Cloning From Feminized Seeds - Is It Possible, Difficult or Impossible?

Guile said:

Dude I want to apologize if I came off harsh (or pessimistically). There was no intent there.. I try to word things in such a way as to make it clear that I am not trying to set a president, (only shearing thoughts or perspectives). I find it quite likely that I choose my wording less than ideally on a far more frequent basis than I would prefer..

Hope I didn't crap up your day, and thanks for the encouragement, I find breeding pretty interesting and hope to explore it a bit in the near future (keep smiling)

Click to expand...

No crap here bro, lol. I wasn't offended -- i just like to spin things positive. I too want to get into breeding a little bit myself. I was lucky enough to get a bag of nugs with one bean in it and said to myself that guy made a crucial mistake by letting that one slip through. I grew it out and it was female and some of the most robust killer smoke I have ever grown -- didn't even look like the stuff I was paying for. So here we are almost a year later and im still cloning the clones and getting awesome reults -- check my post in aeroponics for aeroflo 60 + 1k + hydrohut + CO2 help to see all the pics and my setup. What I want is to find something I can spray on some clones or put in the water or something to get some pollen for this. I would like to have more female seeds of this stuff -- just in case there is a catastrophe and I have to start over. or just to see what it does outdoors ( without having me to xplant a clone into dirt.)

secondshift said:

No crap here bro, lol. I wasn't offended -- i just like to spin things positive. I too want to get into breeding a little bit myself. I was lucky enough to get a bag of nugs with one bean in it and said to myself that guy made a crucial mistake by letting that one slip through. I grew it out and it was female and some of the most robust killer smoke I have ever grown -- didn't even look like the stuff I was paying for. So here we are almost a year later and im still cloning the clones and getting awesome reults -- check my post in aeroponics for aeroflo 60 + 1k + hydrohut + CO2 help to see all the pics and my setup. What I want is to find something I can spray on some clones or put in the water or something to get some pollen for this. I would like to have more female seeds of this stuff -- just in case there is a catastrophe and I have to start over. or just to see what it does outdoors ( without having me to xplant a clone into dirt.)

Click to expand...

How clean and precise do you want to be? Do you mind if everything seeds out this entire cycle (until you do a full cleanup).
Can you delicate a separate grow aria (like a closet or tool shed?).

You can hermi anything from a single branch to a whole plant using Colloidal silver. You can collect the pollen to fertilize flowers as you see fit (and still dry/store leftover pollen for the future).
It can even be done in a single room with some degree of accuracy (but you will probably end up pollinating more than you planned).

Its pretty easy getting seeds from nearly every female in a room. Just hermaphrodite a female in it, give her a shake every once in a while and have a circulating fan running when you do. Just remember to give everything a damp wipe down (inside and out) before you start your next seedless cycle (otherwise you might find some surprises).

If you only want one or two buds worth of seeds it can get more involved...

secondshift said:

It seems strange that you would be so pessimistic considering what "we" do... My glass is always half-full. Anyways... you are correct;

you would think that all the beans you get from this process would be identical but they will not. 25% will be something different that the original mother with all the dominants expressed 50% should display dominant traits but carry recessives and 25% will be copies with only recessives expressed.

You grow the new beans out and pick what you like and repeat the process until you have a plant with only the recessives. Eventually you will get 100% beans that are exact copies of the original since there are only recessives to be expressed.

Problem with that is you will never have a true male. You have to use this process with pollen from an actual genetic male until you get all the beans the same. So what you really need to have your own strain is to have a male that carries only the recessives to breed with a female that caries only recessives then all your beans will be geneticall identical with the exception of the sex. And if your shit is good you can enter the cannabis cup lol.

Click to expand...

err this is true for a simple heterozygous dominant trait, but not most cases. Good cannabis traits are usually controlled by several genes and even traits. Yield, smell, taste, potency, plant height, bushiness, these are all controlled by several genes/traits. This means simple Mendelian genetics doesn't quite work. But ideally, your percentages are correct and methods on the right track.

