Tutorial DIY STS Mixing/Using Guide for Feminized Pollen/Seeds R.C.Clarke Method as Base

[Cvh]

Here is some info I found about how STS works.
Maybe this will clear some of the confusion about STS in correlation with hermaphrodism.

STS: Silver thiosulfate, a salt compound used in photography. In plants, silver interferes with, or locks out, copper, which is a necessary micronutrient. Making copper unavailable inteferes with ethylene signaling, and reduces expression of traits that are dependent on high levels of ethylene, such as female sex expression and fruit ripening.

Copper: a micronutrient that is necessary to assist certain enzymes in their function. Copper can become toxic at low levels, but a few parts per billion is adequate for plants to express their genetic potential. Because copper is needed at such low levels, it does not take much silver to overwhelm the available copper load and exert its effect.

Ethylene: One of the 5 plant hormones. The levels and ratios of these 5 hormones has a huge impact on the shape, strucutre, aroma, flavor, flowering time, and disease resistance of the plant. Hormones are the chemical messengers that allow DNA to 'talk' to plant tissues and determine the phenotype. Ethylene is primarily involved in flowering, sex determination, fruit ripening, and sensescence (rot). Ethylene is a simple organic molecule, C2 H4, which can also be represented as H2C=CH2.
In cannabis, female plants will produce male flowers if not enough ethylene is present, or if too much gibberellic acid is present. The intersex condition is due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Some plants will not turn male under the most extreme stress, and some plants, especially stretchy tropical sativas, will turn with no stress at all.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Good find cvh.

That explains why my glue wouldn't turn. Them being planted in a freshly fertilized farmer's corn field rain runoff to a creek. It also describes my Swazi and why it completely exploaded with empty pollen sacs with the same amout of sts as the glue.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

douglas.curtis; you mentionned that hermie has nothing to do with feminised seeds yet you posted on another thread (There's no need for extra steps to ensure non-herm traits, the breeders will have culled those traits and fully tested their results) Gee, sounds like you have alot of faith in those supposably reputable breeders.

Yes, when you do your research and find reputable breeders of feminized seeds. Yes, this is homework you need to do. I suggest reading grow reports and looking for herm issues.

Do I personally know any breeders? No, I haven't bought seeds in over 15 years. Have I read several hundred grow reports the last 5-8 years with non-herm results... yes. I have severe ADHD and note taking is not my forte, so you'll have to go do your own research and find them.

With luck, and a great attitude, someone may drop the info in your lap.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

In cannabis, female plants will produce male flowers if not enough ethylene is present, or if too much gibberellic acid is present. The intersex condition is due to a combination of genetic and environemental factors. Some plants will not turn male under the most extreme stress, and some plants, especially stretchy tropical sativas, will turn with no stress at all.

Indeed, great stuff.

On a side note, ethylene smells like bananas. Anyone have any luck turning cuts which have massive banana smell?

 

[little-soldier]

sure there are thousands of threads of feminised seeds being grown but most if not all of them were purchased from supposably reputable breeders who supposably used the STS method according to your statement even though you have never purchased any feminised seeds from them in the last 15 years to back up your claim. Look I dont want to come off as someone who is arrogant. I just want someone to point me to a thread where someone actually tried the sts method and grew those seeds. Preferably a thread with pictures from a couple weeks from harvest. And I cant think of a better place than here. Anyone care to chim in?

 

[Mohadib]

sure there are thousands of threads of feminised seeds being grown but most if not all of them were purchased from supposably reputable breeders who supposably used the STS method according to your statement even though you have never purchased any feminised seeds from them in the last 15 years to back up your claim. Look I dont want to come off as someone who is arrogant. I just want someone to point me to a thread where someone actually tried the sts method and grew those seeds. Preferably a thread with pictures from a couple weeks from harvest. And I cant think of a better place than here. Anyone care to chim in?

Why don't you just check some of the threads from the vendors-forum? Sweet Seeds, for example, exclusively sells feminzed seeds and there are many pictures of plants in all stages of flowering you can check out. --> https://www.icmag.com/ic/forumdisplay.php?f=65709
I mention them, because I've tried several of their strains and with the exeption of a single plant, I never experienced any hermie-problems.

