How to tell when to cut and bag males for pollen extraction?

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Just curious, but i've heard you can tell when a male is almost ready to shed his pollen when his sacks start to crack open? Is this true?

I want to chop down a male and throw him in a bag to get his pollen but not sure if i'll be chopping too soon, does anyone have any pics out there of males at the time they should be chopped? (when collcting pollen)

EDIT : https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/20319-seed-production-tutorial.html

Well when you just let the male grow till you think the sacks are gonna pop, you'll prob have loose pollen all over... the sacks can just pop open whenever if you cant pay attention like every few hours when its larger. However letting it pop in a controlled environment is a sure way of collecting pollen that IS matured without risking pollen everywhere. Duno if thats a problem for you but it's still a lot easier to collect the pollen when it's put into a separate enclosed place.

I let the plant keep vegging till you see sacks forming and let the sacks get big enough to see the dark green indents inbetween the lighter color green swollen nanners. You usually can just start seeing the real indents around the same time they get big enough so you can see the stem of them and they start to hang/half-droop to like parallel with the ground.
You also want to let the male branch out, topping it early is a good idea to get a few good branches to harvest from. I let the branches get long enough so you can cut them and place them them between 2 plastic clear cups and be able to have the cut stem in water while the sacks are exposed to 12/12 still in the top cup. Because they are sitting in water like a cut flower, the sacks keep growing and pop still. If you use a piece of aluminum wrapped around a circle cut out of a paper plate the size as the cup you have a little tray that will collect pollen. You wanna duck tape the two cups together and make some type of holder for the stem to sit in the water though so you also have a place for the paper plate/aluminum to sit on top of too. It kinda just cakes onto the foil so you just gotta scrap it off into a medicine bottle or where ever. If you cut the branch when the sacks are closer to popping they'll usually pop sooner too so you don't gotta let it sit for as long. Hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck.

mxyz250newb said:

Solved with Search

Just curious, but i've heard you can tell when a male is almost ready to shed his pollen when his sacks start to crack open? Is this true?

I want to chop down a male and throw him in a bag to get his pollen but not sure if i'll be chopping too soon, does anyone have any pics out there of males at the time they should be chopped? (when collcting pollen)

EDIT : https://www.rollitup.org/advanced-marijuana-cultivation/20319-seed-production-tutorial.html

Click to expand...

I leave any male for breeding in my veg tent and I just let them grow an right before the balls pop I just pluck them off and put them in a little dish...and as more get ready I pluck them off and put them in the dish too...

The main thing that the seed production tutorial doesnt emphasize is that the pollen isn't just inside the sack. The pollen is inside the nanners that grow in the sack. The nanners explode when the sack opens up and that's what releases the pollen. After they explode they look like little flowers because the nanners have a slit in them that grow larger and roll outward and give it that exploding force out. It's pretty cool seeing the sacks after they explode cuz you get to see how the nanners develop and what to look for.
If you pick the sacks too early you'll just have hard little black nanners that aren't fully developed yet and don't have pollen developed yet.