Breeding under fluorescents?

[Guest423]

whats up guys? i have 2 questions actually.....can you get decent seeds if you pollinate and breed your plants under fluorescents? and can you flip to 12/12 after about 10-14 days of veg from seed and still get a decent amount of seeds?

i want to keep my budding chamber going but also want to do some closet breeding on a couple strains, and possible try to stablize a few making f6's but want to keep the watts down, and speed up the generations, last time i vegged for 30 days and budded under a 400w and got about 500 seeds per plant and i don't need that many and wouldn't like to use so many xtra watts. i'm only aiming for maybe 50-100 seeds per plant, think it's possible with a shorter veg and using fluorescents? thanks in advance

p.s....i would be using a 4ft shop light with 4 bulbs.

 

[Closet Funk]

Good idea T2U. I never thought of that. I think it would work really. Have a seperate room just for seed making. Hell a single shoplight would be enough to have some small plants for seeds. I like the idea, I might have to try that myself.

 

[Guest423]

yeah it makes sense to save on electric and go through generations faster. i know a plant needs a certain amount of light to produce good seeds but people flower under fluorescents with decent results, so if they can make good buds i figure they should be able to produce good seed. just curious if anyone does this or has tried it. i've seen some grows lately of people going straight 12/12 right away, you could still pull a decent amount of seeds doing that method i would think? i'd personally veg 10-14 days just to get a few more seeds but you could go through generations fast this way, you could fully stabilize charastics your looking for in 10-12 months.

 

[beancounter]

I have been using about 300w of floros (shoplights or CFLs) in a small closet for breeding for about 6 months now. I also use it for vegging sometimes but it's mostly for seed crops. I'm just finishing my second seed crop with it and it works wonderfuly.

The seeds germ fine and are just as big. I use 1 strain as the male, 1-4 plants/clones that are pruned in veg to give just enough pollen. I then use clones (or short veg seedplants) for females, and put about 5-10 different fem strains in.

I put the females under 12-12 for about 2-3 weeks without the males, to allow them to build up a bit of mass before the males have their way with the girls. I find if you flower the girls and guys at the same time you only end up getting basicaly 1-2 layers of seeds, as the plant goes into seed making mode to early and stops putting out more bracts and pistils..

For sativas you may want to give the females more of a head start to get a decent amount of seeds.

With the 2-3 week headstart a 6-10" clone will easily give you 100 seeds. Even flowering seedplants early will likely give you more than 100 in my experience, maybe 200 or so, it realy depends ont he stretch and yeild of the plants.

And the seeds finish in the same time frame as HID, maybe a few days slower, but certainly in the 40 day window.

You could do the same thing with 1 shoplight, maybe 1 male, and 4 clones or small seedplants. The more shoplights you have the more you can do, and the taller the plants you can do.

 

[sm0kateer4204]

you could root clone's put them under a compact flourecent. send them directly to flower pollenate well and each bud would hold about 50 seed's easy if not more with no veg time.

 

[Guest423]

good replies fellas, i always pollinate between week 2 and 3 also, i grow basically all indicas or indica dominate strains so the timing is perfect. glad to hear a report where someone is doing exactly what i want to do! thanks beancounter for the confidence!

smokateer...thats exactly what i'm thinking to save time, energy, and still have plenty of seed to work with. good post

now lets say i'm working with a strain to stablize some charastics, when going f1,f2,f3 ect....do i cross the original mom and dad then grow them seeds from them...choose a new mom and dad...grow them seeds from them....choose a new mom and dad ect.....or would i want to keep the original mom and choose a new dad from each generation? if i have to work with seed from each generation do you think i still could get away with little to no veg time and still get 50-100 seeds?

 

[Closet Funk]

I would keep some pollen or some seeds from the F1 generation to backcross to. This way when you get down in the F3's and F4's you can backcrosst to the F1 seeds. If you have to grow out more F1's and choose another plant to use then so be it. That would be your best bet on stabilizing some traits.
Keeping a good mom from the F1 generation is good too. Then you can use a nice male from a F3 and backcross to her. I think it's going to work fine and is a great idea.

 

[Guest423]

great idea CF, i've heard of breeding programs being lost because they got deep in the breeding and something unexpected comes up and they didn't keep pollen or seeds from the earlier stock to fall back on....would suck to lose 9 months to a couple years of hard work, plants die, infection, disease, ect.

 

[Closet Funk]

Yea! say you create a 100 F1 hyrbrid seeds and your end up growing out 75 of them. This still leaves you with 25 orignals to work with later on. Store them and put them away for future use. Now later on your into your say F4 generation and you want to stabilize some traits. Now you break out the F1's and grow them out and find which ones resemble the traits you want to stabilize. Then make your backcross. That's how I'm going to do it.

 

[Guest423]

is this how it's done breeding gurus or are we off base here?

 

[Guest423]

bump....anyone else?

 

[jaykush]

ive always done this. once i got the plants i like picked puti clone them. then they go into the small chamber (usually 1x1x1) and flower one male and one female cut at the same time. makes good seeds not good nugs but thats what your going for anyways right.

 

[Guest423]

sweet, yup i'm only worried about seed for this project, the rest can be tossed or thrown in my bubblebags. do you find that your seeds are just as good under the fluorescents as they would be under a HID light? germ rates, ect?

 

[jaykush]

the seeds come out just as good, pass the genetics jsut as good. germ rates well i notice no diff. pm me if ya want some more info on how i do it.

 

[Guest423]

thanks jay, i'll do that if i need any pointers, i pretty much got everything down and know what i wanted to do i just wanted to hear some opinions and see if anyone else was having success, i didn't want to waste time, money, seeds, ect. if it wasn't gonna turn out.

 

[twisted passion]

hey guys

hey guys

well here is my little set up for just that very thing i can run as many as 100 but i chose to run very smaller numbers the whole set up coast my like 20 bucks and some time to get it up it's not much but i pull a fair share of seeds




now these are my f1's and in a few weeks i will be cloning and and swtiching out this monster in to the bloom room.then in 60 days the first f1's will go in to the bloom room.and the clones will take there place.and in another 60 days i will pic from the best of the ones in the bloom room to keep for my f2 moms well just my little project thought i would put my two cents in stay safe all

 

[Guest423]

nice little setup, how many f1 seeds did you get? were they all nice and strong like a normal seed? nice avatar...i love google more then ever!!

 

[DocLeaf]

whats up guys? i have 2 questions actually.....can you get decent seeds if you pollinate and breed your plants under fluorescents? and can you flip to 12/12 after about 10-14 days of veg from seed and still get a decent amount of seeds?

yes. yes.

Sure,,, we often make seed under natural day-light, under reduced photoperiods, from seed or clone, under 21days old.





Remember anything is possible with cannabis... erb is a plant

all the best
peace dLeaf

 

[Guest423]

looks like its on then.....leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeets get ready to ruuuuuuuuuumble

 

[Guest]

It seemed like it took about 13 weeks to flower under flouro lights, could have been the strain but, I think it takes a long time to start flowering under flouro lights(took me four weeks to sex), again it could have been the strain but as far as getting it done, the sooner you start the sooner it will be harvest time, I think that the worst thing about flouro lights is that they dont put off enough heat to warm the dirt up, it makes the roots grow slowly, they soak up water slowly, I started putting heating pads under my seedlings to get a good root system while they are still in starter pots and its working great, but use good judgement and dont turn it on high, lol