For most purposes, cannabis breeding can be quite simple; just time consuming and a bit wasteful. Breed any plants together, find a brilliant plant, clone. Making stable seeds...most breeders use a lot of back crossing, cubing, and squaring. Very complex topics.

Haha. I was reading back on this thread cus somebody recently liked my comment. what ever happened to pooscrubber? Last I remember he started a thread on the "advanced rules" and even put "Pinned:" before his title and demanded no one practice soil methods in the advanced section. good times...

hoagtech said:

When you a buy a feminized seed you have more of a chance of it turning hermie because of the way pre-fem seeds are produced.

Click to expand...

I'm sure you have a good reason, even a scientific one.
I have no science to back my claim up:

3 years of growing with only feminized seeds - without a single hermie.

Believe it or not, I've only grown regular seeds once - the last grow I did - and that was the only time I got hermies!
I know that sounds TOO unlucky to be true - maybe I exaggerate you think, but no - it is true.

I CAN even belive that feminized has greater chance of herming, but my experience is exactly the opposite!

Experience could be simple luck, but 3 years a lot of harvests.

I believe hermies is something we'll always have around, it's just how pot works.

I know you think I must be lying, but why should I? I don't like the trend of feminized seeds, nor do I have a use for them anymore. I used them to learn to grow, and today I go for regular seeds becase I like Mr.Nice seeds.

you can clone just about any strain produced from fem or normal seeds....some strains take longer than others to root

OldGrowAddict said:

I'm sure you have a good reason, even a scientific one.
I have no science to back my claim up:

3 years of growing with only feminized seeds - without a single hermie.

Believe it or not, I've only grown regular seeds once - the last grow I did - and that was the only time I got hermies!
I know that sounds TOO unlucky to be true - maybe I exaggerate you think, but no - it is true.

I CAN even belive that feminized has greater chance of herming, but my experience is exactly the opposite!

Experience could be simple luck, but 3 years a lot of harvests.

I believe hermies is something we'll always have around, it's just how pot works.

I know you think I must be lying, but why should I? I don't like the trend of feminized seeds, nor do I have a use for them anymore. I used them to learn to grow, and today I go for regular seeds becase I like Mr.Nice seeds.

Click to expand...

Nope just personal experience. To be fair though my fem seeds were from therightstrains.co.uk and I bought them because they were cheap. But I hear the tail of the fems turning hermie all too often to ignore it. I hear all these people claiming they have never once had a hermie from a feminised seed but from my trails I have experienced exactly the oppsite by never having a femmed seed that didnt turn hermie.
You think I like to throw away males and waste time disseminating sex ? Of course we all want simplicity, but I share my story so people dont waste months of their time creating a hermie. Because what I was promised from my seed bank turned out to be a 5 month failure. Not really a failure.. I quite enjoyed the harvest and the bud but it took a little longer to sell for less money.

hoagtech said:

Nope just personal experience. To be fair though my fem seeds were from therightstrains.co.uk and I bought them because they were cheap. But I hear the tail of the fems turning hermie all too often to ignore it. I hear all these people claiming they have never once had a hermie from a feminised seed but from my trails I have experienced exactly the oppsite by never having a femmed seed that didnt turn hermie.
You think I like to throw away males and waste time disseminating sex ? Of course we all want simplicity, but I share my story so people dont waste months of their time creating a hermie. Because what I was promised from my seed bank turned out to be a 5 month failure. Not really a failure.. I quite enjoyed the harvest and the bud but it took a little longer to sell for less money.

Click to expand...

Maybe you should try some different breeders.
I have grown feminized seeds from
DNA/Reserva different strains multiple times
Dinafem different strains
Feminized seeds different strains

Only hermie I ever had was a "free seed" from amsterdam marijuana seeds.

Guile said:

How clean and precise do you want to be? Do you mind if everything seeds out this entire cycle (until you do a full cleanup).
Can you delicate a separate grow aria (like a closet or tool shed?).

