How long for seeds to develop?

I am trying my hand at deliberately producing seeds for the first time, and have pollinated a couple of branches of my two best females with pollen from a male plant that I let grow to maturity in my outdoor garden. My question is how long does it take for the seed to develop to viability? I assume that it is some fraction of the flowering period, but don't know how much of a fraction.

The branches I picked have fully developed buds with mostly white pistils, but some are starting to turn red. I estimate I have about four to six weeks until the buds are ready to harvest. Is that long enough for the seeds to develop? I can let the pollinated branches go longer if needed.

BTW, I collected the pollen in a small paper bag, then placed the bag over the branch with the lip of the bag cinched tightly closed on the branch. I then gave the bag and branch a good shake to thoroughly disperse the pollen inside the bag. I will remove the bag in a few days.

depends on genetics ...a full 4 wks is what i roughly go by..i dont count day i look at the seed hull and the seed itself to know wen its truly ready

you can remove the bag now, i'd think. i usually figure by 35-40 days, but since you probably have a lot of potential for seeds given the method you used, i'd just let her go the full flower time and give her time to finish making all the seeds. good luck on your breeding project.

Thanks for the feedback. I will report back how the breeding projects works. Forgot to mention that the male strain is donkey kong, and the females are blue snowdog and oregon greens, all from Oregon Green Seeds. I will have to come up with some new names for the crosses if the seeds turn out. Maybe something like blue donkey dog and oregon kong.

you'll need to keep thinking on the names well, oregon kong isn't that bad.
definitely report back and let us know how you're project is going along. do you plan on popping your new seeds right away?

40 to 50 days for seeds

Is Oregon green seeds still closed?

There's the paintbrush method as well for pollen.
Just let those girls go until fully mature. You'll get those big fatty mature watermelon looking seeds. You can let the buds finish and harvest them no problem while leaving your seeded ones to get fat. You'll only reward yourself by waiting it out if it's needed. Also you can/should rig something up under the seeded branches to catch ones that fall out. The little bastards will pop out. Hit the floor and bounce around all over the place.

Whatever you decide to name it, you should add "F1" to the end. It's a good breeding practice that many other plant cultivators take very seriously. Since we don't have any official strain naming system with the use of single and double quotes, specifying the generation if it is under f4 is good practice.

Something like: Oregon Kong (F1)

If more breeders got into this habit, over time, we could see some serious progress.



As for how long to let the seeds mature... Wait until they are dark with even darker stripes, and basically falling out on their own. If you have to pluck them out, they might not be mature, and you'll ave wasted a perfectly good seed. You should be able to give a mature seed a firm squeeze between your thumb and index finger without it crushing. If it crushes, it probably wasn't viable anyway.

EverythingsHazy said:

Whatever you decide to name it, you should add "F1" to the end. It's a good breeding practice that many other plant cultivators take very seriously. Since we don't have any official strain naming system with the use of single and double quotes, specifying the generation if it is under f4 is good practice.

Something like: Oregon Kong (F1)

If more breeders got into this habit, over time, we could see some serious progress.



As for how long to let the seeds mature... Wait until they are dark with even darker stripes, and basically falling out on their own. If you have to pluck them out, they might not be mature, and you'll ave wasted a perfectly good seed. You should be able to give a mature seed a firm squeeze between your thumb and index finger without it crushing. If it crushes, it probably wasn't viable anyway.

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Thanks for the input. Is there a guideline somewhere for seed breeders to use as far as a naming convention goes? I have been gardening for a number of years, and the names of things seems to be pretty arbitrary. I get vegetable seed catalogs every year, and haven't noticed the use of a F1 designation. At some point, I would like to really get into the breeding aspect, as that is a part of the business that really appeals to me. I grow some pretty dank weed, and think sharing some seed stock would be a great way of passing on some of my green thumb.

nuevo said:

Thanks for the input. Is there a guideline somewhere for seed breeders to use as far as a naming convention goes? I have been gardening for a number of years, and the names of things seems to be pretty arbitrary. I get vegetable seed catalogs every year, and haven't noticed the use of a F1 designation. At some point, I would like to really get into the breeding aspect, as that is a part of the business that really appeals to me. I grow some pretty dank weed, and think sharing some seed stock would be a great way of passing on some of my green thumb.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if there is a unified guideline, but I know at least some kinds of growers (a lot of vegetables esp.) are very finicky about labeling the generation as well as if they are "open pollinated", which means you didn't take measures to prevent pollen from other plants making it's way to the seed parent. Open pollinated plants risk more variation due to possible multiple parent combos.
Some other plant growers use double quotes (") and single quotes (') to designate if something is an official registered cultivar, or just somethign someone made.

