Crossbreeding Your First Cannabis Seeds with guest Brandon Potter

I'm not a big fan of gate keeping knowledge. If you wanna learn a skill, people shouldn't try to keep the education from you. Gate keeping happens a lot in cannabis nowadays. It was less common before when we were all just criminals together. Now that there are some legal financial opportunities in cannabis, some folks have decided that cannabis can now be a win lose sport instead of including everybody. And I'm not down with that.

If you have ever considered introducing a male and female cannabis plant to each other, to watch seeds be made and have your own pile of seeds to pheno hunt, you should absolutely do that. Breeding is not hard at all. In fact, it is so easy. It happens on accident all the time. Don't let people tell you it is too hard or that you shouldn't do it. Now, that said, you don't become any elite breeder without years of work studying

and looking at thousands of plants. But that isn't what you wanted to do, right? You just wanted to make some seeds, make seeds, save seeds, share seeds with friends, and especially patients open pollinate and preserve land races, and share those too. I firmly believe in cannabis patient self-sufficiency, and the plant wants you to make crosses even bad ones.

So this episode is for you, it's just some breeding basics, but it's really all you need to get going and after you enjoy it, there are plenty of sources of advanced breeding best practices to refine your skills later, but get started now and have fun with it. If you wanna learn about cannabis health cultivation and technique efficiently and with good cheer, I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter.

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So go to shaping fire.com to sign up for the newsletter and be entered into this month's and all future newsletter prize drawings. You are listening to Shaping Fire, and I'm your host, Shago Lows. My guest today is Brandon Potter. Brandon is co-founder of Michael Fight Solutions, a group of regeneratively minded crop advisors providing professional services to cannabis and food agriculture. He's also on the cannabis breeding team at New Breed Seed in Oregon.

Brandon earned a Masters of Science and biology, concentrating on both fungal endophytes and fungal pathogens at University of Wisconsin. During today's episode, we are talking about breeding your first cannabis plants, making your first cross. This episode will be a great primer for anyone considering making cannabis seeds for the the first time, and others who are just simply curious about the process.

If you are especially curious about breeding cannabis, be sure to check out episode 92 with Caleb I, Speca and Ryan Lee Camira about breeding S one Seeds. Then episode 71 with Daniel Morford on Pollen Collection and episode 64 on female only Breeding with Ryan Lee Chime. And then all the way back to episode 24, to hear Mean Jean from Mendocino discuss cannabis breeding on the episode entitled The Keeper Plants. On today's episode, though,

set one will focus on common motivations. Folks have to breed cannabis seeds, some of the clear opportunities there are for seed makers and choosing whether to breed indoors or outdoors. The second set looks at choosing plants to cross sifting for parents and ensuring pollination occurs. And then we wa wrap up the show in Set three, talking about the best time to harvest your seeds, curing and storing your new beans. Welcome to Shaping Fire, Brandon. Hello, Chango. It's really great to be.

Here. Awesome. Thanks for taking the time to join me. You know, um, I have been trying to put together this show for a while, but you know, it really takes, um, um, a particular kind of person to, to do like an introductory show on breeding. You know, so many of the people in the scene who I'm friends with, um, uh, they may be advanced breeders, but they don't necessarily have, um, the bringing it down to the basics for new folks level, uh, or,

or, or really all that much teaching experience. And so, um, when I got turned onto you just a, you know, a few weeks ago, uh, I mean, you, you were kind enough to send me AutoFlow seeds that I grew this summer and that, and that was great. But like, I I, I knew you just as a, as a, as a seed guy, right? But, um, when I had the opportunity to see your, um, your interviews after the AutoFlow Cup, um, I'm all like, Oh, wow, this guy really can explain what he does.

And that's when I looked you up and I found out like you had a, you had a master's and you had been a great graduate assistant, and you had been teaching, you know, biology. And I'm like, Oh, thi you know, this is the guy that I'm looking for. And then, and then, you know, we,

we connected and you were exactly the guy who I thought you were. So anyway, I appreciate you bringing your skills to us so that, um, you know, people who are tuning into the show to get like a, like a an easy, better understanding of how to start off growing your first, uh, or not just growing, but breeding your first cannabis variety. That, that this will be, uh, a good solution for them. So, so thank you for all of that.

Thank you for all the compliments and yeah, I really hope I can help some people today maybe avoid some pitfalls and wasted time that I definitely got into when I first started making seeds. And it is so time consuming, right? It's so, it's such a drag to, to put in all that time and effort and like, patience, and then get all the way to the end and find out that like, something you just screwed something up or something wasn't right, and,

and then having to start over. So, um, you know, I, I've only, uh, bred, uh, one time myself, and it was for a very particular reason. It was what, like six, seven years ago and at the, when the CBD stuff was, uh, first starting to become, uh, more readily available, uh, and the seeds at the time, you know, you'd buy, you know, CBD seeds in a pack, and, and they didn't all breed, they didn't all grow with CBD in them.

You know, there it would be, was more like, there are some CBD seeds in this pack, So, so you couldn't just like, you know, grow them all, find your females, clone them, and then have a field of cbd because not all of those female plants had CBD in them. And, and working with the patients here on Vashon Island, I, I could, I couldn't just give out seeds to people that, that they were gonna have to grow and then get tested before they

knew that it even had CBD in it. That's not like setting them up for success, right? And so my first project was to make CBD seeds that were 18 to one, but that every single female was going to show that CBD profile. And so, so, you know, I did that and gave away a bunch, and then much to my surprise, sold a bunch. And, and that was awesome. What was your motivation for starting to breed cannabis? Um, okay, Well, before, I just wanna say I can totally relate to that problem.

Back in 2013, I was, the, the first CBD seed I could get was from, so Home Seeds, it was Har Harless Zoo. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, the pack just said Most plants will be CBD dominant. It was really frustrating for me at the time because I, like CBD crew was releasing one to one seeds, so I knew that one of their parents had to be a, a CBD dominant, true breeding line, and they just weren't releasing it.

So I appreciate your work doing that . Um, but, uh, the, the first seed that I ever made, and I wouldn't, you know, this wasn't really breeding, uh, it was just making seed to have more seed. Uh, and it was the, the first strain I ever grew, which was twilight from Dutch passion, and I just made seed with it. Um, I've actually never, I never grew any of the seed I made because I didn't like the strain. So that's one, uh, one pitfall to avoid. Don't make seed if you don't.

. Actually, that's really funny to put in all that effort and then go like, uh, I'm not happy with this. I'm gonna move on . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the time it was like, I concurrently made the seed with the first grow of it, so it didn't really waste any time for me, but it was effort that, um, you know, if I knew that I didn't agree with the strain so much, I wouldn't have done. So. Um, you know, it's interesting cause like people grow for a lot of different reasons, right?

I mean, there, of course, there's just fun, right? There's cannabis enthusiasts who just, you know, freaking love the plant and they wanna do and try everything. And, um, and then there's people who are like more in it for the science, right? There are like bot but you know, botany minded, and they're all like, I must,

I must, um, I must know all plants intimately. Um, then there are some people who do it in service to patients, which was kind of like where I was coming at it from is that I needed this for patients. Um, and then there's, uh, I think most people fall into one of the last two categories, which is to get something that they uniquely love,

um, or because they need to make some money, right? And, and, um, and, uh, I think that's, uh, you know, I think people generally fall into, to those categories When you decided that you wanted to dive in and, um, you know, really study it, take your, take your, you know, you know, botany and, and, and soil and, uh, biology backgrounds and really dive into cannabis, um, you know, what were, what did you want to create with that? What was your goal?

Um, and the reason why I'm asking you, I know that I know the show isn't like about you, but, um, but what I'm hoping is, is that, um, the people who are listening to the show, who are thinking about getting into this or, or are considering it, maybe kind of giving them a little encouragement. Sure. Um, so I, I sort of always had an interest in cannabis. I didn't know that I would be in the industry necessarily, but, um, it was a goal. And even I lived in the East coast usually in, you know,

not friendly states. Uh, so I was growing black market back, back in like the early two thousands, um, and all that while I was going through formal school for biology. Uh, and then I worked for the forest service for a little bit, and then I went back to grad school for, uh, plant pathology, uh, focused on fungal pathogens.