You can hermi anything from a single branch to a whole plant using Colloidal silver. You can collect the pollen to fertilize flowers as you see fit (and still dry/store leftover pollen for the future).
It can even be done in a single room with some degree of accuracy (but you will probably end up pollinating more than you planned).

Its pretty easy getting seeds from nearly every female in a room. Just hermaphrodite a female in it, give her a shake every once in a while and have a circulating fan running when you do. Just remember to give everything a damp wipe down (inside and out) before you start your next seedless cycle (otherwise you might find some surprises).

If you only want one or two buds worth of seeds it can get more involved...

Click to expand...

I can dedicate a separate growing area to make some seeds. Making the seed is no problem -- pollen plus pistils = seeds. what i need i s a magic bullet to aim at a plant to make it drop pollen. Colloidial silver? How does it work, how and when is it applied? what concentration does it need to be to be effective? I read you can get this at CVS but its not strong enough for our intended use. I read you can get it at some garden supply stores -- i read power company arborists use it to top off trimmed trees from power lines whats the truth on this stuff?

hoagtech said:

When you a buy a feminized seed you have more of a chance of it turning hermie because of the way pre-fem seeds are produced.

Click to expand...

I know this post is old but I am tired of reading this misinformed shit online.


Look man I know you think you have the correct information and in part you do.

You can produce seeds from a plant you STRESS to pollinate. This is NOT how any reputable breeder in the last 5-7 years has done this.

They use colloidal silver to induce a pollination response from an existing female on only a small portion of the plant. They then harvest the pollen when it is produced and "hand" pollinate the female they wish to produce seeds. This is not the same female from whence the pollen came. I am not even gonna bother finding the evidence of this as it is a widely used technique in modern propagation. Look it up yourself.

Not all breeders do a good job. Supposedly the c.silver method increase the chance of a female seed by a very large margin of up to 99%. Of course stable lines are closer to 70% but even then that is a much higher rate than standard seeds.

Yes some breeders use stress to produce a hermie then harvest pollen and so forth or just use teh seeds of that hermie... Look genetics is genetics. If you have a male and clone it you have a male female female and so forth. IF you are cloning a plant that is already hermie by its genetic makeup you can never get anything but hermie.

When you grow a fem seed from start to finish and it NEVER does hermie you have a female plant. Had you taken clones from that plant they ARE female. Does this mean you cannot personally stress them into a hermie? Or course not. That is solely the responsibility of the grower.

Genetically your chances are the same as they were before any femminization. Males are males females females and hermie well hermie are just freaks There is no greater or less chance of hermie in a clone that is being taken from a female seed feminized than from a regular seed that grew into a female if it was using the colodial silver method. If you stress it to fem it you just bred a large amount of hermie seeds and you can do the math from there...

stop spreading information that is not properly researched. Go read a plant biology book or a general book on genetics. People clone fem seeds all day every day and you don't see the internet full of accounts of them all fucking themselves do you? If it were so believe me you would see the evidence of that on the net.

secondshift said:

I can dedicate a separate growing area to make some seeds. Making the seed is no problem -- pollen plus pistils = seeds. what i need i s a magic bullet to aim at a plant to make it drop pollen. Colloidial silver? How does it work, how and when is it applied? what concentration does it need to be to be effective? I read you can get this at CVS but its not strong enough for our intended use. I read you can get it at some garden supply stores -- i read power company arborists use it to top off trimmed trees from power lines whats the truth on this stuff?

Click to expand...

If I were to speculate on what makes Collodial silver work, I would assume it would have something to do with ion/electron exchange or that Silver is far less toxic than most other heavy metals.

Establishing that I don't know how it works I'll do my best to stammer through how to make it for you... Basically what you want to do is electrically strip off some silver into distilled water using DC (direct) current. (like the output of most plug in wall chargers) If you use silver as both your anode and cathode you don't have to worry about polarity. Generally what I read indicates levels over 50ppm are necessary from what It looks like 75ppm works fairly well. (don't test your solution while its being charged).

