Pollinating males and vegetating females

Greetings all,

I am a newbie here and am new to growing. FYI, I'm middle-aged stoner and ex-engineer, and have been smoking pot since I was 16. Now that I bailed out of the corporate crap and am working from home, I decided it's time to grow my own!

I have been reading a lot here and have also done a lot of independant research with some publications on growing hooch (Marijuana Grow Bible, Cannabis Cultivation, etc.). I am in the process of constructing my grow room (8.5' x 6' x 10' high) and I think I understand most of the process. When I start, I will be practicing with bagseed until I get my processes down. I'll be using drip hydroponics, and will partition off the room for a vegetative section and a light-proofed flowering room.

Once I get some really good seeds, I want to create more seed stock so I limit my exposure to getting busted by limiting my seed ordering cycle. To that end, I will want to flower both females and males initially so my first crop is seeded, THEN start flowering sinsemilla. Here' my question that I have yet found an answer to...

Can I have a male plant in my flower room, pollinating my CLONES for seed, without any adverse affect to the female mothers in the vegetative room? Every time I see the subject of males come up, the advice is to always keep them away from the main grow room. I won't have another space, but I wouldn't think a male pollinating clones would affect any established mothers that are in the veg room. Is my assumption correct?

Thanks,

SMM

Jus remember that pollen travels through the air and even on your fingers!
so make sure the mothers are well sealed and wash ur hands when u have been in contact with the room in which the male is located!

Hydro

hydrodirect said:

Jus remember that pollen travels through the air and even on your fingers!
so make sure the mothers are well sealed and wash ur hands when u have been in contact with the room in which the male is located!

Hydro

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Hi Hydro,

Thanks for your response, I understand what you are telling me, but it is my assumption that pollen WILL get on the vegging mothers since I have only one physical room. But since the mothers are vegging and not flowering, I am assuming they will NOT get pollinated...? That's actually my question.

Once my clones were pollinated, I planned to clean and rinse down the room (and any vegging plants) before I put any more clones in to flower female clones for sinsemilla. Is this a viable plan, or will the pollinating males actually pollinate the vegging females?

SMM

It will be tough to keep the pollen under control by letting them do their thing naturally. One pollen sack can pollinate a small crop. Might want to consider growing only one male and watch it closely. When the pollen sack is big enough to contain pollen but still not opened you could harvest the pollen, then using a q tip pollinate your females as much as you want. That way you don't have a ton of pollen flying around your grow space for months. You could even refrigerate the pollen cuttings for a few weeks so you'll have it when its needed. But the best route is to just pick out a female plant and take clones. Much more efficient than separating out males and females and intersex plants. Out of 8 seeds you are only assured 2 true females. From my own experience that's what I have found. A lot of plants will show both sexes so when you factor those into the male to female ratio you get a lot of wasted grow space.

Puff said:

It will be tough to keep the pollen under control by letting them do their thing naturally. One pollen sack can pollinate a small crop. Might want to consider growing only one male and watch it closely. When the pollen sack is big enough to contain pollen but still not opened you could harvest the pollen, then using a q tip pollinate your females as much as you want. That way you don't have a ton of pollen flying around your grow space for months. You could even refrigerate the pollen cuttings for a few weeks so you'll have it when its needed. But the best route is to just pick out a female plant and take clones. Much more efficient than separating out males and females and intersex plants. Out of 8 seeds you are only assured 2 true females. From my own experience that's what I have found. A lot of plants will show both sexes so when you factor those into the male to female ratio you get a lot of wasted grow space.

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Hi Puff,

Thank you for your response and recommendations. I agree with you, I do plan on taking cuttings from the mother and flower out the clones as my primary cultivation plan. As you know, shit happens, I'm new at this, etc., if something craps out in my hydro system I could lose all my mothers in a day, right? I'd like to have a nice seed buffer (50-100 beans) to regenerate a mother from. My idea is to get the good genetics once (minimum exposure to discovery), and have a backup of seeds, rather than continuously re-ordering seeds in the event of an environmental breakdown. The way things are going in this country... well let's just say ordering seeds makes me more than nervous and I want to keep outside activity to a minimum.

As far as your perspective on the pollen action, you may be right. Let me ask you a few follow-up questions, anyone else that would care to chime-in please feel free to:

- If pollen is THAT pervasive, and could stay in my grow room for a couple of months after I seed-out AND after a thorough cleaning of the room, then would I not still have the same issue by relocating the male and handling/extracting pollen in the same house? My grow room will be sharing the same AC system with the house. I will not take a plant out of the residence to extract pollen.

- Also, I was under the impression (could be wrong) that pollen would not remain viable as long as a couple of months later at room temerature. That would be the amount of time it would take to get another crop into my flowering room. Do you really think with all my precautions and two months of time that viable pollen would still be in the room? If so, then I am kind of suprised!

- And lastly, can you or anyone confirm/refute that viable pollen will NOT pollinate a vegetating female? I know a mature, vegetating female can have "pre-flowers", but I did not think they were capable of sexual reproduction in an 18/6 lighting environment. This is an important piece of data that I don't recall having seen documented!

You know, this actually would be a really good experiment for me to try with my bagseed. I've got tons of it, so maybe I can try it out and document my results here. Will take a while as I'm still not up and running yet.

Thanks! SMM

What you might consider is taking your male plant and putting it oustide, anywhere will work. You just want some pollen from it, even if you have to put it in the shade a little bit of direct light and it will keep on growing. That way it's not so close to your females. Im new to this as well but Im in the same boat. Im not going to order more seeds at $10 a seed or more when I can make them. And god knows I have no shortage of males popping up in my garden.

hey i have 3 plants preflowering at month old. sativa african green. 2 males. i highly doubt the males can pollinate unless the female is mature, infact the male being mature enough aswell. im not sure hey. iv had them 2gether 4 a while. i fear pollination

i really dont know how strong the male pollen can be at preflowering. i rate weak. a yung guy hitting puberty and screwing a baby 2 pollinate is just nawty.but u cant compare can u? im rating they cant so young. what u say silver, what did you do last yr?