And all of that was kind of with back in the mi you know, in the back of my mind, well, this could be used for focusing on like a natural resource career with the forest service or, uh, park service,

or I could also do cannabis with this. And especially nowadays, if you're young and you have access to, um, a lot of schools have cannabis specific programs now, or classes, uh, and even schools in unfriendly states are able to work with hemp and do really cool, uh, you know, genomic uh, cutting edge technology type stuff with it. So if I were just getting into it, I might, uh, have focused more on that in my education. Um, but yeah, I,

I always wanted to work with cannabis. I was always interested in breeding. I, I didn't really take many formal breeding classes. I really learned on the job since I've worked, uh, with a cannabis breeder. And, you know, I had a background in gen genetics and, uh, biology. But, uh, practical plant breeding is, uh, a much different thing than I had in my head at the time. Um, yes, it's is just much more directed than, you know, I,

I think evolutionarily a lot. And, uh, evolution still applies, of course, to plant breeding and artificial selection, but the numbers and how to achieve something on a human time scale are a lot different. Yeah. And the name of the game is opportunities, right? Because, uh, you know, you and I both got into breeding originally because we both saw the opportunity and the need, uh, for to, to, to have a pack of seeds that CBD was expressed in every one of those seeds.

And so that's what, you know, originally got you and I to start. But there's so many, you know, opportunities right now. Um, as somebody who's very involved with the, the cannabis breeding scene, what are the, some of the opportunities, like the niches, um, that, that are just dying to be filled right now?

So there are a couple that I see. Um, so some of the first things beyond just making seeds for preserving and growing in the future, The first breeding programs that I also started on my own were, uh, CBD programs where I was trying to get CBD dominant plants as well. And then I was also eventually trying to put CBD into AutoFlow plants.

Uh, so the AutoFlow generally was a, a missing niche that I saw maybe 10 years ago, and that's being filled, but there's still a huge deficit in the quality and variety of AutoFlow plants. So that's still a really big, um, open niche. A lot of people are moving into it.

There's a lot of new growers that are just growing AutoFlow. Um, and there are some great AutoFlow genetics, but, you know, people have only been working on AutoFlow for the last 20 years, intensely maybe 30, 40 years total as far as smokeable flower goes. And they've been working on photo periods for thousands.

So there's a lot that can be moved into outflow to improve those still just as, uh, THC cultivars also, um, smokeable hemp is turning out to be a smaller market than maybe I thought it was going to be a few years ago, but there's also a lot of, um, potential in a missing market there. So I don't know how big of a market, but there is a lack of good smokeable AutoFlow hemp.

There's increasing amounts of good smokeable, uh, photo period hemp, but that's still, uh, you know, far below THC photo periods, uh, better elites. Um, the other big market that's gonna be a little harder for small scale growers to compete with is the minor cannabinoid market. Yeah. So especially, you know, cbd, THC are relatively easy to the inheritance patterns of them. They kind of function as one co co gene where you cross

a THC dominant plant to a CBD dominant plant. They come out intermediate. Youre that generation, and it's gonna segregate one to two to one, where one, uh, 25% will be THC dominant, 50% will be intermediate, 25% will be CBD dominant. Uh, so that's a relatively easy, uh, test or, um, gene to breed with for a home breeder. You still have to get that tested. You can bioassay it, I guess. And if you're not getting high off a plant, it's probably a pure CBD plant. Uh, but what's.

That term? What's that term you just used? Bioassay ? Is, is that, is that just like, is that like kind of like a, um, like a cute phrase for smoking it? Exactly. Right. I've not heard that. That's funny. All right. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I, I actually heard that in reference to, um, I think it was Andrew, we and Gary Linkov, who was the oban mushroom field guy author, uh, they found some Jim Napoli spec Metabolis in Central Park in New York,

and they reported it as active following a bioassay. Meaning. Meaning they just ate it and hoped the head whatever went well, . Yes. Yeah. So, sorry, the term I, I interrupted you, you were, you were explaining how, uh, some of the novel cannabinoids, uh, are, are a target rich environment, but, um, but uh, that's not just for everybody because the analytics that are necessary. Yeah, it's, it's gonna be hard to compete with some of the bigger players with, um, you know.

Like your, like your neighbors at Oregon CBD seeds, right? Like they, Right. They, they've got a whole scientific setup there now for like intense analytical breeding. That's, it's hard for a normal Joe to compete with that. Yeah, exactly. Especially at numbers to create a, a plant that is not just that cannabinoid, but is worthy agronomic plant to grow. Uh, so yeah, that's, that's where I see the major, uh, market. Mm-hmm. Collapses right.

Now. Yeah. I totally agree with you on both of those. And, and, you know, if I was getting into breeding right now, I would intentionally try to stay away from, uh, the kinds of stuff that, um, um, like the big companies with deep pockets and scientific teams we're working on, because, you know, long, the short of it is that u unless it's your passion, um, all those companies are gonna get that stuff done first. And, um, you know, you don't really, it's,

it's really hard to compete with folks like that. Um, whereas, uh, you know, any anybody can, for example, um, I agree with you, auto flowers are continuing to be more and more, um, predominant for home growers and patients and, uh, and competing with, um, with light depth. And so I think there's a lot of opportunities in AutoFlow and also for, uh,

atypical terpenes, for example, like menthol, right? Like sure, there, there's some plants that have gotten menthol, but, um, you know, there's, there's not a lot and there are a lot of other flavor pro terpene profiles, um, that are as fringe as menthol that,

that people can find and, and, and just run with. And, um, I think that is something that, uh, is more about, uh, uh, you know, having a decent size sift and putting the time to smell it and then, and then focusing like you can, you can get to that with, with backyard or or bedroom breeding a lot easier than you're gonna be able to create a, a fricking thcv dominant strain.

Mm-hmm. . And in, in some ways, even though those are inherited in complex multi-gen genetic fashion, uh, something like a terpene profile, there is a limit to the scalability simply because one, some of these large firms can't smell every plant and can't take care of every plant in a way that really gives you a good idea of what the terpene, uh, profile or the, the aroma profile is gonna be at the end of the cure.

So even if they have all the genomic data and they know exactly what base pairs are in that plant, we don't really have the phenotype data of what genes are associated with different terpene profiles.

So that's an area where home growers are still very competitive. Uh, something like disease resistance can also, even though it's very complex and for known genes, the big players are gonna have an advantage if you have a plant that you observe to be resistant, um, you know, that's something you can observe at home, even if it's a, you know, complex, uh, trait.

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Um, these, these companies that are doing, uh, huge, huge, huge grows of thousands of plants, um, they are totally not gonna have the staff and the labor to be able to go and sniff all the plants to find out, you know, what they have that special. And, um, that really, uh, does create a,

a stronger position for the home growers. Um, another, another, uh, opportunity that I think there is is for short flowering plants and, and, and I, and I mean short flowering photos that are under like, let's say 52 days. Um, because as we know when, when those of us in, um, well, let's just say those of us who are not in California, right? Um, we, we buy these seeds and we get California seeds and, and you know, if you're gonna grow 'em indoors, that's one thing.

Cuz you can pretend California in your bedroom, but if you're gonna grow outdoors, um, California seeds don't just thrive or they don't thrive just anywhere. Cuz most of us have got, um, you know, other, other kinds of weather. I mean, I mean, I'm an extreme example here on Vashon Island where, um, you know, our, our plants start flowering around August 15th, so an eight weeker is gonna be like October 15th. And like I'm two and a half to three weeks into my rain season at that point.

Like, there's no chance I'm gonna finish anything from California in Western Washington. And so, um, so I look for very short things like the, uh, like there's a bunch of under 55 day stuff from Humboldt Seed Company where, you know, they may just barely be that where I live versus California. But, um, but there's no doubt that they're short and that's a great opportunity too.

I mean, if somebody could, if somebody could get a reliable great terpene profile, 45 dare, um, I think it'd be a huge breakthrough. Yeah, I, I agree. And that there's, um, you know, increasingly I'm seeing people selling what they call fast photos,

which are a photo period crossed with an AutoFlow. Uh, so they will be, they'll function as photo periods, you can veg them, you can take clones, but that auto is either speeds up its flowering time and or it triggers earlier from, uh, diminished light. Uh, so it has a longer critical night period than, uh, a pure photo period. I actually haven't come across those yet. I want to come across that myself. The idea to have a, um, a a uh, a fast flower that I can clone is very attractive to me.