You want to treat the portion of the plant you want to hermaphrodite with a thorough spraying (drenching) of your silver solution on a daily basis until it begins to show male flowers (kindof like rooting clones its hard to predict exactly how long) I read from 10-20 days is the common range. Keep in mind that male flowers mature pretty quickly and once your female becomes fertilized flower development is likely to slow in favor of seed development.

If you don't care about harvesting any bud (to make hash out of, or just to feel humble/modest again) then you might as well start right around the time you start flowering the recipient plants. If you want more flower development before pollination (for any reason) you can push it off for a couple-few weeks. You may want to attempt this on a couple separate occasions so you can get a feel for how fast the plant responds to the silver treatment and how long it takes for your seeds to fully mature..



If you buy Colloidial silver that is not the right concentration you can resolve this issue with a TDS meter some distilled water and a glass vessel you can boil water in (9in Corning/Pyrex casserole dish)
Take a baseline reading if you solution (compare to concentration on label) then concentrate (distilling off water in a clean glass vessel) or dilute by adding the distilled water..

If you can't come up with 2 pieces of silver, I believe you can use the core of a modern pencil as your cathode (-)
Everything I come across suggests using .999 silver, though I rarely run into much "why" other than: you might get a murky looking solution, or it might cause a little burning on the foliage. Mercury dimes are 90/10 silver/copper and only cost about $1 a piece. (keep in mind I have never personally tried it, but doesn't seem like many people do).

jbrother said:

I know this post is old but I am tired of reading this misinformed shit online.


Look man I know you think you have the correct information and in part you do.

You can produce seeds from a plant you STRESS to pollinate. This is NOT how any reputable breeder in the last 5-7 years has done this.

They use colloidal silver to induce a pollination response from an existing female on only a small portion of the plant. They then harvest the pollen when it is produced and "hand" pollinate the female they wish to produce seeds. This is not the same female from whence the pollen came. I am not even gonna bother finding the evidence of this as it is a widely used technique in modern propagation. Look it up yourself.

Not all breeders do a good job. Supposedly the c.silver method increase the chance of a female seed by a very large margin of up to 99%. Of course stable lines are closer to 70% but even then that is a much higher rate than standard seeds.

Yes some breeders use stress to produce a hermie then harvest pollen and so forth or just use teh seeds of that hermie... Look genetics is genetics. If you have a male and clone it you have a male female female and so forth. IF you are cloning a plant that is already hermie by its genetic makeup you can never get anything but hermie.

When you grow a fem seed from start to finish and it NEVER does hermie you have a female plant. Had you taken clones from that plant they ARE female. Does this mean you cannot personally stress them into a hermie? Or course not. That is solely the responsibility of the grower.

Genetically your chances are the same as they were before any femminization. Males are males females females and hermie well hermie are just freaks

There is no greater or less chance of hermie in a clone that is being taken from a female seed feminized than from a regular seed that grew into a female if it was using the colodial silver method. If you stress it to fem it you just bred a large amount of hermie seeds and you can do the math from there...

stop spreading information that is not properly researched. Go read a plant biology book or a general book on genetics. People clone fem seeds all day every day and you don't see the internet full of accounts of them all fucking themselves do you? If it were so believe me you would see the evidence of that on the net.

Click to expand...

Ok, so I am laying here with my wife and she just read your post with me and she said ...

"more than 90 percent of people on forums -- no matter what they are about -- don't know what they are talking about and just want to argue and badmouth people they don't know..."

I just love her!

secondshift said:

Ok, so I am laying here with my wife and she just read your post with me and she said ...

"more than 90 percent of people on forums -- no matter what they are about -- don't know what they are talking about and just want to argue and badmouth people they don't know..."

I just love her!

Click to expand...

Everything said in the post you quoted is correct tho?

Harrekin said:

Everything said in the post you quoted is correct tho?

Click to expand...

No, not everything.

There are males. No matter what the environment they will always be male. No amount of CS will change that. dang.

There are TRUE hermaphrodite plants which have a mutation with an extra chromosome where NO MATTER WHAT ENVIRONMENT the plant is grown in it will ALWAYS have both male and female characteristics. These do occur very rarely. The odds one would get a whole shipment of seeds where this was the case are astronomical.

