Bob's search for the real White Widow with Dutch Passion's regular genetics

Shiva's Mistress said:

Tent is looking fabulous there!
More Widows than a Pacific Ocean Cruise Ship!

I'd wait a little before deciding on whether they are male or female.
A lot of that looks like just undifferentiated stuff, little leaves, etc., that often pop up at the nodes.
Even if you have a male, it will take at least a few days to a week before the pollen sacks actually open and shed.
Please don't cull anyone too fast!

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Don't you worry about that
I'll only do away with the clone if it's a male for sure

Hey Growers & Blowers


Both my parent tent and my clone tent were overdue for a clipping. In both tents the plants had stretched against the lights...
So something had to happen

Before


After!
As you can see I have loads of nice shoots to make clones out off. But I'm not going to do that. I don't have the space to run these at the moment.


I was done with clipping, vacuuming and pulling leaves in just under one hour, but then the result is quite remarkable.


The clone tent looked way more work then I could handle today and I'm even contemplating in topping some plants as I don't need much end product to make a selection. I did raise the light with a good 5-clicks on each rachet so the tops wouldn't be touching the light anymore.
Tomorrow I'll be doing the clones. Some will get clipped while others will be supercropped. Or I might do a combination of both. The result should be that I can reach the soil again to water all parts equally.


Regards,

Bob

tobe said:

Hey @Bob's Auto's
Do I understand it right , you reverse the males to female?
I smoke the male flowers for the tests as the first smoke of the day. I think I am oldskool

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Yup, using Ethephon will do the same thing to a male as using STS or CS to make a female male.
Ethephon is a precursor to Ethylene, which tells the plants to start making female flowers. You can even use it on females as they will produce quite some more flowers because of it. But that's an entire other story.

BUT...You should be careful in the dosage as to much will kill of your plants.
I've been experimenting with 400-450ppm of Ethephon in the past. Check my Breeding thread if you want to know more. Actually a mate of mine who works in a lab made the solution as in small quantities you need very accurate scales (0.0001gr) to measure. Better to make it in larger quantities and throw away the remainder of the product you're not using.

I was looking online, but I can't seem to find it on AliExpress no more. I have about 50ml in 10ml bottles, so this will keep me going for a while.
This is what the bottle looks like

0,709gr Ethephon /999,291gr water should give you a 400ppm solution. I'm sure you can do the calculation for higher of lower dosages from this.
pH the water first to about 4.5pH with sulfuric acid as the lower the pH the longer the precursor stays in it's original form. You give it as a foliar spray and dowse the plants. The recommendation is to only treat the nodes where the flowers will emerge from, but I've sprayed the plants as a whole.
Keep the solution cool & dark and you'll be able to use it for two to three weeks, after that the ppm will start to drop drastically.

If you checked the posts where I did the experiment the plants will go in a sort of hibernation, probably because of the relative large amount of Ethylene in it's system, but if you keep the humidity, light and temp in check they'll come through. After a week the plants will start to grow again, Before this happens you'll need to dose again (approx every 5 days). Rince and repeat until you see the first female flowers, then continue for a couple of weeks after. Your plants will stay small as they stop stretching, but should end up with only female flowers. If you do see male flowers, pick them by hand so they don't pollinate the female flowers.

The reason I'm going for this approach is because smoking a male won't give you any indication of terpenes and amount of cannabinoids. Giving the males a week before you switch the lights to 12/12 Ethephon at a lower dosage (200-250ppm) will introduce the Ethylene into the system before the changes that occurs when switching the light to 12/12. After that one should give a weekly dose of the ethephon at full strength.
Keep in mind that your plants will stop everything they are doing. So if you don't keep humidity high, lights low and lower the extraction fan the plants will start to wilt...

It's a risky step, but when you're working the numbers to select for a good male my believe is this is the way to go. Unless of course you have access to a lab that can measure the terpenes and cannabinoids of each male, which is way to costly for my wallet.

Oh and before I get the PGR pollice on my tale...Ethephon will completely change into Ethylene in about two weeks and only very small amounts will stay inside the plant material. Ethylene itself is completely harmless and is used to ripen bananas and other tropice fruit during their travel from the tropics to the endconsumer for years.