RODELIZIATION: SOMA'S WAY TO FEMALE SEEDS Here’s an easy, environmentally friendly method for breeding feminized seeds. Story by Soma Creating feminized cannabis seeds is an art. Just like art, there are a few different methods of application. I have written about some of my different methods of making seeds in previous HIGH TIMES articles. I have used gibberellic acid, pH stress, light stress, and fertilizer stress to force my female plants to make seeds. All of these methods are harsh on the plants, and some, like the gibberellic acid, are not organic. In my search for cleaner, more earth-friendly ways of working with the cannabis plant, I have found a new way to make feminized seeds. Feminized seeds occur as a result of stress, rather than genetics. All cannabis plants can and will make male flowers under stress. Certain strains like a higher pH, some a lower one. Some like a lot of food, some like much less. There is quite a lot of variety in marijuana genetics, and you can’t treat every plant the same way. It takes many harvests before you really get to know a particular strain. Just like getting to know human friends, it takes time. I have grown the same strains for close to a decade, and am truly getting to know every nuance the different plants exhibit. I can recognize them from a distance. I must say that I get a lot of help from my friends, both in making seeds and in learning new and better ways of working with this sacred plant. I named this new method "Rodelization," after a friend who helped me realize and make use of this way of creating female seeds. After growing crop after crop of the same plants in the same conditions, I noticed that if I flowered the plants 10-14 days longer than usual, they would develop male "bananas." A male banana is a very slight male flower on a female marijuana plant that is formed because of stress. Usually they do not let out any pollen early enough to make seeds, but they sometimes do. They are a built-in safety factor so that in case of severe conditions, the plant can make sure the species is furthered. To me, a male banana is quite a beautiful thing. It has the potential of making all female seeds. Many growers out there have male-banana phobia. They see one and have heart palpitations, they want to cut down the entire crop, or at the very least take tweezers and pluck the little yellow emergency devices out. I call them "emergency devices" because they emerge at times of stress. In the Rodelization method, the male banana is very valuable. After growing your female plants 10-14 days longer than usual, hang them up to dry, then carefully take them off the drying lines and inspect for bananas. Each and every banana should be removed, and placed in a small bag labeled very accurately. These sealed bags can be placed in the fridge for one or two months and still remain potent. For the next phase, you need to have a separate crop that’s already 2 1/2 weeks into flowering. Take your sealed bags of pollen out of the fridge, and proceed to impregnate your new crop of females. To do this, you must first match the female plant and the pollen from the same strain in the previous crop. Shut all the fans in the growroom down. Then take a very fine paintbrush, dip it in the bag of pollen, and paint it on the female flower. Do this to each different strain you have growing together. I have done it with up to 10 different kinds in the same room with great success. I use the lower flowers to make seeds, leaving the top colas seedless for smoking. This method takes time (two crops), but is completely organic, and lets you have great-quality smoke at the same time you make your female seeds. If you’re one of those growers who’s never grown seeds for fear of not having something good to smoke, you will love this method. You can also use this pollen to make new female crosses by cross-pollinating. The older females with the male bananas can be brought into the room with the younger, unpollinated females after they are three weeks into flowering. Turn all of the circulation fans on high, and the little bits of pollen will proceed to make it around the room. Do this for several days. Six to seven weeks later, you will have ripe 100% feminized seeds; not nearly as many as a male plant would make, but enough to start over somewhere else with the same genetics. As a farmer who has been forced to move his genetics far away from where they started, I know very well the value of seeds. My friend Adam from ThSeeds in Amsterdam has a motto that I love to borrow these days: Drop seeds not bombs.
So...it would seem that you could harvest the top colas off of your crop at the normal time, and then cut them down to some of the lower scrappier bud branches....leave these to continue flowering for 10-14 days and get male flowers on these branches? I am going to try this I think. Thanks for the info
this seems too easy... 1. leave a female on 12/12 for 10-14 extra days 2. harvest and collect pollen from male 'bananas' in a bag, keep in freezer (up to 2 months) 3. brush pollen on a female that is 2-3 weeks into 12/12 1, 2, 3...just like that? does flowering 14 days longer hurt thc content? if not, why doesn't everyone do this? also, when he first explains it he points out that you should pollinate a female of the same strain, but then he say you can use the pollen to pollinate a female of a different strain...? MrBoJangles, great idea
Thanks for the info Herb I allways knew that they sometimes go hermi after too long in flower but I was one to panic and pull. I wonder how much the genetics/strain influences this as I have seen it quite alot more in sativas than indicas? Would this down grade the THC into alot more CBD this way? I suppose you could harvest most at peak and leave a few to over ripen to collect some bananas.
Does this male "banana" look the same as a normal male flower? "Usually they do not let out any pollen early enough to make seeds, but they sometimes do. They are a built-in safety factor so that in case of severe conditions, the plant can make sure the species is furthered." if extending flowering for a week and then plant is polinated how much longer would you have extend flowering for seeds to be mature? how would you know if the plant is polinated this late into flowering?
