A very simple guide to breeding

[white_cluster]

Howdy, This is a very simple post for fairly new growers on making seed. I'm sure many people on the board have more knowledge on the subject, but this is my stab at a guide.

 

MAKING SEED OF YOUR SEED:

If you are just interested in getting some seeds to swap it is fairly simple. Get seeds of an IBL (AKA: True Breeding Strain) such as Skunk. Germinate all your seeds (buy 2 to 3 packs) and start growing, give each seed a number, keeping good journals is the key to breeding.

After sexing your seeds,return to veg and remove the obviously weaker, runts from the group. Take clones of all plants you kept, females and males, and keep clones in veg under flouros, Make sure to number each clone. Treat your dads the same way as you treat your mums (bonsai). Kill your males (originals) once their clones are growing. Flower your females (originals) when they reach an appropriate size. Harvest females and then choose which female was the best to be used as a mum (more on this later). Get rid of female clones that aren't clones of the strain you kept. By this point your mother clone and father clones will be of a decent size to take clones.

At this point, you will need 2 rooms, minimum 400w each. You could do it in 1 room. But there is a chance then that they will be rooting behind your back and you won't know the exact parentage of every seed. Take a couple of clones off your Mother plant and 1 clone of all your males and grow them. flower your males about 4 to 8 weeks at least before your females. All you want on each male is one branch so remove all the other branches. When the balls look like there about to ejaculate (they will swell up) place a pollen collecting bag over the whole branch and keep it in place with a rubber band. Most people use simple paper bags for pollen bags, but I like to make my own. At Nurseries you can buy special shadecloth type stuff, for making outdoor enclosures for wind pollinating plants. I make a bag with that and stickytape. And put it over the whole branch. Make sure all his balls are inside the bag. When you can see alot of pollen inside the bag, remove the bag by cutting off the whole branch. Then kill the plant. label the pollen bag with the number you assigned the plant it came off. Leave it to dry for a bit, then come back and remove the branch. You can keep pollen in the freezer if you want, just put it in a lunchbox (still in the bag) and add some rice in a different paper bag.

Anyway now you should have the pollenbags from all your male clones ready to pollinate your female. A female plant should be pollinated when there are many pistils on the plant but none have turned brown, and the calyxes have not swelled, about 3 to 5 weeks after you saw your first pistils is a good time to pollinate. Carefully put the pollenbags over selected branches and put a rubber band on. put a tag on the branch with the number of the father. Shake the bags around as well as you can, trying to cover the pistils with as much pollen as you can. After about 3 days the pollen bags will be ready to remove. Remove them earlier if you see any rot in the bud.

Destroy the bags after use, dont leave them laying around your grow room as the pollen left in them might escape and come through your intake fans.

Your seeds will be ready when the first calyxes on the pollinated branches split open and show their seeds. Which may be after your buds are ready.I forgot to mention but all the rest of the buds on your plants will be sinsemilla still, which means that breeding doesn't really effect how much you smoke. Make sure when you harvest pollinated branches you keep its tag.

Anyway the seeds need to dry for about 4 weeks. These seeds aren't to be given away as yet as the males might have many unseen bad traits that will make your seeds an embarrassment. Instead. Germinate seeds, Say 20 to 100 seeds from each cross. This time number your seeds by #1(dads #) and #2(seed #). You can get 100's of seed at a time with these bag pollinations, so it will be bad if the cops come at germination point. but every week or so you should 1/2 the amount of plants you have by removing the weaker plants. Flower plants reasonably early for a SOG type situation. At this point you will need a fairly big room. Anyway once you remove the males, repot again and continue flowering. You should bring a minimum of about 10 plants to harvest. Do this a couple of times and all the time take notes on growth, yield, potency, etc... of the plants you grow. Don't keep any plants from these crops unless you find a real special gyrl much better than its mum. Anyway after growing out the seeds about 3 times you should be able to evaluate. which group of seeds are the best and therefore which male was the best father. Get rid of the original clones you took of your fathers and keep just the father that you want, the stud.

Now you have 2 Parent plants and you can cross them and trade the seed whenever. You could use the bag pollination method to grow a couple of seeds to swap with every crop. Or you could just grow 1 mother and 1 father clone in a room and collect the seeds. This way is meant to yield 10,000s of seeds but I have never done it, so I don't really know. Make sure any room with a male in it has filters on all out-takes and never open the doors to quickly. There is much much more to breeding cannabis than this. This is just a method of making seeds. To breed requires a good knowledge of mendelian genetics and gene frequencies.

 

for a more detailed guide to this, buy a copy of 'Marijuana Botany' by Rob Clarke. Best book I've ever read, although its pretty old now. From 1981. Also read 'The Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin. Nothing on cannabis, but a good book for trying to understand genetics.

 

Anyhoo, this is all for now. Constructive Criticism welcome, just don't go on that I don't know shit, cos all this stuff has worked pretty well for me. I will do another post on genetics and what all the F's mean in a couple of days, it'll be mainly about how to make seeds that will be like their mother without having fathers of the same strain. e.g. Cubing, Filial Inbreeding, and Selfing. Sorry in advance if someone new to the board like me isn't allowed to post stuff like this. But, hopefully this will get some breeding questions happening

[Guest Urbanhog]

Sorry in advance if someone new to the board like me isn't allowed to post stuff like this. But, hopefully this will get some breeding questions happening

No need to apologise... you are allowed, either if you are newbie or not... thats what this site for, to share your experiences and opinions, both positive and negetive or whatever you like.

 

I don't breed or whatever, but I am sure someone mentioned to me it's good to keep the males from the first generation to cross or back cross with the 2nd generation? Use 2nd generation female crossed with 1st generation male? or am I off tracked here? ?

 

Cheers,

 

Urbanhog http://www.gamers-forums.com/smilies/contrib/sp/chefico.gif

[Tom]

Sorry in advance if someone new to the board like me isn't allowed to post stuff like this. But, hopefully this will get some breeding questions happening

 

It doesn't matter whether members have made one or a thousand posts, all members are encouraged to post their ideas, comments and tips, and all that is asked is that we stay within the guidelines for the site. We realise that just because someone is new to the site that it doesn't mean they are new to growing, I had been growing for 20+ years before I ever entered an mj related internet site.

 

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[sols]

g'day; here is great breeding info.

breeding.sized

[white_cluster]

Urbanhog, I don't really get what you mean by first generation. Is this the P1's you mean? The Parents you use to make the original cross? Or the F1 generation, The seeds from your original cross?.

Anyway, I've never heard of that method, and can't see the point of it. Generally backcrossing is done to stabilize a strain to be like its mother not its father, Backcrossing is done by repeated inbreeding, crossing mother and son, Then Grandma and Grandson, Then Great Grandma and Great Grandson, until the seeds have become stabilised to be like mum. (mum, gran and great gran are all the same plant.

Cant post much now as I'm not at home. bit tired and stoned too.

[happyherb]

so can you tell me can you keep differnt male dads strains in one grow box and another with mixed mums.as to keep them alive to use at will.happy herb.

[pipeman]

so can you tell me can you keep differnt male dads strains in one grow box and another with mixed mums.as to keep them alive to use at will.happy herb.

you can keep clones of all in the same box even, as long as you keep them in veg.

[Tom]

so can you tell me can you keep differnt male dads strains in one grow box and another with mixed mums.as to keep them alive to use at will.happy herb.

Yes, you could even keep some "father" plants going but I would recommend keeping them in their own cabinet away from the females and that you take care not to accidentally fertilise your females by inadvertently carrying pollen to them on your clothes or person.

 

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