Yeah. I think that Humboldt seed company, uh, has some like the. Hmm, um, hmm. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to start using that keyword . So, um, alright, so we, we, you know, we've, we've kind of established like a whole bunch of different reasons that people breed and what some of the opportunities are. Um, let's, um,

let's talk a bit about, uh, space and materials. Um, because there, there's a lot of different ways to do this and anybody who tells you that there's only one way to breed, um, they're just kind of full of themselves because there's lots of way to do this. Um, would you go ahead and, uh, just kind of like, um, describe and compare, um, what your thoughts are, uh, about breeding indoors versus breeding outdoors. Is going to depend on what your final goals are to some extent and what your

situation is. You can do either. Uh, if your goal is to produce a plant that's being grown outdoors, then there are benefits to growing outdoors. And you can also grow outdoors and indoors where you're breeding a cycle outdoors and then breeding indoors over the winter or

some combination like this. Um, of course indoors is more accessible to more people, uh, but again, it depends on what your, uh, final goals are and there's, there's different ways you can tweak your breeding scheme and methodology to, uh, buffer against some of the negatives for either situation. Uh, so, um, yes, both can be done. I, I don't know that there's an inherit benefit, it just depends on what your end goals are.

To what degree do you think it's important to breed the same environment where the seeds are gonna be grown? Um, I think it's fairly significant, especially for outdoor varieties. Um, like, I'll give an example where, uh, we have worked with some AutoFlow that are bread in Oregon where the, they're grown outdoors in the summer usually, uh, when during the dry period, so like July to late August. And the weather during that period is usually eighties to a hundred during the

day lately. Uh, and then it still drops to, you know, 40 to 60 at night. So you get this cool night period while those same autos when they were grown in the Midwest ended up really short. And one of the things we kind of theorize is that they're responding to, um, basically heat units. So because it's still hot in the night in the Midwest, they metabolism is sort of still running in their aging in a way, but they're not actively elongating and growing in the same way that they do,

uh, in Oregon. Um, so there's definitely environmental effects that can have like unforeseen or significant consequences on how the plant reacts, uh, depending on where you're growing it, of course for indoor breeders, those are, you know, the differences are gonna be minor. Well, there still will be some between and among different indoor grow setups, but it's gonna be a much more significant effect when you take an indoor outdoor or vice versa.

That's an interesting idea about the, the hot nights. I think you may have just, uh, solved something that happened to me. Um, earlier this summer I was, um, running a, a specialty AutoFlow indoors, which I normally just run 'em outdoors, but I was doing an indoors and it, it, it was a, uh, it was like a really squat plant. It didn't stunt, but it, it stopped at about 18 inches and it was heavy. I mean, it was heavy for 18 , but I didn't understand why it, it didn't,

um, get the height that I was expecting and other people did. Well, it was, it was indoors and it was hot in this, this spring here. And my, my nights were hot and I bet you that, um, those, those additional heat units, um, kept them surprisingly small because it was so hot in the evening. So I, I had never heard of that analysis before. So.

It could be something, you know, not necessarily how I described it. Like there, there is a technique called temperature diff and greenhouses where they, uh, affect the height of greenhouse plants by raising the temperature in the morning for a certain period of time and plants will react physiologically to things

like that. So, um, it could be either or both of those things. And I've, I've seen similarly, I've seen a plant, an AutoFlow that was bright outdoors in Oregon or in greenhouses and, uh, it was grown indoors under 24 hours of light. It ended up about a foot tall, like branched like six branches and each branch had about a two liter nugget on it just to the soil. It, it does not look like you normally, you know, it's a four or five foot plant with normal size, uh, buds and structure.

So they definitely are reacting differently. Um. So let's talk about the advantages in space between indoor and outdoor. So, um, indoors of course, great, there's lots of great reasons for it for, for privacy and control of your environment and maybe your breeding for indoor

plants, cuz that's what you want to provide to people. Um, but also outdoors great because you've got, you know, if you, if you don't live in the city, you may well have, uh, unlimited space and so you can do a more significant, um, you know, run with, with to produce more seeds. At one time, um, I was talking to, um, to, uh, Dan Jimmy, um, at, um, at, uh, No Automatics, and he's all like, when, when he wants to bring something to market, um,

he's looking to produce 30,000 seeds of it. And I'm like, holy crap, that's a, that's a lot of, um, that's a lot of moms and, and a lot of processing those, those seeds. And so, um, you know, depending on what your particular needs are as the breeders, that's really going to influence whether or not you choose to grow indoor or outdoor. It's, it's, it's not just one variable, it's probably, you know, eight or 10 or 12 variables that you have to decide which is right for you. Yes, totally.

And that's a lot of these questions we have to start with where your goal is. Are you just breeding for yourself for home? Are you trying to produce commercial quantities, things like that. And that will change, uh, you know, how you approach the project to begin with. What do you think about, um, um, you know, a lot, a lot more people are breaking up indoor space into sub spaces by using grow tents versus just, you know, using an entire room, like a grow room.

They might take their garage and put, you know, you know, four or six, you know, tents in there and treat them as individual spaces. I, I think that's a pretty novel approach to, to turn one room into six rooms. And they're doing this for breeding? Yeah, they're doing this for breeding. Okay. So I think it's valid as long as you meet a certain, uh, pollen control, uh, threshold. So especially cannabis pollen, it's wind pollinated,

it moves around really easily. Uh, so I've seen people doing this where they're filtering usually through, uh, a me filter. I, I think anything rated above a nine will work for pollen, but probably, uh, an 11 to 13 is better and then they'll have them under positive pressure blowing in clean, filtered air. The problem is if you have a bunch, you know, right next to each other, you also want to be filtering the outlet air with the same filter, um, or higher. And then, uh, with grow tens,

they're usually sewn together. So if you have any holes in that tent, pollen will be escaping out of those holes. Uh, you can, you know, tape them up or I've seen heat sealed tents where there aren't, uh, any holes in the seals. Um, but it, anytime you open that tent as well, you're going to be exposing the rest of the tens to pollen. So there are,

there are ways to manage that. Uh, you can build tents where there's irrigation into the tents and you, once the pollen starts to drop, you close the tent, you never open it until it's harvested. Um,

so that's one way to prevent pollen contamination. Uh, another way, you know, that's for producing pretty much, uh, commercial quantity seed lots though, if you're devoting a whole tent to it. If you're just breeding, you can do, uh, pollen bags or an individual, uh, branch pollination probably with just as much control over pollen contamination. Uh, and you know, if you're not opening the tents, that's different. You have a situation where they're completely sealed,

that's the ideal situation. But if, if you have bro tents and there's these, you know, pinholes all over the seams and things like that, well that might still work broadly, but you're going to have a certain amount of pollen contamination from one to the other, especially if you're opening and going tent to tent. And you can minimize that with spraying water and things like that. But cannabis pollen is, is very movable.

Yeah, and I think that's a good point. And and I, and I think for most po folks, uh, you know, they're, they're probably gonna start with their, their one tent and their one project, and then after they have success and they give some seeds away to patients and they sell some, uh, you know, to, you know, friends or online or something, uh, and they were like, Oh hell, I think I wanna,

I think I wanna do this some more. Well, you know, okay, so, so maybe now you, you get a couple more tents, but you're gonna gonna spend some of that money you made to get some like really nice tents. Right. So I've, I've had a bunch of really mediocre to crappy tents, and then I, I, and then I, you know, Gorilla sent me a tent and I'm like, Oh crap, this is, um,

this is a whole different level than the other tents I've been using. And, you know, if I was doing this, I'm certainly, you know, not pushing, you know, saying that people need to use Gorilla tens. I'm just saying that there are different, uh, grades of tens and, and as, as somebody decides to take this more seriously, if they choose to, they will probably upgrade their gear to be on par with their level of interest.

Yes. I, I would say that's valid. I, if you're producing a tent full of seed, though, that's a lot of seed, like you said, 30,000, uh, seeds for a commercial lot, uh, from Dan. That's, you know, you could do that in a 10 by 10 area with, I, I, you know, I'm used to producing seed outdoors, but probably a thousand, uh, maybe 1500 watts, uh, could easily produce that much seed.

