Are these tiny bananas a problem? Will it pollinate my other plants?

[nay420]

So I left my lights on for an entire dark cycle last week. The lights were on for 36 hours straight, this was 4 weeks into flower. One of my plants started to show bananas, but they were very small. I removed them and remained diligent. A week later, I am still finding VERY TINY bananas like these

You can see that the bunch of bananas is as small as the pistillate hairs. I have been removing these bananas whenever I find them.

Here lies the problem.... are these big enough to pollinate my whole grow?
I have 5 plants total, all with about 3 to 4 weeks left in flower. Should i just harvest this plant now?

 

[Budley Doright]

I see no real reason to believe your light issues caused this plant to hermie....

There are two kinds of hermies....

we call them....

nanners and balls....

Balls are found on the preflowers..... they are in fact typical male flowers.... and they dangle allowing their pollen to get airborn....

The other kind.... they kind you have generally isnt nearly as damaging as the balls variety....

MOre than likely since you are removing these flowers...you are likely spilling pollen on the remaining female bits.....

For your piece of mind you should trash this plant.....

What will be more difficult....is if some of the other 4 do the same thing on its way to finishing...

 

[Adze]

aye240,

Those little things aren't making pollen yet and if you want to be compulsive about watching carefully and pruning every one before they mature much more than what your photo shows you can likely get it to finish. Sometimes there are only a few and they're easily handled, you'll have to be the judge.

 

[Budley Doright]

It depends on how they are removed....

I tried removing them with tweezers when I was young and dumb....

and the pollen squished out....and made seeds.....

 

[amanda88]

Unless you intend to breed ...best to remove them offending males, leaving that light on..should have returned them to some veg time, tho WILL have caused unnecessary stress, perhaps resulting in some Herm, later ....stay sharp, ..

...and get a better timer

 

[Budley Doright]

Unless you intend to breed ...best to remove them offending males, leaving that light on..should have returned them to some veg time, tho WILL have caused unnecessary stress, perhaps resulting in some Herm, later ....stay sharp, ..

...and get a better timer

I find the word stress a funny sort of word....

this sort of 'stress'....apparently can cause hermies in seed plants....

but not clones.....

 

[SpaceJunkOG]

It depends - was it the same strain as the other 4 plants and you are growing, and are you growing for yield / providing as medicine to patients? You may want to heed the advice of the first responder (lol "first responder") and just cut your losses, you don't want even a slight chance of having seeds in the medicine you're going to be selling (but for personal stash, i don't mind a few seeds, they preserve genetics, albeit sometimes unwanted ones).

But by the looks of them, those nanners probably won't pollinate much more than themselves - meaning that the hermie plant itself may be seeded to some extent (a small extent i would expect), but the spread of pollen to your other plants from that will likely end up being pretty minimal - or nothing at all - this depends a bit on how crowded you have everything and the proximity of the straight females to the hermie. "Balls" are what spread pollen like the plague. But your plant doesn't have balls. From my experience when a plant just throws nanners but never makes balls, it tends to mostly pollinate itself, and not much of the surrounding plants. (But maybe i just got lucky in the past and the nanners on my herms weren't big pollen producers).
Now on the other hand - the hermies I've had with BALLS? Absolute nightmare. Hundreds of seeds in all plants. I will not play with balls anymore. ( ).

You could go either way with this one. Just make sure you separate it and put it a good distance away from the others if you keep it. And if you're plucking those things - use tweezers, turn off your fans when you pluck, and remember there could still be some viable pollen left on them, so be very OCD sanitary and don't touch anything without washing your hands. And remember water kills pollen. When in doubt, spray a little water mist on the plant before you're gonna pluck the nanners, it should help kill any remaining pollen - if you go that route. Hell, give it a nice daily / twice-daily misting and you might just reduce the chances of seeds even more by killing a few thousand more pollen grains.

This is based on my own personal experiences with various types of hermaphrodites in my own grows. Others' experience may differ.

Good luck to you!

 

[St. Phatty]

One option is to move the plant-with-nanners to a second small grow area that is absolutely DOWNWIND from the main grow area.

And just let it do its thing, which seems to be, making bud and nanners.

At least until you decide to give it the ax.


If you have any neighbors who are growing ... that you want to stay on good terms with ... best to cut it now.

And if you know anyone with chickens, maybe give them a treat ... chickens LOVE cannabis.