nanners (herms) 5.5 weeks into flowering?! need advice

Alright guys and gals. I have 8 2-3 foot grapefruit's that were growing beautifully in my GR. I started to notice the usual swelling and strange look in some of my buds that are consistant with pollination of a female plant. I checked and checked and could not find any male flowers on the nodes or anywhere, so I thought I was tripping. Well, today, upon re-exam I noticed a couple of already split male flowers on the TOP of my buds!!! A few nanners here and a few there. I cut a small branch that had one and cut the top parts of the bud just under the male flower. I have NO IDEA what is causing this. I have them in the same room as I have all the others, and these were clones taken from my "queen" if you are farmiliar(sp?) with my other threads. I know that I see signs of pollination in some of my plants but some of the others do not look too badly affected

Questions:
Any idea what could have caused this?
how bad do you think my crop will be affected? riddled with seeds?
What would you do and what advice do you have? Thanks in advance!

Oh yeah... male flowers are really hard to find in a big bud riddled with trichs! Not used to seeing balls with trichs. It's just not right.

And another question that I forgot to ask. Since in all my time growing, I have NEVER encountered this problem..and was curious to know. How much will the plants continue to grow flowers and go on as usual versus how much the plant will focus on making the seeds and nothing else.
I am just hoping that I am not just screwed here. THIS SUCKS!

You may have a light leak, or heat stress.
A couple nanners aren't going to completely ruin your crop. Go through carefully and check daily, picking them off with tweezers, if you suspect you are having herm problems. It's a good practice to look for herms even if you think everything is fine.
This will sound anaethema to some growers, but my opinion on seeds in your bud is: Oh well, it has a couple seeds in it. Boo freaking hoo.
Do I pick off any herms? Yup! But a seed here and there isn't something that I've ever lost sleep over, and it really doesn't make your yield go down or anything like that just having the occasional one scattered around. Hell, the guy upon whom I offload my excess gets all SORTS of excited when he finds a seed! It's cute, this big burly thug-lookin' dude getting all giddy over new genetics to play with.
You aren't screwed.

Thanks stinky! One thing that I was happy about was the fact that I will have seeds from amazing genes. Out of all the plants I have grown of this strain, that queen ( the near QP one)was definately the best plant I have had. These plants are clones from her. I will not have to buy any more seeds and I already know it's amazing genes.
I just wanted to make sure it wasn't going to riddle my plants with hell amounts of seeds.
I talked to the guy I offload my extras to as well and he was actually saying people were begging for seeds from this stuff. I will be trying to keep as many as possible.
Stinky, I looked and looked making sure there were no nanners, but damn right on the top.
I double checked last night for light leaks and repositioned some stuff to make sure there were no light leaks. I will raise my lights a bit too. I run an AC in there as well that controls temps for me, but I know that sometimes the space between the lights and the plants can still be a bit warm.
I will continue to comb through them today when the lights come on and see what I am dealing with!
I was hoping you would help me out Stinky. I really appreciate it!

STINKY I had one more question again.
So what is the general rule about hermies pollinating the other plants including itself? Female seeds or Hermies?
The reason I ask is because I had a similar thing happen a year or so ago but all the seeds that popped were herms as well. I have just read and heard many different things.
Thanks,
Elway

Yup- the rule is that the seeds will have a high ratio of females, but will also tend to pass on the propensity to herm under the same conditions that the selfed mother did.

cool thanks. That makes perfectly good sense. Well they are seeds I do not have to pay for, then wait to be shipped, yadda yadda yadda..
I will probably be sending you an email or PM soon I wanted to ask you some other questions... So look out for it.
thanks again
Elway

Okay no problem! I might re-post the questions and answers on the boards too because hey the more info the better, right?

I think any grower who does it long enough will end up with a few seeds. In fact I got re-started growing a couple of years ago after finding one seed in an 1/8th of OG Kush I bought from a grower friend. I grew for two years from that one seed and had great results. Plus seeds are great if you need to re-start for some reason. Much easier to store and transport.

regards to Stinky, and thanks for your good work as a Mod.
Max Blast

Y'alls very welcome.
There's a lot to be said for having a few seeds stored at a safe location in case anything bad should happen.