Or check out my albums. With the exeption of anything "Afghani" and Karma Genetic's "Biker Kush" (which - btw - threw a hand full of male flowers ), everything you see is the result of feminized seeds.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

llittle-soldier, take a breath, use a comma or two and the enter key once in a while, please. You're not coming off as arrogant, you're coming off as upset and childish.

Ty Mohadib.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

I've mentioned this in another thread before. I used to work in the wholesale food industry as a kid. We had Banana rooms and Tomato rooms in the warehouse. The order pickers would pick from one room only. The other rooms had green product in them. When one room was half used, a new room was gassed with ethylene. The ethylene came as a liquid and a small stainless steel box would take a tiny bottle of the ethylene and diffuse(?) the liquid into gas to kick start the ripening process in that room. By the time the active room was empty, the pickers would pick from the previously gassed and freshly ripening rooms.

Tomatoes were picked and shipped very green and stored by us until we needed them. Bananas are also picked green but are sprayed with Thiabedazole to ward off fungus and has the added benefit of also slightly retarding the ripening process. The ethylene would quickly kick start the ripening in both cases.

There were times when the Liquid Ethylene wasn't available when we needed it (some dink didn't order it in time), so we'd take the ripest case of bananas we had AND a banana box full of the APPLES (apples are store in an oxygen free room to halt ripening. We could keep them for almost a year like that.), and sit them uncovered in the room we wanted to start ripening. Apples are also a good source of ethylene as they ripen. Want to ruin your apples at home? Store them on your counter with the bananas. lol

You may have heard that storing cannabis seeds with banana peelings will feminize the seeds because of the ethylene. Two things I might do this summer, is to use Liquid Ethylene in a humidor to see if I can feminize my regular seeds. I have enough to test a couple hundred seedling and a control group in my tiny greenhouses. Should be fun. But if this works, I think a seed company using this method on their regular seeds would produce many more females than males.


I have a couple of these for the tests (@ $36 canadian pesos, they were hard to ignore. lol)

Side note:
This year I popped about 1000 regular seeds. Most times, 2-4 males per flat of 18 appeared. For some strange reason, and this has me scratching my head, one flat was almost all male! I think I only got 4 females out of it. So something happened, I just can't figure that one out yet.

 

[little-soldier]

Upset, a little, childish lol ya ok whatever you say man.
Mohadib; thx for the info, ill look it up but was hoping to see someones grow here from their own STS female seeds.
Douglas.curtis; I looked up your album and didnt find what i was looking for. I suppose you don't grow the fruit of your own labour. Was thinking probably for security reasons but you still posted pictures so it still makes no sense unless your pictures are from someone else

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Upset, a little, childish lol ya ok whatever you say man.
Mohadib; thx for the info, ill look it up but was hoping to see someones grow here from their own STS female seeds.
Douglas.curtis; I looked up your album and didnt find what i was looking for. I suppose you don't grow the fruit of your own labour. Was thinking probably for security reasons but you still posted pictures so it still makes no sense unless your pictures are from someone else

Dude... do you walk into a lumber yard and ask if they have baseball bats for sale? I suggest you read the thread title before you start crying about what you can't find.

Maybe you should come back here once your testicles have fully descended.

 

[Cvh]

...but was hoping to see someones grow here from their own STS female seeds.

After I successfully made my first fem seeds I'll grown some out and post some pictures here and share my experience.

To grow the seeds is the point of all this for me.
We will all see how those beans will perform then. Either be it for the trouble free good or the horrible hermie nightmare bad.

But it will have to wait for after this summer (I don't grow during summer months) and also if my current STS fem seed making experiment has worked off course.

Cheers.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Awesome CVH, it'll be a great addition. Congrats on your success so far and ty again for your contributions to the thread.

 

[Cvh]

Update:

Hi all, a quick update on my first STS experiment.

Yesterday (or the day before) the first male flowers popped open.
But they are deviant, there was no visible pollen inside. They even fell off today.

Reading all your experiences and also different threads and forums I think the issue might be over application off STS.
Either that or the first flowers are always (or in many cases) duds.

I have however treated several other branches with different spraying cycles all less then the branch I'm talking now about and different then the one shown in the pictures below.
They are all behind in development compared to this branch. But the STS applications ranges from one (very big) drop balanced on an early flowering clusters to other branches getting sprayed once or multiple times.
All these branches show male flower development (it appears that even the branch with a single drop is starting to show reversal signs).