Yeah, I agree with you on that. Um, but if you're, you know, if you're, if, if you've gotten to the point that there's one, Well, I, I , I'm, I'm pretty sure that, uh, one tent can grow to be five tents pretty fast when somebody's got the bug. Um, so you, you said that most of the time that you are breeding, um, it's outdoors. Um, let's talk a little bit about, uh,

doing that responsibly. Um, uh, I have, I, I have no idea what process you use, but, but the, the main thing I want to hit on is, uh, folks that just let their pollen go like into the air wild, um, especially if they are in, uh, neighborhoods, right? Um,

it's, it's been very challenging here on Vashon Island. We, we, you know, we, we did an education campaign here, um, and, uh, we're not running into it as much as we did say in like 2015, but in 20 13, 14, 15 times, um, we had people that were just had putting a male plant with some female plants in their yard. And, you know, our whole island is only like 14 miles long. And, um, you know, with enough people letting pollen, you know,

go on the island, all sorts cross contamination was happening. And, you know, patient gardens got ruined by being seated because they didn't know that their neighbor at the end of the block was letting pollen just like, just like raw dogging it out into the, out into the air. And so, you know, I, I definitely discourage people from just letting like males go. Um, but you know, you're doing this at a professional level. Um, uh, you know, are,

are you, is that how you guys do it with the pollen? Or, or, I imagine that you have more pollen control even outdoors, um, where you're, where you're applying it in a more controlled way. I don't know though. And, and, and, and so I'll leave that up to you to explain. There are pollen isolation distances for like commercial seed production. If you're going to do an outdoor, uh, production of seed,

which I'm talking like many, many acres of seed production. Uh, otherwise, you know, all the breeding that we do. And what I would do outdoors is, uh, the plants are bagged, so usually we do all female breeding, and so we're partially reversing plants to self them. And those plants are bagged before any pollen is dropped. So they never release pollen openly,

It's just onto themselves inside the bag. And similarly, if we're doing, say, a production, we will have it in a pollen isolation, like I described earlier, with a, um, filtered inlet and outlet. And then once they start producing pollen, they don't get opened again. So we're not, we're not just releasing pollen. Um, and if you, if you're doing something like a backyard, and this is another thing, like you really need to know what your goals are.

Why is someone leaving a male out there just, you know, continuously poll pollinating his female or their female, um, you know, how many seeds are they trying to produce? You don't need much pollen to produce a lot of seed. Uh, so if you're gonna do a select pollination in your backyard, I would have that mail in a closet or in some, you know,

you can do it in a little greenhouse, uh, something like that. And personally, when I have a single mail at home like this, and it's not bagged, I remove all of the, any, uh, forming male flowers before they drop pollen until the female is ready to receive pollen. And then I'll let the males develop, collect that pollen, or pair them in the closet, bring the female inside, let them, you know, uh, have sex with each other,

and then I kill the male immediately. Uh, so doing something like that, or a more controlled pollination, if you're trying to get a big lot of seed, then I, if you can try to bring the females to the male in an enclosed space and you can let them hang out for a couple days, even in the dark, uh, just to get pollinated and then kill the male. Or you could do it a couple times, you know, bring them in at night and just shake that mail all over them,

take 'em out again. Um, and you could keep the mail for a couple weeks, do that, and then kill the mail whenever it's done. Yeah, I like that idea. And, and I think the moral the story is, is a, is like, you know, there, there's no way in one show that we are going to be able to cover all variables. Everyone might consider from making their first, they're making their first cross.

What we're trying to get across is that there are a lot of ways to do this and make sure you do your homework and try not to be irresponsible with your pollen. I think that's kind of like the generally the point. Yeah, totally. And if you're just letting your mail out there pollinate everything, you're also only doing, you're limiting yourself to one pollination, uh, project a year as well. Yeah, that's true. Because your entire property is gonna be covered with that one pollen. Yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. Right? Yeah. At least 12 that's alive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right on. All right, cool. Well, let's go ahead and take our first short break When we come back, we're gonna talk a little bit about, um, the, this new vocabulary people are using about bio intelligent seeds. So, um, you are listening to Shaping Fire and my guest today is Crop Advisor Brandon Potter. There are so many seed banks nowadays that you really have options in who to

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no caps. Whether you are starting with new beds or pots, or if you want to add some zing to tired soil, choose dynami to maximize your plant's potential. Dynami O Endo, Microrisal inoculate. Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire. I'm your host Shago Lo, and my guest today is Crop Advisor Brandon Potter. So before the break, we were talking about, uh, you know, some of the things to consider, uh,

when deciding whether or not you were gonna breed indoors or outdoors. And, um, while people can certainly breed in any kind of a substrate, there is this interesting discussion that's been going on the last few years about bio intelligent seeds. And, uh, the idea with bio intelligent seeds is that they are grown in soil and seeds that are grown in soil, um, have got a different biological makeup, and they know what to do when they are presented, Uh,

soil again. And you know, at the beginning when I first heard that, I'm like, that's a really cool idea, is being a living soil guy like I am. I said, But I really don't know what the, what the reasons would for that would be,

like a, like a seeds, a seed. Um, but then last episode, um, when we were talking with, uh, Jeff Lowen fells about endophytic bacteria, Well, this is where the whole case for bio intelligence seeds I think starts because, um, the idea that there is endophytic bacteria, which if you haven't listened to that show yet, is, um, bacteria that spends some, a part of it, of some part of its life cycle in the cannabis plant.

It's interesting to find out that these, these, these, these endo bacteria will, um, uh, come up through the roots into the plant and enter a newly forming seed. And there is, um, oh, I forget what it's called, but it's, it's another type of bacteria, uh, which means that it is bacteria from the neighboring environment that lands on the flower. And so, and it gets folded into the seeds, um, from the branch.

And so these seeds are going to be all packed up with the bacteria that it, that the seeds gonna need wherever it goes, which makes it a more reliable and people are using this term bio intelligent seed, and I'm very attracted to that. Um, what are your thoughts on, on, uh, seeds that are grown in living soil versus more inert mediums like cocoa or something?

So I definitely agree and am intrigued by, uh, the interactions that are going on with the environmental, uh, organisms and the seed and how they can pass from the environment to the seed and, uh, back. Uh, I am more familiar with fungal interactions in that way cuz fungi also form endophytic relationships within a plant body, including some within the seed. Uh, but I am learning more about the bacterial, uh, cycles, the rof phage, uh, and things like this.

And there are also, of course, bacteria within the plant body, um, of the, of the seed. So it's in the embryo of the seed. There's also, you know, a, a plethora of things on the seed coat. Um, so one of the previous practices are, is often to be like, Oh, put your plants, uh, your seeds in hydrogen peroxide or bleach water. And I, I would really only do that if you think there's a pathogen on the seed coat.

Uh, so there's definitely gonna be differences in the population that are colonizing seeds that are grown in organic substrates and, and living soil and things like this compared to, uh, cocoa or more sterile media. Uh, there's still, you know, I say sterile media, nothing is sterile. There's definitely organisms in there as well. There population is going to be different than a different media, um, different types of organisms, maybe, uh,

species as well as total population density. Uh, you know, I haven't seen specific numbers on this, but in general, I would assume, uh, or expect that living soil is going to have higher diversity and more

likely to have beneficial organisms, uh, but not necessarily. You could also, you know, pathogens and, uh, latent pathogens can also, uh, get into the seed, uh, even beri conform and endophytic infection in a cannabis plant, uh, potentially and not show symptoms and even get into the seed or the plant. The mother plant may have cannabis on the buds and there will ber on the seed coat mostly, but some of the seeds may also be, uh, internally effect infected.

And that's going to be cultivar path of far specific on whether or not that's happening. But, um, so my point is that yes, there's going to be a lot of potential beneficial relationships that we can exploit and how you produce the seed will affect that. Um, but it's also a pathogen risk that these organisms are in there. So one, one thing to say about, at least for, uh, endophytic fungi of the aerial parts of the plant.

So this is the parts of the plant that are going to be producing the seed and will, um, potentially, uh, provide the inoculate to colonize the seed. Um, those fungi are usually, uh, acquired horizontally from the environment. So it's not just your soil, it's where you're growing the plant. If you're growing that plant under, uh, a canopy of a certain tree, you're going, you might, you're gonna expose it to a different, uh, potential population of endophytes than if you grew it indoors

or under a different species of canopy tree, uh, something like that. So there, it's hard to predict which one's going to be most beneficial because this is all so new, we, uh, don't really know how to manipulate it in that secondary way from environmental manipulation to help inoculate the seed with the proper microorganisms.