As long as you have solid records, and can answer anyone who has questions about stability/lineage, you'll be a huge step ahead of most cannabis "breeders", including commercial ones.

nuevo said:

Thanks for the input. Is there a guideline somewhere for seed breeders to use as far as a naming convention goes? I have been gardening for a number of years, and the names of things seems to be pretty arbitrary. I get vegetable seed catalogs every year, and haven't noticed the use of a F1 designation. At some point, I would like to really get into the breeding aspect, as that is a part of the business that really appeals to me. I grow some pretty dank weed, and think sharing some seed stock would be a great way of passing on some of my green thumb.

Click to expand...

Post fertilization most seeds take roughly six weeks to ripen. To test them, squeeze seeds between your fingers, if most seeds aren't broken with firm pressure, harvest them.

i have a female charlottes web i bred with a pure afghani for pain. thinking the afghani is going to be good for muscle pain and the c. web for nerve pain. i have both.
the name may be a problem. jersey girl? jp

First check of seed condition. The first pic shows the seeds and flower from the first bud trimmed off about two weeks ago. Second pic is buds trimmed a couple of days ago. Seeds from first bud not mature and unlikely to be viable. Will check second set of buds in two weeks. Will be getting a lot of seeds in the end because two entire plants were pollinated, not just the two branches I dusted. If anyone would like to have some viable seeds cheap, send me a pm. If in the Portland area, will share some bud too.

The naming of this new local strain is based on the travails of an unsecured outdoor grow that was forced indoors. The momma and daddy plants started as seeds, and were transplanted outdoors after germing indoors until about mid May, after a week or so of 12/12 lighting to picks out the girls. I didn't intend to transplant any boys, but one got through my inspection.

They were growing with great vigor when they got hacked by some immature pot thieves. With apparently no experience for how these special ladies were destined to grow into very special plants, they climbed into my back yard and into my garden. I had a little grouping of rocket chunk girls just starting to bud out nicely with lots of trikes, and my unwelcome visitors topped all three along with a few of the best branch tips.

I had four other plants outside that didn't get hit that first night, and I immediately potted up the three smaller girls into 5 gallon plastic pots, and proceeded to start moving the pots into the house at night, very much a literal pain in the ass. The largest plant was too big for a pot, so it got left in the ground. It turned out to be the daddy plant.

I was able to keep a pretty good routine moving the plants, in the house at night and out in the sunshine every morning. As those of you in the northwest know, we got plenty of sunshiny days this summer..

Unfortunately, my nemesis returned one night when I forgot to move the plants inside.

I missed moving the plants one night, and the creeper came back around and topped two of the three potted plants, and broke off several branch tips of still immature flowers. A few night later I forgot again and got hit. Finally, I got into the daily habit of never missing putting the pots in at night, but all three plants lost their tops and nearly all of their branch tips to the Creepers. I was left with three pretty good size plants still though, but highly stressed by now. All three plants started shedding sugar and fan leaves leaves, but the buds were growing up to be pretty good, firm little nuggets all over every branch.

About this time, the only plant left in the ground was growing into a massive male plant, standing over eight feet tall with a main trunk about two inches in diameter. This is the plant I used to dust the ladies. There was so many pollen sacs that when I finally cut the daddy plant completely down, the ground below was covered in a yellow dust. Since I was putting the potted plants outside each morning, I am guessing that pollen blown from the daddy plant ended up pollinating the entire plants, not just the branches I had dusted earlier..

Now I have two true mommas with lots of pretty buds swelling up with seeds. If I am able to finish these beauties with good, viable seeds, I will have seeds of two different crosses. I am predicting good results from my little breeding project, and soon there will be two new strains from the west end of the gorge.

The daddy plant was blue snow dog, and the mommies are donkey kong and oregon greens.

The blue dog x oregon green is hearby named Hackleberry Creep (F1). It will sneak up and hit you in the head, leaving a hole where your brains leak out.

The blue dog x donkey kong cross will be known as Daddy Donkey Dog (F1), or 3D for short. 3D will cause mind bending semi-hallucinatory visions with a little deep thinking on the side. Best used with some Pink Floyd or Rush.

Okay, I'm getting a lot of seeds from my first plant, but from appearance alone it looks like just a fraction (50% maybe) are going to be viable. Does anyone have a good way of testing for viability short of planting the seed? My ipad is fritzing out so I can't post any pics right now. Will do so soon.

I am going to have beaucoup seeds, so anyone wanting a few to try out, send me a pm.