is, in a container with water as if it were a regular flower on a glassy surface in a room far away from the girls. You don't even need any lighting. In a few days, the pods will shed pollen all over as this:

pollencollecting.jpg

Then you can use that pollen to make that Violator Skunk (which sounds awesome). Collecting from more than one select male is also a good a idea so that you don't bottleneck the resulting cross. If the girls are not ready right away, you can mix the pollen with an equal amount of cornstarch and store it in the fridge for future use, keeps many months, perhaps years if frozen.
 
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pinner420

Well-Known Member
No need for a tent or grow box, just cut a male branch and put it, unrooted as it is, in a container with water as if it were a regular flower on a glassy surface in a room far away from the girls. You don't even need any lighting. In a few days, the pods will shed pollen all over as this:

View attachment 3652852

Then you can use that pollen to make that Violator Skunk (which sounds awesome). Collecting from more than one select male is also a good a idea so that you don't bottleneck the resulting cross. If the girls are not ready right away, you can mix the pollen with cornstarch 10:1 and store it in the fridge for future use, keeps many months, perhaps years if frozen.
10 parts pollen or vise versa?
 

Castroman

Well-Known Member
10 parts pollen or vise versa?
Sorry, I meant 1:1, equal parts pollen and corn starch (or wheat flour, rice flour, etc.). Water and moisture kill pollen on contact, so you need get rid of all moisture before storing it. The cornstarch or flour itself needs to be free of moisture, it's a good idea to put the flour or cornstarch in the oven for a few minutes just to get rid of the moisture it may have absorbed. You can also try to get pollen dry without adding anything, using silica gel dissecant for instance. The advantage of flour or cornstarch is that you effectively double the amount of pollen available for use. Once dry, you can pack it in small amounts in small glassine envelopes, etc.
 

PKHydro

Well-Known Member
No need for a tent or grow box, just cut a male branch and put it, unrooted as it is, in a container with water as if it were a regular flower on a glassy surface in a room far away from the girls. You don't even need any lighting. In a few days, the pods will shed pollen all over as this:

View attachment 3652852

Then you can use that pollen to make that Violator Skunk (which sounds awesome). Collecting from more than one select male is also a good a idea so that you don't bottleneck the resulting cross. If the girls are not ready right away, you can mix the pollen with an equal amount of cornstarch and store it in the fridge for future use, keeps many months, perhaps years if frozen.
Awesome, I may just try this. Thanks for the info
 

PKHydro

Well-Known Member
Well another update is in order, as I've just finished another harvest. I pulled a personal best of just over 7.5lbs from this crop.

The 4 plants in the room I just chopped, were the first ones that I tried my new "pruning tech" on, Lol everything is a "tech" these days.

1 week into flower I cleaned up the bottoms of these girls and also took a lot of the middle crap out. I then left them to flower, pulling only the odd leaf here and there if I see a spot that is all clogged up. The girls responded extremely well to the pruning, increasing my yeild substantially.

This is a shot of 1 of the girls at about how 4 weeks, you can see the pruning I've done to the bottom.
IMG_20160312_013848.jpg

I like to take these to 9.5 weeks before I chop. I was chopping at 8 weeks but I noticed a lot of trichomes in the 45u and 25u bubble bags when I would wash. That extra week and half really matures the resin heads so I'm catching them in the higher bags, now I'm getting nothing in my 25u and hardly anything in the 45u, all the goods are in my 73u and 90u.

All in all I'm extremely happy with this harvest, and looking to hit the 2lb per plant mark in the next few crops!
 

m4s73r

Well-Known Member
Nice grow. Id like to hear more about your trimming. Are you defoliating at all, or just removing little side branches? That first pic the in the first post looked like they had been defoliated.

Very nice set up.
 

PKHydro

Well-Known Member
I like your photo documentary idea, if it works for you, I'll try something similar.
It just came to me when I was moving the plants from my veg room. I always get the feeling that the plants are too small and I didn't veg them long enough. But sure enough they end up blowing up and becoming what I want.

So I was thinking I'll take pictures once a week just to capture the dramatic explosion of growth.
 

ttystikk

Well-Known Member
It just came to me when I was moving the plants from my veg room. I always get the feeling that the plants are too small and I didn't veg them long enough. But sure enough they end up blowing up and becoming what I want.

So I was thinking I'll take pictures once a week just to capture the dramatic explosion of growth.
Once a week is only 8-10 snaps. Consider every 2-3 days, it should do a much better job of catching growth spurts.
 

PKHydro

Well-Known Member
Nice grow. Id like to hear more about your trimming. Are you defoliating at all, or just removing little side branches? That first pic the in the first post looked like they had been defoliated.

Very nice set up.
Thanks,

Basically when I first started I would just leave the plants alone and let them do their thing. I would pluck the odd leaf here and there if it was covering a top or something. That picture you were talking about is a plant that wasn't trimmed or defoliated.


Then I saw this video and decided to give it a shot. His set up is close to what I'm doing, vertical bulbs (although he uses a China hat reflector on them) and big trees.




I just harvested my first crop that I used this technique on and my yeilds increased dramatically. I was getting on average around 6lbs out of my room. My last crop was 7.5lbs of the biggest chunkiest buds I've ever grown.

So now at 1 week into flower I will be lolipoping hard and cleaning out the middle shit. And then at 2 weeks I go and do a bit of defoliating.
 
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