We are gaining some knowledge of, oh, this is mic microorganism is beneficial and we can inoculate, uh, the plant perhaps while it's growing the seed or the seed, um, post-harvest, um, to help it get that organism associated with it. Uh, you know, it, it, there's a lot unknown about it. I in general, the bigger the diversity, the more diverse, uh, the population of microbes are, the more resilient and more likely you will have beneficial symb in there with it. Uh, yes. Right on. I think.

It's not guaranteed. Yeah, right. On a very, very, very good point. And you know, this whole idea of of of bacteria and uh,

uh, fungus, that that is on board a seed. This is, this is brand new science and it is really strange to consider the idea that, uh, different seeds from the same mother plant will have different, um, you know, endophytic bacteria in it, uh, because of where it is on the plant, and then when that those seeds are germinated, um, that is a, um, that bacteria expresses itself differently in different ways in the different

plants. So, um, I'm gonna use the word pheno, even though it, it's not appropriate, but, but people will understand what I mean. We are always talking about different pheno in one seed run. Um, and, and what we're realizing now is like, yeah, there are those different, um, uh, variety expressions within the seed run, but now it's even more complex because each seed is going to have onboarded different endophytic bacteria depending on where it was

in the plant. And us trying to figure out how influential that is, that opens up a whole bunch of new doors. You mentioning making seeds under the canopy of a particular plant, um, you know, or a tree or something. We may find out that the, the, the fungus that's, you know, being dropped from these plants in its own pollen that's in the air might also be influencing our cannabis plants. And that's just like a whole new brave new world.

Yeah. And, and the way some of these organisms are inherited by the plant are, some of them are passed from the parent to the seed, and that's vertical transmission. Some of them are acquired from the environment during the plant's life cycle, which would be horizontal transmission. And some plants are more prone to acquiring, um, their endophytic partners and some lean towards systemic,

uh, vertical transmission of them. So something like a, there's a lot of grass into fights that are passed, uh, parent to offspring. And I'm really not sure where cannabis lies along that continuum. If you can, uh, you know, if you take a variety and it has a certain microbiome associated with its internal seed, you grow that a couple times. Is it keeping that through generations? This is something I'm unclear of for cannabis. Uh, and it might be, you know,

maybe some of the organisms are kept and some of them are lost. Uh, so there's definitely a lot of work to do. I there's a potential here too for a scientist if they can figure out a stably inherited, uh, you know, microbe that they can sell to breeders or seed producers to improve their, their existing varieties. That's, uh, you know, definitely a marketable product for someone if that's. Possible. Yeah, that's, that's a really interesting idea. In fact, they actually do that for grasses.

There are endophyte inoculated grasses, usually fungal endophytes, um, because grass endophytes often have a toxin that is poisonous to livestock. So they've developed these endophytes that are symb with the grass, they help reduce insect bi, but they don't poison the live livestock. Right on. All right, so let's, uh, let's, uh, cycle ourselves back, um, uh, off the theory and back onto, uh,

checking these boxes for the the new grower. So, so, so, you know, the, the, the new breeder rather, So the breeder knows why they want to grow, and they've got an idea of, of what they want to breed and they figured out whether or not they're gonna do it indoor and outdoor and how they're gonna control their pollen. And, um,

and so now they're actually like choosing their plants, right? And, and the actual characteristics now, um, you know, for, for in an advanced breeder who are, who are going to go, um, many generations, this can get confusing very quickly, but what I'm gonna ask you is that if, if we're just talking about the first time somebody is making a cross, and so they are going to be looking for a, a male that they like and they are looking for, um,

a female or potentially a group of females that they like, um, to just get this what I'll call F one. Um, what are some of the plant characteristics that you recommend that a first time breeder look at, um, when considering their males and females? So again, you're gonna have to start with whatever the breeding goal is. Uh, and you might have certain goals that are, you know, required checks that, that you have to mark off and some other that are negotiable.

And there might be traits that come up in your program as you move along that you, you know, reprioritize that list. Um, but in, in general for small scale growers, um, it, one of the, okay, so the first decision you have to make is, are you doing regular seeds or feminized seeds? If you, um, are doing regular seeds, I actually generally advise against choosing a single male to choose a single male properly.

You would want to create a bunch of test crosses with a bunch of different males and pick, pick the male that actually passes on the genes that you want, which is, uh, quite a bit of work. You, that's how a large scale breeder might do it. But for a home breeder, that's a lot of work that's, uh, I think might be better spent moving forward in generations as either a half si population where you're selecting the female that you can get a good read on

the characteristics from and you're using a group of males. Um, or you could do, uh, you know, most traditionally people do pedigree breeding where they're picking one male to one female. And the risk with that is if you pick the wrong male, you send your line down the wrong road. If you're buffering that with a group of males and you're picking based on characteristics, you know, are present in a female, uh, it's gonna take longer.

But, uh, long term you might be more likely to reach a product without having to go back and start again. Um, but it, so for characteristics that I would look for in either a male or female one, you want to have whatever characteristics you're breeding for should be present in both if possible, or you're planning on working more generations to get it,

uh, standardized. Uh, but general vigor, you know, uh, disease resistance, things like that on top of, you know, most people will be selecting for terpene structure, resin, uh, potency, things, things like that will be in most people's selection list. Um. So in your example, when you have, uh, multiple males, um, in that example, you're gonna have multiple males and multiple females.

Are you trying to hit one female with multiple males? And then you're gonna, you're gonna sift and search the, the seeds that that one female, uh, uh, puts out. I've, I've never, I've not heard this, uh, multiple males, uh, approach unless people were trying to, uh, like do an open pollination and, um, you know, preserve, preserve a line that might be lost or something. Mm-hmm. . Um, so I, I like to work on a population basis, uh, especially for early,

early generations of lines before I start in breeding. Uh, but so basically why I, I, I lean against single males. I, you, let's see, how, how should I explain this ? Um, okay. So when you do a selfieing, you're increasing the homozygosity to the next generation by 50%. If you do a full SIV mat, so a male to a female, or one female to a separate female, you're increasing it by 25%, and then it goes down half.

If you're doing a half siv mat where you're picking, uh, one select female mother plant out of a population of males that pollinated it. So it's the slowest form of breeding in that respect. But you are moving the line forward in a more general way. Whereas if you're doing the, the more specific in breeding types of breeding that are more traditional, say SIB is most traditional, um, for cannabis or celling is a lot more common. Now you're moving it towards homozygosity a lot faster.

But to screen the amount of lines to get the exceptional plants will be, uh, more difficult. You have to plant larger populations. You're more likely to take a step down an inbred line that isn't the good step. Um, so it's not that multiple males is better than doing it that way, but for a home breeder, a small scale breeder, that's the technique I would lean towards more of like an open pollinated variety, uh, uh,

production method rather than in breeding. When you inbred, you're generally producing parent lines to make hybrids out of, and, and that is gonna be much more difficult for a home breeder to produce exceptional hybrids than, you know, someone with a really large operation. So, um, I know that some people resist going about their breeding projects because they don't believe that they have got like a lot of room,

um, for large sifts. I mean, we, we all idealize large sifts and in, and in a and, and in a perfect world where you've got lots of time, labor and space, that's awesome. Um, but you know, when, when a, when a new breeder says to me, Oh, I, I would really like to cross this and this, but you know, I don't really have all that much, um, all that much room for a lot of plants, or, you know, or I usually just say, Just do it dude or person, you know, Just,

just just go ahead and do it and get your first one done. You don't have to, you know, you can always get better as, as new projects come about for you. And then, and then after your original cross, if you're going to start in breeding, well then, then you can fine tune it there. Um, you talk about a lot of these different variables that we want to control for, but, but I, am I right that, that that controlling for all these variables is really about getting more

and more sophisticated. And if you've got, you know, your male line that you like and your female line that you like, just get 'em in the same damn like space and let nature do its thing. Like you don't have to overthink this. Yeah, absolutely. And this is, this comes back to what your goals are. If you just wanna make, say you wanna make seed to have seed to pheno hunt for the rest of your life,

you could do that in one grow. And if you have two lines that you like, you, you know, smash them together, you have seed and you can either move forward generational with that seed or just pheno hunt that seed forever. And for that, you know, especially if someone just wants, Oh, I just want a bunch of Dan seed and have it forever, you could get two elite female clones that, you know, you like, put them together and other people would start a seed company for that.