I'm still hoping that later on I might still get some pollen. I only need a couple opening with male pollen to pollinate this plant.

Anybody any input, ideas or advice to make this experiment still a success? Or what I should do different in later experiments? I think that spraying more wouldn't be the correct thing to do.

Strain: Power Plant
Current date: 26/05/2019
Start from seed: 10/04/2019 (broke the surface of the soil on this day)
12/12: 24/04/2019
STS (every 5-7 days): start from 04/05/2019 until 18/05/2019 (the branch shown in the pictures below, other branches received different treatments).

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Some plants are really sensitive. I sprayed the top branch and the whole plant produced pollen sacs. But I sprayed a lot, about 3-4 times. Mine showed the same as yours. But I collected all the flowers anyway in a large freezer bag. You might not be able to see it, but there is *some pollen there.

I used the whole freezer bag to pollinated a girl. I got lots of seeds. Not as much as I liked, but enough.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Beautiful

 

[Cvh]

Some plants are really sensitive. I sprayed the top branch and the whole plant produced pollen sacs. But I sprayed a lot, about 3-4 times. Mine showed the same as yours. But I collected all the flowers anyway in a large freezer bag. You might not be able to see it, but there is *some pollen there.

I used the whole freezer bag to pollinated a girl. I got lots of seeds. Not as much as I liked, but enough.

Sounds like a good idea to collect the fallen off flowers.
Did you dry them out a bit and grinded them or did you put them directly into a bag?

How did you then proceed to pollinate a plant? Simply put the bag over a branch?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Cvh]

Beautiful

It looks nice but I need it to be more then just ornamental.

I have read your posts where you said that you pick off the first male flowers. Would you care to share why you do this?

Also do you think I will still get some pollen bearing male flowers on this branch? If not, what would you suggest I had done differently?

I have somehow a feeling you know what is going to happen. But that you don't want be a spoiler. Or am I just hoping?

 

[little-soldier]

Tychomonolyth; I think this is the perfect place to ask, see Cvh is willing to share. Your testicle comment was funny but watch out, douglas.curtis might call you childish on that one. I know I would but Im not here to throw insults and making bogus analogy. I thought I had anger issues, maybe Im not that bad after all .Neways Im out, ill be back to see if more people share their experience in the future because making seeds using STS is only half the battle. Sorry If I offended, twas not my intention.

 

[djonkoman]

Anybody any input, ideas or advice to make this experiment still a success? Or what I should do different in later experiments? I think that spraying more wouldn't be the correct thing to do.

if I were you, I'd just wait.
since you say you have different branches with different treatments and all are developing male flowers. should get you at the very least one flower with lots of pollen if you wait.
also, my experience so far, on the more heavily treated ones you might still get visible pollen later on, as long as you don't spray more.

also, with these flowers without visible pollen, there might still be a little in there. dry the balls and crush them up, and try if it works for pollination. I got some seeds that way on my first reversal, there clearly wasn't that much pollen in there since there were just some seeds in the bud I pollinated it with, but ~20 seeds is still better than nothing.

 

[TychoMonolyth]

Sounds like a good idea to collect the fallen off flowers.
Did you dry them out a bit and grinded them or did you put them directly into a bag?

How did you then proceed to pollinate a plant? Simply put the bag over a branch?

Thanks for the advice.

I put a large freezer bag over a few branches and shook it violently to collect any free flowers and pollen. I flipped the zipper top of the bag inside out. That let me keep the bag open which was set on a shelf in a closet to keep the flowers dry. When I thought the majority of the sacs were ready to open, I put and cut long branches in the same bag. I bent the stem to fit in a bottle of water to keep it alive as long as I could. I'd give the sacs a little nudge to get pollen fall out every few days. After a while I massaged the pods on the branches to get the ready sacs to release.

Once I was satisfied, I shook the bag to try and get any pollen into a corner of a bag so I could use a small paint brush to collect and tap on a female flower. I didn't see any pollen, but I had lots of pods/sacs. I'm an impatient SOB so I eventually slid the freezer bag over the colas and gave them a good rub with the open pollen sacs. Worked.