Colloidal Silver Project

[smilley]

Great info TSK. You're the 3rd person to recommend STS over CS. Since I don't know how to easily obtain STS, and I can purchase 20 ug CS at any health food store that's what I use. I spritz the target plant 3 times daily so I'm assuming that's equivalent to 60 ug applied once daily.

The first time I tried the process, the plant did turn black in places and showed severe stress. In my particular case, I thought this was caused by impurities and contaminants left in the sprayer I was using. The second time, documented in this thread, the target plant showed no visible blackening and the plant exhibited very little stress and th e plant produced small amounts of viable pollen.

Below is my new target female. She was started from seed under a 12/12 light regime and expressed her female pistils at about 3 weeks from germination. I waited till she showed sex before starting CS treatment. I'm going to give her 14 days of spritzing and then discontinue the treatments and see what happens.

JOTI BB Female For Sex Reversal

I really like TSK's suggestion of putting the mature (semi-mature) pollen sacs into a jar to allow for further ripening. I'll definitely try this. As a hobby grower, I don't need tons of pollen. Just enough to pollinate a few select buds. I ended up with roughly 100 female seeds from the last pollination. For me, that's perfect. It looks like TSK has the solution for scaling up the process. Those interested in commercial quantities should take heed. Again, for me, the last thing I want is to seed up an entire plant or heaven forbid, the entire crop.

Just as a side note, below is a regular male BB. I just wanted to show my current pollen collection technique. Again, this male was started 12/12 from seed and moved to isolation for pollen collection. I just tilt the whole pot and place a ceramic tile under the terminal bud. I shake the plant once a day, let the pollen accumulate for several days and then remove and replace the ceramic tile with a clean one. After removing the ceramic tile, I set it aside and let the pollen dry for a day or so. Then I just scrape the pollen into a pile with a razor blade and place it in a little paper envelope and store it in the freezer till I need it. This process can be repeated several times. I'm going to use this identical process for the reversed female with the exception that instead of discarding the male flowers, I'm going to put them in a jar or vial to see if I can increase the amount of pollen I collect.

JOTI BB Male for Pollen Collection

 

[stoned-trout]

sts can be bought at photographers formulary online its like 11$ for everything if I remember right...yeehaw........... stores.photoformulary.com...enough to last a while and do many plants so it easier and cheaper and prob more effective...its on my to do list next..your looking for silver nitrate and sodium thiosulphate then all ya need is distilled water found anywhere...

 

[smilley]

So, she got 3 spritzings a day for 14 days. I sprayed the whole plant, top to bottom (she's a small plant). I've got her tilted again, mostly because she's taller than the propagation rack. It'll certainly help if it starts dropping pollen.

It's been a couple of days since I discontinued spritzing it. Still some pistils but not like there would be if it hadn't been treated. I don't see any male parts yet. Another week will tell the tale. I need it to produce pollen in less than 5 weeks to meet my pollination schedule in the flowering room.

 

[smilley]

It's been 12 days since I discontinued spritzing with CS. The entire plant is producing male parts. The main cola is completely reversed. Just a couple of the lower buds have a mix of female/male parts. The plant is looking a little stressed. The lower leafs are yellowing and the lower buds aren't looking perky. I'm going to blame the lack of perkiness on lack of light. The T5 fluorescent is good but doesn't have great effective distance.

All in all, things are looking very promising. From last years experience, I'd say he/she is about 10 days from producing viable pollen (if it produces). I think I'll easily have the feminized pollen in hand before the flower room is ready for sex. Yee Haw!!

 

[subrovka]

nice work!
currently i´m doing my first feminization with 50ppm CS.
have been applying it 1-2 per day 1 week prior to 12/12 and now its 6 days in..hope to obtain some viable pollen soon!
cool to see that you have success with 20ppm, so it should work for me with 50ppm i guess..

 

[smilley]

That should work great for you subrovka. I'd recommend that you discontinue treatment once you see male parts. Also, keep in mind the consensus is pollen production generally not till 30+ days after initiation of 12/12.And remember, you may have to manually open the pollen sacks. Good luck!!

 

[belivitez]

Subrovka to which strain do you apply coloidal silver?