And that's very easy if you have access to those original genetics to do. But if you have two lines that you like, uh, you know, absolutely don't, don't put barriers up for yourself, um, and just, just get it done. Make the seeds and see what you end up with. Uh,

there's a lot of different directions you could take that as well. If you, if you are an indoor grower and you have those plants, uh, on hold, you can do back cross breeding type things if you're selecting for certain traits in one of the parents, uh, or you can inre or you can just grow that seed. For. So we, we, we now are, uh, talking about being in a situation where we have, we have chosen our, um,

you know, either one or now I'm liking your case for multiple males. And, um, you've got your one or multiple females depending on what your goals are and what your, um, you know, how much space you have. Um, what do you do about the, the pollen from dropping from the male when the female is

ready for it, Right? Because, um, you know, since you're gonna be bringing together two different varieties, um, you know, it's entirely likely that the mail is going to be ready at a different time as the female, And I've not run into this since I've, I've only done this once. Um, I just, I just put him next to each other and I got lucky. Um, would you speak to this idea of, of having the pollen drop at the right time?

Um, and, and you'll probably end up tying this back into the show to, um, your idea for just, just maybe bagging some of the branches to collect it and put it on later. But just kinda speak to this idea to the male and female being ready at different times, which unfortunately happens with humans too. So I hopefully you have some background on how long your plants are gonna

flower or something like that. Uh, generally I would start the mail first because even if it's ready first, it you, it'll produce pollen for a certain, you know, window of time and you can get your female, uh, ready in that time, or you can save the pollen. Uh, generally females, you know, people like to hold the pollen off of them until they're, you know, if you have an eight week flower, maybe week three, so that it has enough, uh,

stigmas to produce a good seed yield. If you pollinate earlier than that, it'll be fine. You just might get a lower seed deal. Uh, your seeds might be bigger. Um, you could also have the female and male together the whole time, and it'll eventually produce new flowers. That's fine as well.

You just have some different seed ages. Um, so as far as the best way to pollinate, uh, you know, if you can get your male dropping flowers at the great right time or a little bit before that, and you hold your mail in a separate area until you want to pollinate, that is ideal. Um, if you have to save pollen,

I personally try to avoid saving pollen. It's, it's always been hit or miss for me, Uh, but you can get the pollen collected, remove any flower material from there, and save it with desiccant in, uh, the freezer. And that should last theoretically a long time. I have never pushed it because saving pollen has always not worked out well for

me. It always, uh, get better seed production when it's fresh. Um, similarly, like, uh, feminized, uh, pollen producers especially sometimes have trouble dropping the pollen out of the answers. So you can collect the entire flowers, dry the flowers, and then kind of grind them up and the pollen will fall out and then apply that by hand. Uh, that works all right. I, it's always preferable that the pollen just drops and it's less work and

everything works out all right. Um, but usually I would just, uh, get rid of the mail as soon as you pollinate, unless you're leaving it in a tent or something like that and letting it go until harvest. Yeah, I agree with you about saving pollen. Uh, I have found that most of the time when I've done that, um, it gets, it gets moist in rots or it starts to clump on the female flower when I go to

apply it. So, um, you know, this is, you know, in retrospect this is pretty cheesy, but, um, when I, when I did my cross, I literally wrapped the mail into the, the female plants, um, and put them on a, um, uh, on, on my deck in a, um, in a tent and just, uh, you know, let them, let them do it. And, um, naturally, and I got lucky cause I didn't have to save it. Um, but you know, there's a lot of people who save pollen successfully,

and there are certainly ways to do it. Um, but, you know, since we're talking about somebody doing this for their first time, um, we wanna try to continually keep this as as simple as possible. Um, where in the, in the process do you normally add the pollen to the female print? And when, and when I say process, I mean like where in the, in the flowering cycle, do you want to, um, um, you know, encourage the pollen, uh, immediately as soon as you start to see pistols? Or do you,

do you wanna wait until the flowers are, are more mature? Uh.

So generally I would wait until the flowers are a little more mature. However, it, depending on your situation, if there is potential for, say, pollen contamination, you might want to get that pollen all over the branch or plant that you're making so that if there is a few pollen grains from a, you know, fiber hemp grow a couple miles away, blowing around there, you've already fully pollinated with your plant, uh, with your preferred pollen source, uh, to limit, uh,

potential contamination. Otherwise, I would wait until there's a little more flour and, and you get better seed yields. Right on. So, um, how do you know that you have effectively pollinated your plants? A lot of first time, uh, breeders, you know, they'll, they'll either, you know, add the pollen themselves or put 'em near each other and they're hoping for it. And then, and then because they know they don't have a lot of experience,

they're all like, Did, did it, did it do it? You know? So what are, what are the first visual signs that the plant has, um, accepted the pollen successfully? Yeah, and sometimes it can be hard to tell. Um, and, and generally the first things that you'll see is that the pistols kind of start to turn brown. This can also just happen by touching them. So if you touched them, it might just turn brown, cuz you touched them . But it's, it's, it kind of becomes distinctive once you get an eye for it.

It's like a certain way that the, the pistol shrivels back. And then pretty soon within a week maybe you can see, uh, the of, of you'll start to develop into a seed, uh, through the bra. At what point, like, um, will they start to see seeds form? Like I know that we'll talk more about how long to let the seeds to run and, and mature during the, uh, down the line in this conversation. Um, but when will they start seeing the, the green, uh, very young seeds, um, start to form.

It's a little bit plant dependent, depending how like, uh, the structure of their bral that's surrounding what's going to become the seed. Uh, but as, as soon as a week I can see them sometimes, and they usually appear white at first and the pistols still are attached, Uh, you kind of can see them poking out sometimes. Um, you know, you hit on femini seeds briefly, and I want to go back to that for one moment. So, you know, this show is not about, uh, you know, breeding or, you know,

making femini seeds in their importance. Uh, we've done that on other shows, but, but I would just like you to speak to the idea of, of the first time breeder, considering whether or not they want to make femini seeds. Just walk us through like, you know, what those considerations might be for the first time breeder.

Yeah, so there's definitely positives and negatives. The, the first positive for a growing female only like a female only breeding pro project is that you're getting a read on both sides of whatever cross you're gonna make, uh, so you can make more effective selections. Uh, the, the major drawback to femini seed, especially for home producers is that it's less reliable and that some, some plants don't reverse as well. And you're more likely to have a pollen failure.

You can have a nicking failure where like, you know, especially you mentioned earlier about getting the male flowers at the right time as the female is ready. You know, if you have a short flowering indica and you're trying to cross that to a long flowering tropical variety, uh, you might want to have the short flowering variety be the pollen donor, or you're gonna have to flower that long flowering variety far before the short

flower flowering variety. Cuz you could, you know, you could trigger a tropical variety and it doesn't produce pollen for another eight weeks. Meanwhile, the other plant's done. Um, so with femini seed, you're more likely to get a, a pollen failure, like I mentioned, where either you're gonna have to put extra work into collecting the flower and helping that pollen escape, uh, or it just doesn't produce very viable pollen and you get lower seed yields.

Uh, so, and you don't wanna be, if you're having a long term breeding project, if you're having pollination issues from the beginning, that's a red flag. Uh, so some varieties are gonna be better as regular varieties for, for breeding because of that, uh, for home breeders, um,

or seed seed producers. Uh, but as far as functionality like, you know, femini seed isn't genetically modified or anything like that, as far as I'm aware, there is no functional difference in the plants that are grown from it. You can breed female, uh, femini seed to regular seed. You can breed femini seed only for generations. That's fine. Um, so yeah, those are, those are the major drawback I see about femini seed is pollen production.

And you have to understand at least some about the technology of how to reverse a plant, which is pretty accessible nowadays. All right. Um, so let's go ahead and take our second, uh, short break. When we come back, we're gonna talk about, uh, judging when to, uh, collect the seeds and, uh, harvest them, handling them and, and, and prepping them for whatever you're gonna do next. Um, you are listening to Shaping Fire, and my guest today is Crop Advisor Brandon Potter.

