Here's a link to my grow journal for more info about my setup: https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/435527-indoor-bubbleponics-white-widow-seed.html#post5786694
I'm in the 11th week of flowering two White Widows in a hydroponic "bubbleponics" setup, and I just discovered that seeds are developing in a large portion of my buds. Every bud I checked, in fact. Obviously I missed a male flower and it's managed to pollinate and germinate virtually all of my buds. *sigh*
Now, they are... or were... absolutely female until very recently. Definitely not hermaphrodites.
I found a few male flowers today, and they seem to be relatively new growth, so I suspect that I did something to stress the plant late in the flowering cycle (possibly the flushing), which caused it to grow some "emergency" male flowers to save itself (this is apparently not unheard of and, in a controlled environment, can be used as a method to feminize seeds). Germination had to have happened in the last week or so, based on the size of the seeds currently.
At the moment, they're very, very small... about the size of strawberry seeds, if not smaller, and they're buried deep inside the female flowers. I really had to work to dig them out (and boy were they sticky!) with tweezers and scissors from a swiss army knife.
So, I've narrowed down my options to pretty much only two choices at this point:
1) Continue to let them flower for another 4 to 6 weeks and allow the seeds to grow to maturity before harvesting, and obviously deal with really seedy weed. Oh, the nostalgia! haha
... or
2) Harvest immediately before the seeds can get any bigger, despite the new influx of trichome growth that hasn't become very cloudy yet.
I need to go into more detail here... around week 8 of flowering, they actually looked like they were about ready for harvest. I was seeing about 20% amber, and lots of milky trichomes. I even went as far as to apply a leeching solution for about 2 hours and then started flushing to prepare for harvest. However, I did a lot of reading about flushing around that time and decided that I don't want to be a flusher, so after about 2 days of straight RO water, I put about a 25% strength dose of nutrient solution back in and started feeding again.
Holy shit, this is what threw me for a loop: after I started lightly feeding again, the plants exploded with new flower growth. So naturally, I decided to hold off on harvesting until these new buds were ripe. That was about 2 weeks ago, and these things are STILL producing new flowers, albeit they're almost all seed pods now.
Regardless, they are absolutely covered in tons of NEW trichomes, more-so than there were when I thought they were ready to harvest around week 8. Yes, they're new and not quite milky yet, but those old amber trichomes from week 8 are still there and more amber now as well, so it's not like there aren't any mature/ripe trichomes on the plant.
I'm torn... what do you guys think I should do?
I'm in the 11th week of flowering two White Widows in a hydroponic "bubbleponics" setup, and I just discovered that seeds are developing in a large portion of my buds. Every bud I checked, in fact. Obviously I missed a male flower and it's managed to pollinate and germinate virtually all of my buds. *sigh*
Now, they are... or were... absolutely female until very recently. Definitely not hermaphrodites.
I found a few male flowers today, and they seem to be relatively new growth, so I suspect that I did something to stress the plant late in the flowering cycle (possibly the flushing), which caused it to grow some "emergency" male flowers to save itself (this is apparently not unheard of and, in a controlled environment, can be used as a method to feminize seeds). Germination had to have happened in the last week or so, based on the size of the seeds currently.
At the moment, they're very, very small... about the size of strawberry seeds, if not smaller, and they're buried deep inside the female flowers. I really had to work to dig them out (and boy were they sticky!) with tweezers and scissors from a swiss army knife.
So, I've narrowed down my options to pretty much only two choices at this point:
1) Continue to let them flower for another 4 to 6 weeks and allow the seeds to grow to maturity before harvesting, and obviously deal with really seedy weed. Oh, the nostalgia! haha
... or
2) Harvest immediately before the seeds can get any bigger, despite the new influx of trichome growth that hasn't become very cloudy yet.
I need to go into more detail here... around week 8 of flowering, they actually looked like they were about ready for harvest. I was seeing about 20% amber, and lots of milky trichomes. I even went as far as to apply a leeching solution for about 2 hours and then started flushing to prepare for harvest. However, I did a lot of reading about flushing around that time and decided that I don't want to be a flusher, so after about 2 days of straight RO water, I put about a 25% strength dose of nutrient solution back in and started feeding again.
Holy shit, this is what threw me for a loop: after I started lightly feeding again, the plants exploded with new flower growth. So naturally, I decided to hold off on harvesting until these new buds were ripe. That was about 2 weeks ago, and these things are STILL producing new flowers, albeit they're almost all seed pods now.
Regardless, they are absolutely covered in tons of NEW trichomes, more-so than there were when I thought they were ready to harvest around week 8. Yes, they're new and not quite milky yet, but those old amber trichomes from week 8 are still there and more amber now as well, so it's not like there aren't any mature/ripe trichomes on the plant.
I'm torn... what do you guys think I should do?