 

[Tynehead Tom]

I was shown how to do this last year by a friend. Not sure how long he has been doing it but it's how he gets his greenhouse seeds for each summer's batch.
the ppm's your using jive with what I've been taught so the method is certainly sound, not that I'm an expert LOL the only thing he does is he stops spraying once the male sacs start to take over. my notes say 10 to 14 days, every day at first sign of flowering under 12/12
and in my notes in capital letters.... DO NOT smoke the bud from the sprayed plant hehehe
following this thread with interest, it's a good way to preserve a particular plant to lay down all fem seeds with vigour over clone only.

 

[Eltiburón]

Hi
I'm also working with colloidal silver.
I make a generator and it is producing a very dark CS.
spraying it since 10 days ago 2 or 3 times per day and not produced any male flower.
The pistils became dark. There is still time for produce male flowers ?
sorry my bad english.

 

[GoeRilla]

Hi
I'm also working with colloidal silver.
I make a generator and it is producing a very dark CS.
spraying it since 10 days ago 2 or 3 times per day and not produced any male flower.
The pistils became dark. There is still time for produce male flowers ?
sorry my bad english.

Keep it in the dark otherwise the silver particles gets black.
That´s how old fashioned photo film works.
Maybe that´s the problem or maybe you spray too much.

Rilla.

 

[Tynehead Tom]

Hi
I'm also working with colloidal silver.
I make a generator and it is producing a very dark CS.
spraying it since 10 days ago 2 or 3 times per day and not produced any male flower.
The pistils became dark. There is still time for produce male flowers ?
sorry my bad english.

it can take up to three weeks of treatment for some strains I am told, but generally 10 to 14 days. was talking to my friend and he reminded me it's from start of 12/12 , not at first signs of flowering, sorry my bad

 

[idiit]

the dark cs for me comes from using silver or jar that is not clean enough. I use goof off from auto store and it works great. also use goof off to clean my fingers and stuff after wax extract run and for cleaning the glass bong parts. super fast. super effective. I use wire brush between soaks in goof off for help cleaning the silver between runs.

to get the ppm's up in my cs runs I learned a neat trick. I could only get the cs to go to 20 ppm's. I left the silver in the jar after turning off ( unplugging) the cs generator for a few days and when I got around to bottling the cs I tested it and it went up to nearly 50 ppms. I've repeated this technique several times and it has worked every time. if I try other ways to get the ppms up past 20 ppm I always end up with dark murky water. with clean jar, clean silver and leaving the silver in the distilled water for 3-4 days after I get my 20 ppm redaing I end up with 40-50 ppms and very clear, clean looking water at the end.

the 40-50 ppm cs works very effectively. the 20 ppm cs is not nearly as good at getting the female to reverse and give off viable reversed pollen.

for storing pollen I recommend using q-tips. q-tips allow very good control in pollen application. I make sure the q-tips and the pollen are dry ( powdery; does not cake, falls off q-tip easily as a fine powder). I store the dry pollen dusted q-tips in little marked baggies and store them in a jar in the freezer. when I want some pollen I take the jar out, open the baggie and take out how many q-tips I need and quickly reclose the baggie and put it back into the jar and place the jar quickly back into the freezer. I keep an ice cube in the bottom of the pollen jar to keep the jar cold while I remove pollen q-tips. the ice cube is important; the little baggies can get warm very quickly at room temps and the pollen stored must say frozen to maintain viability. yes, I use a screw on lid on my pollen jar and close the lid when working out some q-tips but even with the jar lid screwed back on the jar can heat up towards room temps. very very quickly. the ice cube really helps keep the pollen frozen in the few seconds the jar is out in ambient temps.

1). get the ppms past 40 ppm.

2). thoroughly dry the q-tips and the pollen before rolling the cotton in the pollen for storage. if the pollen cakes on the q-tip you did not get the q-tip and pollen dry enough. damp pollen will bust and become non viable after freezing.

3). get the silver and jar very clean before making cs or you will get cloudy cs.

4). start cs application before the first female pistils appear if possible.


5). use the ice cube technique. it works at keeping the remaining pollen cold/frozen.