Then there are females. Females will grow differently in different environments. Stress them right and they will drop pollen. Different environments will contribute to the expression of one or more genes.

In some females the gene that creates male flowers and pollen is easily triggered. It makes sense that some seed banks just want to cut price and make whats easiest, so its possible you could get a bag of seed that are all female but is made from pollen that all the guy had to do was spray a female couple of times and use the first pollen that popped to make the whole batch. Yeah, he just bred for susceptibility to drop pollen. He should have taken the pollen that was MOST difficult to obtain -- from the plant that withstood the stress the longest to make his feminized seed -- then he would have a good more robust donor that would be less likely to drop pollen inadvertently. pip pip pip Blah blah blah...

tomato tomato

Guile said:

If I were to speculate on what makes Collodial silver work, I would assume it would have something to do with ion/electron exchange or that Silver is far less toxic than most other heavy metals.

Establishing that I don't know how it works I'll do my best to stammer through how to make it for you... Basically what you want to do is electrically strip off some silver into distilled water using DC (direct) current. (like the output of most plug in wall chargers) If you use silver as both your anode and cathode you don't have to worry about polarity. Generally what I read indicates levels over 50ppm are necessary from what It looks like 75ppm works well. (don't test your solution while its being charged).

You want to treat the portion of the plant you want to hermaphrodite with a thorough spraying (drenching) of your silver solution on a daily basis until it begins to show male flowers (kindof like rooting clones its hard to predict exactly how long) I read from 10-20 days is the common range. Keep in mind that male flowers mature pretty quickly and once your female becomes fertilized flower development is likely to slow in favor of seed development.

If you don't care about harvesting any bud (to make hash out of, or just to feel humble/modest again) then you might as well start right around the time you start flowering the recipient plants. If you want more flower development before pollination (for any reason) you can push it off for a couple-few weeks. You may want to attempt this on a couple separate occasions so you can get a feel for how fast the plant responds to the silver treatment and how long it takes for your seeds to fully mature..

View attachment 2029178

If you buy Colloidial silver that is not the right concentration you can resolve this issue with a TDS meter some distilled water and a gals vessel you can boil water in (9in Corning/Pyrex casserole dish)
Take a baseline reading if you solution (compare to concentration on label) then concentrate (distilling off water in a clean glass vessel) or dilute by adding the distilled water..

If you can't come up with 2 pieces of silver, I believe you can use the core of a modern pencil as your cathode (-)
Everything I come across suggests using .999 silver, though I rarely run into much "why" other than: you might get a murky looking solution, or it might cause a little burning on the foliage. Mercury dimes are 90/10 silver/copper and only cost about $1 a piece. (keep in mind I have never personally tried it, but doesn't seem like many people do).

Click to expand...

YOU ROCK. I cannot wait to try this. I am going to try it with some Morgan silver dollars.

secondshift said:

Ok, so I am laying here with my wife and she just read your post with me and she said ...

"more than 90 percent of people on forums -- no matter what they are about -- don't know what they are talking about and just want to argue and badmouth people they don't know..."

I just love her!

Click to expand...

I think she is probably right, but I think its partly the reason we come to these places... To hear the arguments that exist around our ideas. Some times my personal bias's keep me from seeing a perspective that may deserve some consideration (sure you are also going to get some that are completely mute) either way it might cause further research/consideration and could potentially lead to some sort of development..

I do take a small issue with the negativity some people enforce their perspectives with, but you can always assume that they don't know any better (maybe they were abused as kids, are alcoholics, or are just plain asses).. Their harshness does not have to mean the same to you as it does to them (just let them suffer in their own negativity while you try to draw as much productive crap from it as you can)..

