Male Harvest
Male flowers can produce pollen as early as
two weeks after changing lights to the 12-hour
day/night schedule. Watch out for early openers.
Three to six weeks after initiating flowering,
pollen sacks open and continue producing flowers
for several weeks after the first pods have
begun to shed pollen. Once male flowers are
clearly visible but not yet open, THC production
is at peak levels. (See "Sinsemilla Harvest"
below for information on trichome glands.) This
is the best time to harvest. Once males release
pollen, the degradation process speeds up and
flowers fall.
Harvest males carefully, especially if close to
females. Cut the plant off at the base, taking
care to shake it as little as possible. To help prevent
accidental pollination by an unnoticed
open male flower, carefully cover the male plant
with a plastic bag, and tie it off at the bottom
before harvesting. Or, if you can see an open
pollen sack, spray it with water to make pollen
unviable. Keep males used for breeding as far
from flowering females as possible. Make sure
to install fine screens for air coming into the
flowering room and wet them down regularly to
discourage rogue pollen. Isolate males until
needed. After a month, the male will start
reverting to vegetative growth even though it
Spray male plants with water to deactivate pollen
before harvest.
retains viable sacks of pollen. Males can also be
cloned and held in the vegetative stage until
needed. Induce flowering about three weeks
before viable pollen is needed. Within three to
five weeks, the male will be full of viable pollen
sacks.
Prolong male harvest by removing flowers
with tweezers or fingernails as they appear. New
flowers soon emerge after plucking old ones.
Continue to remove pollen sacks until females
are two weeks from full bloom. Picking off individual
male flowers is a tedious, time consuming
process, and it is easy to miss a few.
Harvesting most of the branches, leaving only
one or two pollen-bearing limbs, is practical. A
single male flower contains enough pollen to
fertilize many female ovules; a single branch full
of male flowers is necessary to produce enough
pollen for most home breeding needs.