Great article 'sparky!! and great questions from everyone!! ..this should prove an interesting thread to watch. I'm just one of those folks Soma spoke of...the ones with "banana phobia".. heee hee hee
Johny....you are not trying to grow beans on the same plants. You only want the pollen so that you may pollenate future plants. I too am a hater of the dreaded 'banana', but as it is stated...the bananas form so late in flower there is not time for them to harm the harvest. In nature the plants would continue to grow and create beans, but I would think the volume of seeds would be far less than if a male got them early on. As a means to have some of your own feminized beans I like it and may try it if I see more male flowers on my Slippers. If anything it will be fun to play with. My question is this....are they stating that THseeds and Soma both are using this method for their feminized strains?
i dunno but i wanna see the price in feminised seeds drop or just the sale of feminised if its that easy....what do you guys think
chief, that would be nice. however, if this method really works and a lot of serious growers start to do it then fem'd seeds will not sell as well, and as a result the price will rise that is, if what i learned in economics is true
The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that although this is a useful way to increase femaleness in your progeny, it is probably not as efficient as using giberillic acid or some of the other techniques. I say this because I was remembering an article on creating feminized seeds by first taking a large number of plants and screwing with the photoperiods to induce hermaphroditism. Only the females which DID NOT produce male branches were used for the application of gibberillic acid, since they were assumed to have pure or nearly pure female genetics. I would imagine that this is one of the things you would have to do first - find the pure female genetics. Only problem with rodeliziation is that if a female has pure female genetics - how will it produce any type of pollen producing flower? That would take male genetics I imagine. That is why the use of gibberillic acid is necesary. Soma's article states that all plants have both female and male genetics. That other article indicated that this wasn't the case....That is an issue which could be looked into. I haven't found that other article as of yet, but following are some quotes from an interview with one of the founders of Dutch Passion. He says that they used to try the Rodeliziation technique, but that it wasn't reliable enough (Meaning what? it produces some males? or it wasn't business-efficient? doesn't say exactly why it wasn't reliable...). This indicates to me that it is an effective method, perhaps not commercially, but for home-growers it sounds like a natural, convenient method. Anyways, the promised article snippit - '...But Dutch Passion has figured out a surefire way to sell more seeds, by creating "feminised" varieties engineered to produce only female plants. Bye-bye, boys! Henk admits that when Dutch Passion first released feminized seeds in November 1998, many people were skeptical. "It was very difficult to make these seeds," he explained. "There were several years of experiments that went into this. At first, we relied on the fact that if you let females flower a long time without getting pollen, near the end of their life cycle some will try to pollinate themselves. But this did not produce a reliable amount of pollen. Then, we tried hormone and chemical agents. The hormone produced pollen, but it also affected the plants in other ways that we didn't like. We tried other applications, and found some that could change basic female plants into plants that produced pollen, which we then used to fertilize other 100% female plants to produce what we used to call ‘female seeds.' "A lot of people think we have created hermaphrodites, but we take 100% female clones, and apply a safe chemical so the clones produce abundant male flowers. Then we take that pollen and fertilize other females with it. Seeds from this method will usually grow out female. "In the beginning, some people were telling us that the seeds weren't producing all females, but we've discovered some strains don't work well with this process, and some of the success depends on the way they're grown. Now, we aren't getting those complaints. I sell a guy 300 seeds, and 298 of them grow out female. We are seeing that level of reliability." Research and improvement As with any new technology, Dutch Passion's feminized strains have experienced growing pains. Some varieties have not adapted well to the feminizing procedure and are no longer sold. Henk no longer calls his special seeds female, either. "They are not female seeds," he explains. "They are seeds that have been created a certain way to produce female plants, but it is not accurate to call them female seeds. We call them feminized seeds – there is a difference." Henk says it's a lot harder to produce feminized seeds than regular seeds, and he has to be careful about feminizer technology and its resultant pollen. As with Terminator Seed technology utilized by greedy corporations like Monsanto (the company has designed food crops that produce sterile seeds, forcing farmers to buy new seeds from Monsanto every year), plants grown from feminized seeds cannot reproduce naturally; at best, they can be cloned.'
QUOTE "...At first, we relied on the fact that if you let females flower a long time without getting pollen, near the end of their life cycle some will try to pollinate themselves. But this did not produce a reliable amount of pollen..." to me he is saying that the rodelization method produces female seeds, but it just doesn't produce enough for them because they want to sell as many as possible. QUOTE '...plants grown from feminized seeds cannot reproduce naturally; at best, they can be cloned.' i have a DP fem'd WW seedling that i was planning to cross with a Blueberry if i get a male. according to him i can't do that? seeds produced by the rodelization method should be able to procreate though, right? if not then there's no purpose to a plant pollinating herself. (Edited by MellowDood at 3:00 pm on July 31, 2003)
--------------------------------- i have a DP fem'd WW seedling that i was planning to cross with a Blueberry if i get a male. according to him i can't do that? ---------------------------------- I think it just means that you won't be able to breed the strain because you won't get any males....no way in hell the females wouldn't be able to be pollinated.
