Hermies

We have been growing using hydroponics for almost 2 years. The problem we are seeing right now is that most of our plants look perfect up until the due date. Then as we trim we notice seeds......lots of seeds. I thoroughly inspect each plant once or twice a week. I have never seen an open flower that has released pollen. I have pulled out 2 males in the last 2 months but none of the seed pods were open. Are we doing something wrong towards the end? It seems to happen when they get put into the flush tank. I have a question about that, could they turn while they are in flush? Is there a time period that the plant should be in flush? While in flush, should the plant remain under 12/12 lighting or just dark? We leave them in the dark in a flush tank with just clean water. Up until now this process has really worked. We flush them in our trim room which is why they stay in the dark until it is time to trim. Could this be the problem, leaving them in flush under darkness for a couple days? I don't ever see any sign of hermie until we trim and seeds are popping out. PLEASE IF ANYONE CAN HELP, OUR CROP IS SEEMS TO BE GETTING RUINED!!!!!!!!!!!!! I clean the rooms weekly and clean the tubs monthly. It is hard with the amount of plants we constantly have in veg and flower and transfer into flower it is hard to completely gut a room and clean it. I would appreciate any help. OH, one more thing. We have an air/heater/ac unit in the flower room that has a blue light in the screen. I put a piece of cardboard over the light because it is stressed that the 12 off cycle needs to be pitch black, no light. Could this be the cause of our hermies?

Thanks so much ;)

Megan :rasta:

Are the seeds you are seeing fully developed? If they are, something is pollinating them early in flower. Your flush is usually in the last couple weeks so that should not be the cause because the seeds wont have time to develop. Any kind of light leaks can trigger a hermie. Now whether or not the light from the ac is powerful enough I have no clue. I usually do like you did and cover it with something. The ac that i use was actually letting in light through the vents from outside. I had to install an awning that kept the sunlight off of it outside. Easy fix that worked wonders. If i were you, id sit in the flower room with lights out for about 15 minutes and make sure there are not any light leaks. Just something you might wanna check out. Could be an easy solution. Could also be pollen from one of the males given the amount of seeds you are talking about. It only takes a little pollen to screw up a lot.

Thanks so much. I will check for any light leaks. Would it be worth it to start over? get rid of all hermies and start fresh? The hermies are not bad quality, actually some is really good. But our patients don't like seeds. It is a frustrating situation given the amount of plants we have in flower. Thanks so much again. Any other suggestions on preventing hermies would be great. What pre-flower should I look for before putting into flower room? I have read that if the preflower hasn't emerged then it should stay in veg and placing into flower could cause it to turn hermie.

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Originally Posted by mrumley

Thanks so much. I will check for any light leaks. Would it be worth it to start over? get rid of all hermies and start fresh? The hermies are not bad quality, actually some is really good. But our patients don't like seeds. It is a frustrating situation given the amount of plants we have in flower. Thanks so much again. Any other suggestions on preventing hermies would be great. What pre-flower should I look for before putting into flower room? I have read that if the preflower hasn't emerged then it should stay in veg and placing into flower could cause it to turn hermie.

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It all depends to whether or not they are stressed or if it is strain related. If they are stressed i would personally just fix whatever is stressing them and you should be good to go for future flowering. I dont really know too much about your grow so it could be anything from unstable temps, too much ferts, light leaks, etc, etc. while they are in flower. It could just be that a male was left in a little too long and pollinated everything. Hermies will also produce pollen so if you see them and you have others in early flower in the same room I would get rid of them. There's just too many variables to narrow it down to anything. You could always fill out a trouble shooting form and give as many details as you can about your grow for a better answer.

As for the preflower question, you can place a plant into flower at any stage of its life. I've seen people start from seedlings with 12/12 lighting with the only results is a smaller plant. I personally wouldnt but ive seen it done. I usually wait til the nodes are alternating and see little white hairs (preflower) showing before I flower. That's mainly because i like the size of a plant vegging for 6-8weeks. Clones take on the age of the mother plant so as soon as they established their roots, they can be flowered at any time. Ill see if i can find a pic of preflowers for ya

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Think I'm with push it, seeds will be from pollen, you said hermies late then little time for seed to make. Pollen can travel from next door or down the block. You can even carry it in yourself from somewhere, and it sounds like you spend some time there. Might help to know where in the bud the seed is. Fix the stress and the strain, your strain must not like your style.

Light cycle is really important, do all go off on schedule, is it really dark(sit from 15 min, can you see anything), then do they all come on time.

If you want to be mother nature, it's allot of work.

