St0ney

After having a heated discussion with 'TheGreenMan' on another thread I have run a crossed a problem. It seems that some of our mods disagree with our grow guides in the area of Hermaphrodites. This quote was taken from an old thread --> http://www.hempcultivation.com/420/s...&threadid=6744 Now mind you there is ALOT more to this discussion then this... But this has always been my belief as well. Until 'TheGreenMan' Pointed me to our Grow Guide --> http://my.marijuana.com/sections.php...rticle&artid=8

Now that brings up...

TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL HERMAPHRODITES

If you can make feminized seeds with Hermaphrodites then killing natural ones would be stupid right? Or is it all just 'Snake oil Selling' to raise the prices of seeds at seed banks?

Enquiring minds want to know...

And also, I have been doing some research into Gibberellic Acid and have found that it is primarily used for fruit trees & bushes to increase yield. Now why would a hormone that on most plants (hops included) would increase yield induces Hermaphrodites in MJ?

I, by all means, am not even close to knowing what the hell I’m talking about.. but I would love to learn.. So Please all of you that know please fill us laymen in..

Please...

St0ney

__________________

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." -- Albert Einstein

TheGreenMan

St0ney (who's not such a bad guy after all ) asked me to post this in here after the two of us hijacked someone elses thread and tried to kill each other in our desperate quest for knowledge and my childish enthusiasm for smilies


It's a bit long,forgive me please
quote:
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Originally posted by TheGreenMan
Hey St0ney
I came across some of your journals last night, they're excellent stuff keep up the good work. (He said patronisingly )
I dint have time in the end to properly look through all of Shiva Shanti and St0ney's 0.2 but I'm hoping to today, especially as I did see some mention of FIM ing which I'm very keen to learn more about and experiment with (also anything with a name like 'supercropping' can't be all bad).

Oh yes the other ting I wanted to bring up Aha ha ha
I'd always believed that too much light was a bad thing for plants and that they should never have more than 18 hours a day. Then I was recommended a method where you have them on 24 hours a day for just 2 weeks, they shoot up like mad and then you bring the time right down and start flowering.
I decided to try this out, grow before last, mainly to save time and electricity costs to be honest, and a few weeks into flowering I first started to notice -- Ooh what's that amongst the female budz? a wee male flower here, one there. -- I thought, great, I'll get a load of non male seeds.
I did wonder why it had happened though (quite a lot, those days I did little but 1, Sit 2, Smoke 3,Think ) anyway the only thing I could come up with was the un-naturalness of having lights on 24/7 and looking in a (old) book found the following:

"Despite claims that lights can be kept on 24 hours a day, there is considerable reliable evidence to show that plants need a period of total dark once a day, mainly for cell growth. On examination of several documented experiments it appears that an optimum daylength is 18 hours for excellent vegetative development. Daylengths longer than this may affect sexual expression and encourage hermaphrodism, give a lower percentage of female plants and reduce seed viability."

Now it's possible I guess, that the seeds I bought were feminized but just dint sa so (unlikely) but I believe they hermed because of the extended daylength. I have come across the odd mention in here of 24 hour daylengths but no-one seems to have added anything about this provoking herming, and myQ to all of you who grow at 24/0 is whether it has been followed by the appearance of male flowers on otherwise female plants?
Or not.
I've also noticed comments about getting more female than male plants by giving more/closer light, anyone got any knowledge on this one ???

I (shame on me I know) dint keep sufficiently close track of which seeds were which (I'd previously produced my own seed bank of regular seed from 'straight' female plants pollinated by a 'straight' male) but this last grow I tried to mainly use what I thought were the herm seeds. Again 24 hours for two weeks then down to 10/14 (bit faster bit cheaper than 12/12), and again quite a few occasional male flowers. This time I found myself wondering about the possibility of these plants being genetically inclined to herming because of their parents (hermmothers) being herms also.
Now if herms can be a good thing because you get all female plants maybe they can also be less good because you keep on getting herms and effectively you can never hope to produce any Sinsemilla because even with no boys around the Ladies will just always make their own pollen and their own seeds anyway, and anyone who's tried to pick off all the iddy biddy male flowers hiding all over the plant in amongst big thick wads of female flower clusters knows that that one's a losing battle.

On the other hand maybe these last ones would not have hermed had they been grown @ 18/6 or even 17/7 or 16/8 rather than the 24/o that they got. Trouble with that of course is it'll take longer to get the same results. So maybe the plus with herms is no boys but then that gets negatived by having to take longer and what with time being money and all...........Then again it would be fine for producing seeds for outdoor grows, and a lot of people seem to do fine vegging at 18/6 don't they??
Anyway I guess my point is that there do seem to be other ways than G acid, although that may be less likely to produce herm seeds and make more genuine "feminized" seed, I don't know, I'll have to try and start again and maybe take some plants out of the grow room 6 hours a day and see if the others herm and they don't, hmmmm although if they were in the same room with female pollen would it really work ? Actually it might as some of my last grow seem to have made no seed at all despite being in with other herms.

