COLLOIDAL SILVER
There is another way to get “female” pollen.
A way that is guaranteed to work and a way that is far quicker than waiting for the old lady to panic.
The application of Colloidal Silver to a female plant will “trick” the plant into believing that it is a male and it will then produce “male” flowers, the pollen from which will produce female seeds.
This “trickery” has nothing to do with stress, nothing to do with self-preservation and certainly nothing to do with hermaphrodites. In terms that I barely understand, the silver molecules in the Colloidal Silver bind with copper molecules in the bud sites. The copper is used for ethylene production in female plants which tells the plant to produce female flowers – as the copper is tied up with the silver, the ethylene is not produced and the plant thinks it’s male – maybe “male” is the default setting.
Colloidal Silver is simply silver molecules suspended in water.
Colloidal Silver is very easy to make and very inexpensive.
To make Colloidal Silver you need to pass a small DC current through water using 99.99% pure silver as the electrodes (really only need silver on the positive electrode, but stoners need as little to go wrong as possible).
My Colloidal Silver generator consists of an old Nokia phone charger. The plug was removed, wires stripped and 2 small alligator clips crimped on (no soldering needed).
I bought two tiny (1 gram) silver ingots from eBay, cost slightly less than fuck-all after postage. These are clipped to the alligator clips and partially submerged in a glass of Demineralised Water (found in the cleaning products aisle in your supermarket)
Make sure that the alligator clips are not in the water, plug in the charger and leave for about 12 hours in a dark place (silver reacts with light).
In the original thread there was some discussion about the strength of the Colloidal Silver, whether particle size mattered, whether higher currents produce it quicker – personally my view is that nothing really matters except whether or not it works.
I don’t know why people need to know how many parts per million of silver is best – if something costs very little and it works a charm, then why change it.
Not having a PPM meter doesn’t mean you can’t tell when there are suspended silver molecules in the water – just shine a laser pointer through the water and if you see a red line, you are good to go.
The red line you see is the Tyndall Effect where the light bounces off the suspended silver.
….
So, once you have your Colloidal Silver … what next.
Simply spray the CS onto the part of the plant that you want to turn “male”, start spraying a couple of days before switching to 12/12 and continue daily until you have harvested your pollen.
I suggest spraying until the pollen is collected as I have noticed that if you stop the CS application, as the plant grows it may revert back to female and produce non-viable pollen.
The following photos show my first experiment with Colloidal Silver.
My experiment involved three clones from a female grown from a Barney’s Farm Red Dragon feminised seed.
All three clones were the same age however the two outside ones had already been under 12/12 light for a few days and would be the “females” with the plant in the middle being forced to grow “male” flowers.
The above photos were taken on 9th November.
17 days later, the two females were well into budding while the “male” was not budding but wasn’t showing male flowers either.
In this next photo you can see the pistils are starting to brown off and not be replaced, but no male flowers yet.
However, a week later on 2nd December the story was different and I was confident that the plant was now in full male flower production.
As the “male” flowers developed and ripened I removed the flowers (before the pollen was dropped) and collected them in a small plastic bag.
When I had enough pollen I started applying it to the females – pollen was applied from 11th December to 15th December. The next photos were taken on 14th December and you can see how the pistils have browned off after receiving pollen.
And to show you just how huge the plants are, here is a photo of the “male” plant on 16th December.
It is obvious that making a tiny clone produce pollen is a lot easier than pushing an old girl into extreme old age for the same result.
A few days later (20th December) and magic has happened – swollen calyxes show that pollination was successful.
… and by 7th January the girlz were heavily pregnant and about to drop their babies.