I just had a mixed run of strains. One strain I had six plants and gifted out two after 10 weeks veg and 4 weeks bloom. All the plants went6 12 weeks bloom. I had no seed in my plants at all. The two gifted plants were loaded with seed. I guess it can just happen. Weirdness.

thank you so much for all your education. Growing is such a tedious and patient process and when you run into problems it kind of irks you a little. Does anyone know much about feminized or regular seeds? We have heard that feminized seeds are female, but have also heard that they come from a hermie plant so you are guaranteed a hermie. We have had success with both. We had a mother that we found was a hermie after we had taken clones, but that was an easy fix, get rid of the mother and the clones. i am hoping we will get it all figured out and start producing high quality bud again, this seed shit is really pissing me off :wtf:

Thanks again to you all, I really appreciate all the help. I do a lot of research for our grow (because my step-dad is 70 years old) I try to most of the research and grow stuff. I do as much as I can as often as I can. So, again, thanks so much :stoned:

It very well could be strain related. I am growing clones of a querkle seed that was from a selfed querkle clone from a seed that was from a selfed querkle clone. Basically sometimes the lower, inner buds get seeds, and those are guaranteed females. HOWEVER, they are also slightly unstable and fairly easy to go hermie. If I get them, I usually have a big run of hermies at week 4 or 5 of flower, (a few dozen throughout the 4 plants in flower). I pull them off. I have noticed that even the ones that are ripe don't have much pollen in them. They don't always hermie, but it doesn't take a disaster level stress to trigger it. I have had plants FULL of hermies that didn't have a seed in it, as well as plants with few to no male flowers, and dozens of seeds. Any hermies popping in the last 2 weeks or so usually wont cause mature seeds. If your flower area is staggered, then the hermies late in flower can pollinate the younger plants in the area. I used to have this problem, so I reverted to One grow, one cab. This should stop the production of mature seeds. While stress does cause hermies, people forget that growing sensimilla plants is stressful to begin with. Biological clock ticking, still not pregnant. Who needs a man, I can do this myself lol. Plant equivalent of artificial insemination!!

I laughed a little when I read about the females getting aggravated when no males were around to pollinate LOL. It did make me chuckle. I am thinking half were strain related and the other half were stress related. out of 32 plants, i pulled out 12 that had flowers on them or seeds. I still am closely watching the other 20. Some didn't even have any pistels on them (just recently moved into flower, before the spotting of the hermies). But, I have plans on going to completely clean the room, tubs, lights, cords, ac unit, everything in that room will be sterilized. What a shame it is to have this happen so soon into flower, and then not spotting them til harvest. With one set of eyes (mine) good enough to see these mishaps, it seems to all fall on my shoulders when "hermies" roar their pretty ugly heads. LOL. Thanks for all the suggestions. Hopefully we will get it under control soon.

I had a question about where we find the seeds in the buds. Sometimes they are right at the base (where the pre-flowers emerge) and some are right on top. I think the ones that show up on the outside of the buds are because of light, possibly. The ones inside the buds are fully developed so I am pretty sure they were from pollen. We are in the process of cleaning out our flower room, so once everything is out and I can deep clean everything. it is insane how fast a crop can be ruined and how many. Too bad they don't have a vaccine for situations like this LOL. Some plants are so covered and some only have a few seeds. Do you have a suggestions on watching for this better before it ruins another crop???????? I need help on making sure this does not happen again. I heard you could spray the "seed sacks" with water and it would sterilize the pollen.....is this true? Thanks so much!!!!!!!!!!!!! :smokin:

no water will absolutely not "sterilize" pollen if it would the first time a rain fell on cannabis it would not have been able to reproduce. once pollen hits a pistil you get a seed. as for where they form it depends on where the pollen lands. you cold easily have had a hermie pop in random or a few. not every pollen grain is viable thats why they produce so many that and how many blow away and never see a female plant.

thank you.....it seemed far fetched but I thought I would verify. Thanks. We are in the long process of clearing out the room and cleaning EVERYTHING!! Thanks again :jointsmile:

water does absolutely make pollen ineffective. The pollen only has to be on the pistil a short time (hours?) to pollinate. After that water will ruin the pollen. This has been used for years for selective pollination of limited number of flowers or branches. Typically a plastic bag with pollen is put on a branch. The next day the bag is removed and the plant is wet down.

Actually they are both correct.

Tap water will take the pollen out right away.
And distilled/rain/RO water will , well get it wet.
Wet pollen can't fly, so it rots.

Aloha,
Weeze

Sorry for your loss. Hermaphroditism sucks, worked all that time! Been down that road & tried to fix the problem, HUGE MISTAKE!!! Toss em & start over or suffer the consequences.

:wtf:

That is what we are going. Starting over from scratch. Room has been disinfected and sterilized. Starting from seeds, won't be too long before our crop florishes again!!!