By the way I remember hearing/reading years ago that an "over the counter" pain reliever could be used to a similar effect (though it my have only required 2 applications several days apart). If I recall correctly it was easily dossed either using a half or whole pill (capsule/tablet) per quart or gallon.. I don't remember which one though. I have a particular feeling about aspirin but it leads me away from it (some people I have discussed this with find it to be the most likely) otherwise it may be either Ibuprofen or acetaminophen (keep in mind there were a couple other pain relievers available in the 70's-80's that you don't see around much anymore)..

secondshift said:

No, not everything.

There are males. No matter what the environment they will always be male. No amount of CS will change that. dang.

There are TRUE hermaphrodite plants which have a mutation with an extra chromosome where NO MATTER WHAT ENVIRONMENT the plant is grown in it will ALWAYS have both male and female characteristics. These do occur very rarely. The odds one would get a whole shipment of seeds where this was the case are astronomical.

Then there are females. Females will grow differently in different environments. Stress them right and they will drop pollen. Different environments will contribute to the expression of one or more genes.

In some females the gene that creates male flowers and pollen is easily triggered. It makes sense that some seed banks just want to cut price and make whats easiest, so its possible you could get a bag of seed that are all female but is made from pollen that all the guy had to do was spray a female couple of times and use the first pollen that popped to make the whole batch. Yeah, he just bred for susceptibility to drop pollen. He should have taken the pollen that was MOST difficult to obtain -- from the plant that withstood the stress the longest to make his feminized seed -- then he would have a good more robust donor that would be less likely to drop pollen inadvertently. pip pip pip Blah blah blah...

tomato tomato

Click to expand...

you forgot to mention that they should breed the pollen collected from that hard to stress plant with a sister (slightly different genes) and not itself this also lowers the chance of hermie

alphawolf.hack said:

you forgot to mention that they should breed the pollen collected from that hard to stress plant with a sister (slightly different genes) and not itself this also lowers the chance of hermie

Click to expand...

Right on that -- I had read that too but hadn't been thinking about it -- reason being I started with a bag seed from some unnamed nugs I had been paying too much for so I have only ONE copy of the genetics I want to keep. This stuff is really interesting -- it grows strong and dense until the 6 to 7th week then all the new calyxes start getting larger and larger til they are at least 4 to 5 times their previous size. I have almost come to depend on this stuff and would like to be able to have a back-up in case of disaster. I don't know if its my "kung-fu" or the aeroflo or the GH nutrient or the lighting or what but what have looks nothing like the stuff I was paying for. It would be nice to see if I can mix something more fruity in ... lets just get the pollen first lol --

Guile said:

I think she is probably right, but I think its partly the reason we come to these places... To hear the arguments that exist around our ideas. Some times my personal bias's keep me from seeing a perspective that may deserve some consideration (sure you are also going to get some that are completely mute) either way it might cause further research/consideration and could potentially lead to some sort of development..

I do take a small issue with the negativity some people enforce their perspectives with, but you can always assume that they don't know any better (maybe they were abused as kids, are alcoholics, or are just plain asses).. Their harshness does not have to mean the same to you as it does to them (just let them suffer in their own negativity while you try to draw as much productive crap from it as you can)..

By the way I remember hearing/reading years ago that an "over the counter" pain reliever could be used to a similar effect (though it my have only required 2 applications several days apart). If I recall correctly it was easily dossed either using a half or whole pill (capsule/tablet) per quart or gallon.. I don't remember which one though. I have a particular feeling about aspirin but it leads me away from it (some people I have discussed this with find it to be the most likely) otherwise it may be either Ibuprofen or acetaminophen (keep in mind there were a couple other pain relievers available in the 70's-80's that you don't see around much anymore)..

Click to expand...

Old school grow guides mentioned aspirin but that book was old 20 years ago so I am sure someone has found something more reliable by now. Seems that people agree that CS is whats up. I hope to use the info you have given me to some success.

alphawolf.hack said:

you forgot to mention that they should breed the pollen collected from that hard to stress plant with a sister (slightly different genes) and not itself this also lowers the chance of hermie

Click to expand...

Total baloney, if this was true then "true breeding" strains would have Hermies all over the place.

Theyre plants, not people, they don't get deformities from "incestuous" breeding.