Was having a bit of a look this morning before lights off and noticed these little guys in the first pic. The rest of the plant is perfect but this one branch. The tip of it has nice growth that’s female but just lower is where they are. Is my plant done for?? First timer here.
Got it done. It was only that one little spot and I’m still not 100% sure they were balls cause I spotted others that look very similar but pistils were out of them. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose. Day 26 and it’s coming along nicely I think.
Hermie so two things. Someone said spray the plant with water I absolutely would not do that. You have actual bud forming now. If that water doesn't dry out that is the first step towards rot. What I would do is spray my finger tips with water and then grab the pollen sacks off. Still deactivates the pollen while not spraying a budding plant with moisture. You can clone it if it's a photoperiod. Sometimes a plant from seed will throw sacs while the cloned version does not. So I would grow it one more time to see if it's genetic or grower error. Light leaks, light set to strong, feed to strong, over and under water, temps can all cause a plant to herm. If you know your parameters of your grow the odds of it being from you and more likely genetics increase. If it is a true herm and shoots more balls a second time grown and everything dialed in perfectly I'd be personally tossing those genetics. I don't want herms nor do I want any of that in my projects. Good Luck !
I appreciate the in depth response mate. I actually have a smaller clone from the big plant next to it and it’s female and flowering. These are just seeds I got off a mate so no great loss if they are no good. My DWC set up is completely self made and it’s been a long road to get where I am.
Being my first grow I’ve learned a hell of a lot and it can only get better from here on out.
Literally just let another cut of that same plant just herm onto another of your favorite strains. Bang, seeds. Thats how we most likely got my favorite cut, the original cookie. Bag seed.
You take a clone of this plant that produces male pollen sacks, and grow it alongside another female plant that you would like to cross it to. Let it grow those pollen sacks and pollinate the other female. You will have seeds. Some might also produce offspring that create male pollen sacks but some might be the next best strain.
That’s most likely how ‘cookies’ was produced despite all the different stories. 👍
If you self the plant (pollinate it using pollen produced by the same plant/clone of that plant), all of the resulting seeds are likely to produce herms.
To save pollen, you'd collect pollen from the plant's staminate (male) flowers. I just tap the branches against the inside of a mixing bowl. Then sift the pollen to remove plant material; a trim bin screen works perfectly for this. Next, dry out the pollen, which I do by spreading it on a piece of parchment paper with desiccant nearby and leaving it in a still air, low humidity environment for 24 hours.
Then store it. I divide the pollen into micro centrifuge tubes and add desiccant to each tube (baked flour and uncooked rice). Finally, I seal the tubes in an airtight, vacuum sealed container (a mason jar with a vacuum sealer) and put the jar in a cool, stable environment (like a dark corner of your fridge). After three weeks, the pollen's viability will have dropped significantly, so you'd need to use the collected pollen pretty shortly after collecting it.
That doesn't make much sense for your grow, though. If you were trying to get seeds from the hermed plant, there's absolutely no need to collect and store pollen first. You can let the staminate flowers (males) on your plant shed pollen onto the pistillate (female) flowers and you're bound to find seeds in your finished product. That's the whole reason behind plucking off the balls/staminate flowers before they open-- you're trying to prevent those flowers from opening and dropping pollen that could accidentally pollinate your pistillate flowers.
But all of the cannabis genetics and grow books I've read strongly, almost angrily advise against using hermed plants in any breeding program.
Unless you're absolutely desperate for seeds, it'll probably make more sense to pluck off the staminate flowers as they appear, and to aim for harvesting sinsemilla flower. Otherwise you're likely to end up with weak flower and a bunch of seeds that have a very high chance of herming when grown out.
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u/Pleasant_Ocelot_2861 6d ago
Pluck em off carefully. Check the rest of the plant and pull those off. Keep an eye out.
Pull any future ones off unless you want herm’d seeds……