6). occasionally check your ppm meter in pure distilled water. it should read 0. the ppm meter can get so much silver on it that it no longer reads true ppms.


edited to add: as I posted later in this thread 40-50 ppm was too strong for some strains. I now use 30 ppm. if a cut won't reverse I gradually up the ppms.

 

[Eltiburón]

Thanks.
I had to do it with filtered rain water and 925 silver
was the only things found.
now I'm worried about this silver contain copper. read somewhere that silver works by merging with copper. preventing the synthesis of ethylene from lack of copper. but I 'm applying copper unintentionally

 

[Siever]

nice work!
currently i´m doing my first feminization with 50ppm CS.
have been applying it 1-2 per day 1 week prior to 12/12 and now its 6 days in..hope to obtain some viable pollen soon!
cool to see that you have success with 20ppm, so it should work for me with 50ppm i guess..

Yo I did the same and at the end it seemed I sprayed too much
I suggest you don't go over once a day spray

 

[GrowerGoneWild]

CS was more a hassle for me to use, and I didn't get any good results with it. I'm amazed people are using it for reversing. And yes I started with distilled water, spray before the flip... Yadda yadda..

STS or Sodium Pentasulfate + Silver Nitrate DID work. And you're not constantly applying CS, STS is a once a week treatment. I think you have to adjust your dilution ratio a bit when using penta sulfate because of the extra water.

Anyways, skunkman sam likes it and endorses it, and after trying both I understand why.

 

[subrovka]

Yo I did the same and at the end it seemed I sprayed too much
I suggest you don't go over once a day spray

what was the outcome of spraying too much? did you loose them?

 

[subrovka]

6). occasionally check your ppm meter in pure distilled water. it should read 0. the ppm meter can get so much silver on it that it no longer reads true ppms.

thanks for the advice on how to store pollen, the q-tip storing method sounds great, i´ll do it like this!

but how would you measure the concentration of the cs-solution with a ppm-meter, although there are almost no ions in solution..? is this the same ppm-meter used for nutrient solutions?
or did i just get you wrong?

 

[idiit]

^^ oops, i'm using a tds meter.

 

[smilley]

Pollen Production

Pollen Production

The reversed BB is at 40 days of 12/12. She's been producing pollen for a few days now, so I'll say it started at about Day35. If the reversed plant had been started flowering at the same time as the target females, it would be quite late in flowering to be pollinating. I recommend starting the reversing earlier so you can get the pollinating done at about 21 days to ensure seed maturation. I like to give the seeds at least 30 days to fully develop.

Pollen production is considerably less than the regular male BB I collected pollen from earlier. This plant will continue to produce pollen for several weeks so I'll have plenty for my purposes. I'm going to package 1 envelope for the freezer and then in a couple of weeks I'll use my remaining pollen to fertilize a few buds in the flower room. I'll let this batch dry for a day or 2, break open any pollen sacks on the tile, discard the open flowers and then package it up. (sorry for the crappy pic, you can make out some of the pollen grains on the tile surface)

My biggest concern when working with pollen is accidental pollination. It sounds easy, but believe me it's not. Although the plant is in isolation, it's room is still connected to the house via the heating system. When I water or care for the isolated plant I try not to re-enter the flowering room afterwards for fear of accidentally carrying pollen in on my clothes. Even the watering cup I use, I rinse before using it again. Invariably, I end up with a dusting of seeds on some of the non-target plants. Again, not a serious issue as I'm not a commercial producer and a few extra seeds isn't the end of the world.

I pollinated 2 plants in my "little room" with regular pollen from the BB male and I'll pollen 2 other plants in the "big room" with the feminized pollen. If I end up with 100 seeds of each, I'll be pleased. If I end up with 200 of each, I'll be a bit disappointed but still happy. Any more than that, and I'll be picking seeds out of my reefers regularly and my yield will be affected slightly. For me, less is more. For others, the more the merrier.

 

[Eltiburón]

Good job Smilley very vigorous reversed plant, its sounds like good genetics.
My poor silver apparently don't work.
Anyone know if this works with other silver ions beyond the thiosulfate ? The only one I can find here is silver fulminate ( on fireworks ) will it work ?