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That's North Coast Dot rolling. And when in Michigan, Ask for North Coast at your favorite shop North Coast. Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire. I'm your host, Shingle Lo and my guest today is Crop Advisor Brandon Potter. So here we are at the big finish. So, um, now we've got plants that have got seeds in them. Um, we have successfully, uh, pollinated and we are, uh,

so grateful to have reached this point with the plant. Um, you know, chances are by the time somebody is at this point, they have already grown cannabis before, so they know how to successfully grow and harvest cannabis. Um, in your experience, are there any other particular care instructions that are different than

growing a regular plant? When you're growing for seed? Um, uh, I'm thinking like, you know, different, um, you know, different nutrients that you would normally use or different or different light or, I don't know, anything. Is there anything different when a seed is being grown for, excuse me, when a plant is being growed for seed than when we're just, uh, growing it for smokeable usable flower?

Um, so generally I would give it more of a veg nutrient type profile through its entire life, uh, than if I were smoking for flour and I wouldn't do any type of flushing or anything like that. Uh, you want the plant to kind of csse on its own, not because it's being starved of any nutrients. Um, other than that it's, it's pretty similar to growing for flour.

Right on. So for a lot of folks, you know, the, the, the trying to figure out when to harvest is one of the more challenging aspects because, um, for many people, if they're doing photos, um, you know, people, a lot of people are just looking for, uh, the, you know, a 20% ish ish of, of trichomes that have gone amber. And of course, you know, when you're, when you're a more, uh, experienced, uh, cultivator, you will know how to recognize swollen flowers and the color changes and,

you know, the change in the pistols and all these extra things. But really, um, the first rule of thumb that, that most novice cultivators go with is the, is the 20%, um, amber trichomes, unless it's an AutoFlow, which which don't really amber up the same way. Um, what do you look for when deciding when to, um, to harvest the seeds? Because, you know,

we've all gotten seeds that didn't look like they had finished maturing. And, uh, you know, for for many seed varieties, we're looking for, you know, a darkened seed potentially with, you know, striping on it, depending on what kind of a plant it is. But, uh, but we've all bought seed packs that, that looks like the seeds were not mature and we're like keeping our fingers

crossed, uh, when we, that they, that they germinate. So, So what do you look for what in considerations when you're judging when to when to pull the plant down? Uh, so basically it, I base it on time from when I know pollination occurred as well as I usually dig out, uh, a couple seeds and squeeze them, see how full they are, how mature they are. Uh, of course they're sacrificing those seeds. Um, but it should also be noted that a lot of seed, the color of seed and the,

and the striping on seed is really variety dependent. That of course, you, if you have a seed that's supposed to be brown and it's tiger striped and it's, it's white, then it's probably immature. Uh, but you know, like the variety freak show, uh, has notoriously light colored seeds that are kind of misshapen. Um, but that's all they ever do, even if you let them go forever. Uh, but generally, I, you want to be able to squeeze a seed and have it, you know,

be resistant full of an embryo. When you squeeze it, you'll see a , a now dead or dying embryo pop out of it. Uh, you should be able to see like the completely formed little radical and things like that. Um, and it should be, it should start to be getting a hard seed coat. Uh, once the, you know, you do do do a few tests like that when the ma majority of seeds are like that, uh, you're probably good to go. It, it doesn't hurt to let it go over.

I've heard people claim, you know, it's, you can get over mature seed. I really don't think that's a thing. . Um, the, especially if you're cleaning your seed at the end of it, you might get, uh, lighter seed and things like that that will blow off, uh, when you're cleaning it. Um, you said that, uh, one of the, um, one of the things you use to judge when to pull the seeds, you said, you know, days from uh, pollination. So, um,

like dig into that a little bit more if you would. Uh, do you, are you looking for a particular number of days or a, a, a certain number of days in relationship to, um, how long the bloom cycle is supposed to be for the, this particular female? Like, give us a little more on that.

Usually I use the same timeframe regardless of the variety. And I haven't, I haven't produced seeds on any, you know, 16 week varieties, so I can't say it's necessarily true for that, but I think that it would still apply and that there would, even if you pollinate based on this timeframe, there would be a mature seed sitting in there for, you know, 10 weeks or whatever. But, uh, so I would say two weeks is the absolute minimum to get viable seed.

If you're trying to do something really fast, uh, preferably you want to let it go at least four weeks and six weeks is better. So if I can let something go at least six weeks and then start looking at it, sometimes it'll be just completely finished, uh, at four weeks and you don't really need that extra two weeks. But, um, I, I don't think it hurts to let it go over unless you have something like beri

happening and that'll start infecting and eating your seeds. Uh, there's really no harm in letting it over mature. Let me push on this a little bit. So you said, um, you know, six weeks, two, two is a minimum. Six would be optimum. Now, uh, if, if we are going to pollinate our, our plant, you know, a week or two into the flowering cycle, that kind of lines up with an eight week plant, which is, you know, give or take, that's, it's a, it's a pretty common, uh, bloom cycle.

So it could be, unless you're doing a specialty plant or something that has an especially long flowering cycle that, um, you might wanna pull those seeds just simply when the flowers are done. Is, is that, um, am I, is that oversimplified? You're saying that you, you might be pulling them earlier than six weeks, or what.

What do you say? No, no. I'm suggesting that if, if, if you, if you, if you're plan is going to start to flower and then you pollinate it at like, you know, somewhere between week one and two of the flowering process, and then you said, you know, you want a minimum of two weeks for pro, but more like six weeks for, to allow for this all the seeds to mature. When you add those two weeks and the six weeks, you're at eight weeks,

which is like one of the most common bloom cycles for cannabis plants. Mm-hmm. . So it's, it's sounding sounding like, uh, in, in many or if not most cases, um, it's not really a different time to pull the seeds as it is just when you would pull the flowers normally. Yeah, completely. So it's, it'd be very convenient, you know, if you have like an under branch that you pollinated, but you still want the flower from that plant, you can usually just harvest them at the same time.

If I do pollinate something, especially if it's later in the cycle of something that I know I'm going to cut down for flour, then I'll pick a lower branch and you can kind of leave that lower branch alive and let the seeds mature a couple weeks longer. Say you have an eight week flower, you pollinate it week four or five, then you wanna let it go beyond where you would flower or harvest for flower.

Yeah. I, you know, the one time I did this, I intentionally just let it go until, um, uh, until I was good two weeks beyond the, when I would've flowered it because I was so concerned about, um, the seeds not fully maturing and ripening and I would've gone through all this, you know, effort for nothing. Um, and then so, so this, this eight week plant, I was looking to harvest it at week 10, um, and then I was surprised it actually just started dropping the seeds on to the

ground. And I'm all like, Oh, well I would say that that's probably like the most sure sign I'm going to get, but it's possible I was misreading that sign. What, what stage are we at when the plant is actually literally dropping seeds into the pot or on the ground? And I mean, that's, you know, it depends what varieties you're working with that's in, you know, kind of atic trait where it's ancestrally wild cannabis plants will shatter and

drop their seeds a lot more readily than the domesticated varieties. Uh, so if you have a plant like that, yeah, you wanna harvest it before it drops its seed. If it's dropping at seed, they're definitely ready. Uh, that, that's really the only that. And say if you're outdoors and it's getting rained on, I've seen, uh, seed germinating in colas before. Um, so you wanna avoid those kind of negatives to letting it go too

long. But otherwise there's not a harm to that. And if you, you know, , if you collected, had a plastic piece of plastic under the plant, collected those seeds, they'd be fine. Right on. So, so, alright, so, so, uh, we're in this situation. The,

the seeds are dropping from the plant. Um, if, if summer dropping, chances are your vast majority of 'em are mature and ready to rock, um, uh, do you have any best practices for harvesting a seeded plant that is, you know, dropping seeds because, uh, you know, certainly we wanna, we want to be more gentle with this plant cause we don't wanna be dropping the seeds all over, all over the room. So, um, you know, I just cut it and put it in a bag like right then and there,

so there's as little motion as possible. Um, what do you do? That's, that's exactly what I would do. Uh, if it's a big area of seed production, I'd lay down plastic before I start cutting plants down and then collect, uh, the fallen seed as well. Um, but yeah, there's, if it's just one plant, I'd just put the bag under it, cut it right into the bag. Would you walk us through the, the next steps of, um, take us from where we're at now to, um,

to having clean seeds. So wa just walk us through, I know there's a lot of different ways that people do it and we are talking about somebody who is a first time breeder, so they're, they're not gonna have all the sexy gear that we see, you know, professional breeders have. So just walk us through like the baseline of what they're gonna do. So what I would do first is, uh, just drive the plant material. Usually at ambient temperature you don't want to use heat.