Hi, i'm not familiar with the term 'nanna'?..

I'm really new to this, my second crop,..
I think they might be developing seeds & they're 1/2 way through flowering.
I'm not really sure what to look for, what does an early male flower look like?..
Does anyone have a pic of 1 that's developing in a female flower?

I can't see anything that's not sticky & hairy, the bits that i think are developing
seeds are kind of fat things with the 2 hairs coming out, please excuse my lack of technical terms & general blondeness,..

aah, it's the calyx,..
They are fertilized i think,..
Doh

I'm soooo confused, are the whole buds going to be really seedy?..
I don't mind a few, but the whole lot?..
Shall i just give up now save electricity..

This site always amazes me, I just walked in from my cabinet with the same issue. About 5 weeks into flower, I just noticed that one of the bud sites was flowering out, I just cut the whole bud off (a good reason to sample it) but am hoping that the trouble is isolated. errr..

12345- Well as Stinky said above. You will be ok. A few seeds actually helps a grower. Well me at least! LOL You could have just cut the male parts off or tweezed em as Stinky said and been fine, but hey SAMPLE!

Bugarit....
I was hoping that mine would not be COMPLETELY SEEDED as well and if you read above Stinky answered that for us. It's probably fine. If you think you have been pollinated and are growing indoors, you need to search and find your herms, nanners, or male flowers. We call em nanners because when the male flower splits and is ripe you will see small yellow things that look like very very small bananas. You will notice the difference between a normal female flowering and nanners. Also if you are growing and you let your bud over ripen, they too can swell and look as if they have been pollinated. Forgive me if you already said this but how long have you been flowering?

I have had seeds a few times and I honestly did not notice any difference in either yield or potency. By the way, every seed I have planted from my hermies turned out to produce a female plant and some were hermies when grown out and some were not. (All produced great smoke)

I don't mean to say that you should avoid caring about preventing seeds altogether but a few here and there does not seem to be much of a problem.

If you can, trim off any "male parts" you find in your grow if possible and of course rip out any male plants but I would not worry too much about the hermie situation. You will still get great buds from your grow.

regards,
Max Blast

right, this is my first grow and I guess I'm figuring the less pollen in the cabinet the better. There are some new clones in their first week of flowering so I'd like to keep them as pure as possible. I checked the other buds, and only found one other on the same plant out of four, so hopefully its all good. I do need seeds, just right now I want to finish up this grow and get to the smoking part........everthough its still a least a month out....The one in the front right got seedy....

:D

12345-
wow. They look good. What strain is that? Well some seeds are fine I guess we are all coming to that conclusion. I usually grow sensimilla but heck I DO NEED seeds anyway.
Not a bad grow just on CFL's. Ive done it. pretty well actually. It looks like you are doing the same. How far into flowering are they? It looks like it's more than a month out to me.

Thanks guys, i guess seeds wont bother ME too much, can buy nothing but crap these days anyway, at least i know what it is, where it comes from & what it has, or rather, hasn't, got in it!
It's just, i'm mainly growing for personal but was hoping to make enough to clear our overdraft!!
I still can't find any balls, i did have a hermie that i took out a week or so into flowering,.. maybe, somehow that shagged my babies before i knew what it was! I think they're pretty well seeded though!?!..
x

the pics above are my first grow, the seeds were bag collection over the years... out of 6 seeds, got 5 plants, only 1 male, but he went male while I was on vacation so that didn't help this grow out. They all started in a rubbermaid and vegged for about 5 weeks and now they are about 5 weeks into flower. They were running out of room, so I made a 4x4x2 cab, and they are much happier and have plenty of growing room now....The CFLs are doing alright for me now, although I'm always trying to cram another light in there while juggling the temps..... I've seen the advantages of the higher output lights, and have a hood already, just need to make the upgrade to the next level, perhaps for the next grow....

:bong: