Male Harvest

Marijuana Horticulture

by Jorge Cervantes

Male flowers can produce pollen as early as two weeks after changing lights to the 12 hour day/night schedule. Watch out for early openers. Three to six weeks after initiating flowering, pollen sacks open and continue to produce flowers for several weeks after the first pods have begun t shed pollen. Once male flowers are clearly visible but not yet pen, THC production is at peak levels. This is the best time to harvest. Once males release pollen, the degradation process speeds up and flowers fall.

Harvest males carefully, especially if close to females. Cut the plant off at the base, taking care to shake it as little as possible. To help prevent accidental pollination by an unnoticed open male flower, carefully cover the male plant with a plastic bag, and tie it off at the bottom before harvesting. Or, if you can see an open pollen sack, spray it with water to make pollen unviable. Keep males used for breeding as far from flowering females as possible. Make sure to install fine screens for air coming into the flowering room and wet them down regularly to discourage rogue pollen. Isolate males until needed. After a month, the male plant will start reverting to vegetative growth even though it retains viable sacks of pollen. Males can also be coned and held in the vegetative stage until needed. Induce flowering about three weeks before viable pollen is needed. Within three to five weeks, the male will be full of viable pollen sacks.

Prolong male harvest by removing flowers with tweezers or fingernails as they appear. New flowers soon emerge after plucking old ones. Continue to remove pollen sacks until females are two weeks from full bloom. Picking off individual male flowers is a tedious, time consuming process, and it is easy to miss a few.

Harvesting most of the branches, leaving only one or two pollen-bearing limbs, is practical. A single male flower contains enough pollen to fertilize many female ovules; a single branch full of male flowers is necessary to produce enough pollen for most home breeding needs.