Another monster post think I'd better stop now.


GM
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TheGreenMan

Just thought
there's gotta be a bunch of people running commercial seed banks and try and sell "feminized" seed at vastly inflated prices who read these pages, now YOU guys have got to believe you can answer our Q's
Don't be shy, come and explain to us why your seeds are so sh!t hot and why we should pay so damn much for them instead of just keeping the lights on longer when they're babies

The public has a right to know ! !
Green Man

Phantom

and I agree on the feminized seeds,inquiring minds do want to know. I had 2 hermi plants from a small number of seeds I was given which produced excellant smoke so I cloned them and grew out those to try and get a few seeds together then revegged those plants for another harvest cause I liked the smoke soooo much. I now have a goodly number of mature seeds and I'm hoping that the odds will allow me at least one pure female though I'm expecting mainly more hermi's. I would want to be seeing a pretty high % of pure females from commercial fem-seeds to justify the extra price.

Can't say I've ever seen a plant hermi from a 24/0 veg when I've done it though I now stick to 20/4 to give the HID's a rest more than anything. If I was using fluros I'd probably stick with 24/0. I believe a plant would have to have some gentic potential for hermaphroditism for it show anyway.

Phantom
Ghost Who Smokes

bonsai

this is both interesting to me and it also worries me a little. it worries me because i just switched my 1 month old babies to 24/0(from18/6).i did this in hopes for slightly faster growth, but now i am conserned that i may have just caused myself alot of trouble later on.the seeds are from bagseed so they wouldn't prove to be useful as an experiment, and they still got a little while to go before i can sex them(although i already have a feeling that one is definately male). i will be checking in on this to see how the information stacks up, and to let you know if they do hermie(even though i won't be able to single out why, if they do).good discussion guys it will be interesting to see how this thread comes along.
bonsai

TheGreenMan

Which at least goes to show, if nothing else, that herms are not the spawn of Satan and can produce wonderfull results worth cloning, re-vegging and generally reproducing. Thankyou

I suspect you're probably right about the need for hermi genetic pre-programming of some kind, which is maybe then brought out by un-natural/distorted light patterns in the same kind of way that some humans have their psychosis brought out by LSD etc.
On the other hand I also think it's possible that all plants have a certain genetic pre-disposition to turn herm IF and when certain conditions necessitate

MONOECIOUS (Hermaphrodite)
"A frequent occurence when female plants mature late during cool, overcast days in Autumn, (that's "fall" to you colonials ) is the appearance of male flowers among the female clusters.
The powerful reproductive mechanism supplies threatened female plants with their own pollen source. .....
....... The sex reversal producing monoecious plants is normally associated with unfavourable environmental conditions such as excessive soil deficiency," ('soil' deficiency ??) "low temperatures and most certainly sharp decrease in the sun's energy. More usually it is due to genetically determined changes. Hermaphrodism can be used to control future sexual characteristics(see chapter 13)."

Green Man

PS
You will grow on those goodly number of mature seeds and tell us what transpires right?? Of course you will, Bless You

St0ney

Now, if we could get some more of the 'Big Brain' Mods we will be in business.. I gotta agree with you there. I have seen alot of people do 24 with no problem. My relitives in Alaska grow in a green house during the summer and they pretty much have 24 hr light. I call them last night to see if they have noticed any incresed hermies and they informed me that they have had no problems with 24 hr light.

St0ney
don't kill the hermies just yet

__________________

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." -- Albert Einstein

TheGreenMan

What is an hermaphrodite?
Added by: Bongaloid Last edited by: MedMan Viewed: 5645 times
An hermaphrodite, or hermie, is a plant of one sex that develops the sexual organs of the other sex. Most commonly, a flowering female plant will develop staminate flowers, though the reverse is also true. Primarily male hermaphrodites are not as well recognized only because few growers let their males reach a point of flowering where the pistillate would be expressed.

Hermaphrodites are generally viewed with disfavor. First, they will release pollen and ruin a sinsemelia crop, pollinating themselves and all of the other females in the room. Second, the resulting seeds are worthless, because hermaphrodite parents tend to pass on the tendency to their offspring.

Please note that occassionally specious staminate flowers will appear in the last days of flowering of a female plant. These do not drop pollen and their appearance is not considered evidence of deleterious hermaphroditism.


I'd just like to add that my own experience with some herms in my last grow was that some of my plants in the same grow room grew no seeds at all and the herms that did produced comparatively few seeds, usu. just a few in the bud where the male flowers were. Certainly not the kind of quantity there would have been with a mature male towering over the females, and certainly not enough to spoil the crop, the end result was definitely more bud than seed and hopefully enough seed for an all female grow next time.

Green Man

TheGreenMan

smokinrav

My last harvest included a number plants grown from seeds taken from hermies. They hermied again, one far worse than "her" "mother". Didnt matter. Out of 10 ounces, I may have 5 grams of seeds overall, an acceptable ratio if ever there was one

Smokin