If you have a dehumidifier, you wanna keep the, uh, humidity low. Um, once the plant is kind of crispy, that's when I would thresh it. It's a lot easier to thresh plants that are just like crunchy. Um, if you're trying to save the flour from the seeded bud, that generally I don't, I usually just throw it away cuz it gets really beat up and isn't the best quality. But you could, you could absolutely save it,

especially for something like cooking. Um, but regardless, I would get it crispy and then you just, uh, basically sh it right off the branch. Get real rough. Take those flowers and grind them between your hand. Uh, you don't have to be too careful at this point. The seeds should be relatively resilient. If you're crushing them by grinding them in your hand, then they probably were dead already . Uh, so do that until it's kind of like a consistent powder seed,

plant mixture. And then you can start to separate that material. So I, I always use, I always recommend using gloves at this point because, uh, anytime I'm touching the seeds, I really wanna limit my human oils onto the seeds for the reasons we mentioned earlier about the vital biology that's on the outside of the seeds. You know, a lot of people handle their seeds like they are like in little impervious

suitcases, but, um, you know, I go a little more gentle than that. Um, what are your thoughts? I definitely touch seed without gloves during that po that process. I wear gloves cuz grinding plant material in between your hands is not, doesn't feel good. Uh, but I'm, you know, and I've never thought about it, how the oil affects the seed coat microbiome. Um, I'm sure it has some effect. I don't know what it would be.

Yeah, I didn't actually think about it at all until, uh, last episode with Jeff Lo Fells when he was explaining the, the bacteria on the inside and outside of the seed that are carried with it, where the seed is going. The, the, um, the research of, uh, I think the, the, the scientists name was James White, I believe it was. Anyway, um, it's totally changed my relationship with, uh, with, with the, you know,

handling the seeds. Um, so, so now that you've kind of like pulverized the flowers in your hands and a bunch of seeds are like, just like raining out of it for you, hopefully, um, you still have got all of this, um, plant material mixed in with the seeds. Um, you know, d you know, if, if you're just producing a little bit, just going at it on a, on a, on a flat service with a a credit card might be tedious,

but it would work. Uh, is there, um, is there a nice best practice you like for removing the plant material from the seeds. For home scale? I do one of a couple things. Uh, I will grind the plant material through a screen sometimes to get it really fine. Uh, when, okay, so when you tsh the plant, you have just this pile of, of whole plant material, you can kind of shake it in a tub and the seed will, uh, sink to the bottom.

And at that point you might want to just pick the plant material off the top, uh, and get rid of some of the bigger stuff. But then I'll grind it through, uh, like a spaghetti strainer screen, uh, and make all that plant material more fine. And usually the seed sits on top of that screen. So that's like the first, uh, sift of plant material. I throw away everything that ground through the screen. Um, then I pour that seed into like a dishwashing tub and I

kind of shake it around. And I've seen people do this a few different ways. And you can also buy or build machines that use, uh, vacuum cleaners to air clean that are more precise, but just for the home grower, uh, just a dishwasher tub, shake it around, move it to one corner, and then I blow into the tub kind of in the direction of the seeds. And all the light seed and plant material will fly away. Uh, you have to be a little bit careful. You're gonna lose some good seed.

Pretty much any air cleaner is gonna remove a little bit of good seed. Uh, but the idea is that you're removing, you know, 95% of the trash, uh, and you're leaving yourself with viable seed. So now we're sorting seeds. Um, what are you looking for for seeds that you are gonna reject. Once you have like a, and it depends on what size lot you're doing and what, what are you saving? Are you just saving them for breeding, then I might,

you know, have a lower standard for defects and things like that. Uh, but if you're gonna give it to people, I'd clean them more, uh, precisely. But generally you can, light colored seed is usually pretty obvious and if you pick up a seed, it just crunches in your hand. It wasn't filled with anything, you just toss those away. Um, sometimes those will survive air cleaning and they'll still be in the batch, especially if they still have, uh, plant material attached to them.

They might be, have been a little heavier and survive that. Uh, you know, if you know your seed variety well, you'll get a look at what a, a good, mature, healthy seed looks like, and you'll be able to kind of calibrate and look for the ones that don't look correct. So if you have a seed variety that usually has tiger stripes and you have one

that's light and tan, uh, you know, I would to that. Um, but it's surprising though because some, some seed especially, uh, you know, if you do so, or say you're trying to do a quick breeding cycle and you only let it go two weeks, uh, the seed might look green still and look immature, but it'll still have 70% germination, which could be enough if all you're doing is breeding with it. Mm. I haven't seen any of those seeds yet. That's a, that's a strange thing. Yeah.

Probably because they're not released that way. Right? They're just, they're part of a breeding program. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, you know, I, you know, I don't really know when, when people talk about curing their seeds, um, I don't usually know what they mean. But we do know that a, a fresh seed taken right off the plant, um, given a little bit of time to dry will then germinate better in a,

in a couple weeks than it does on the day that you take it from the plant. Um, but I actually don't know a whole lot about that. Would you speak to this idea of curing seeds and letting 'em dry and to, into increased germination rates, um, so that when you go to them, they're, they're actually ready to do their job? Yeah. So I think it's two things. One is, is drying it down to a moisture lever level where it will be shelf stable, uh, for a certain amount of time.

And that's down to 5%. Moisture is, uh, preferred. Anything under 10 and in cold treatment is also going to stay alive for years. Um, there's also another aspect to, you know, curing or aging your seed a little bit. And it's probably, uh, post harvest maturation, just physiologically that embryo is still doing things after the harvest. Um, and it's not quite ready to, uh, germinate yet. Uh, if you plant, you know, a week after cleaning seed or something like that,

you might get 50% germination. If you wait two to three weeks, that'll go up to 90. Uh, so there's something happening and I think it's beyond just cuz the moisture content probably won't change that long in that amount of time. So my guess is that's mostly, uh, some physiological process within the seed. Mm-hmm. . And, uh, let's finish up with storing.

So now you've put in all this effort and you've got your first run of seeds and you're so fricking stoked and you're gonna, you're gonna share 'em with your friends and you can't wait to grow it and smoke it. Um, but you got some other stuff you gotta do first. And so, um, so you're gonna need to store it for a while. Um, what are your best practices for, um, for storing seed? Before I get to that, there's just one more thing on the, uh, put,

I forgot to mention. I have heard some people talk about, uh, you know, some seeds need to of other species need to, what's called alize, where they go through a cold period in the winter before they're able to germinate. I have heard some people report, and I don't have a specific experience with this, um, but they say that they get better germination if they put their seed in, not just wait the, those two or three weeks before trying to plant it,

but they put it in a refrigerator or a freezer for that period of time. Um, I'm not sure if they've compared that just to waiting and I'm kind of curious to try that, uh, sometime. But usually when we're waiting, the seed is in a cold fault.

So basically all our seed is getting that treatment anyway. Um, but yeah, so when your seed is, when your seed is dried down to a good percentage, which should be under 10%, uh, preferably under eight or so, uh, percent moisture, um, you can put it in, uh, either a freezer or a refrigerator. I usually keep my stuff in a refrigerator, freezer should be okay as long as the moisture level is low. And that's probably best for long term, uh, storage.

The problem with either a refrigerator or a freezer usually arises from when you're taking the seed in and out. So you want to have it in an airtight container, maybe with a little desicant, um, and put it in the freezer refrigerator. When you take the seed out to access that, uh, session, whenever you're ready to grow it, it, you wanna let it, um, acclimate to whatever the room temperature is before you open it.

Cuz like if you take that, say you have it in a little plastic container and you take that out of the freezer, it's gonna be instantly covered with, with moisture. Um, and if you open that before the seed reaches, before it all equalizes in temperature, the same thing will happen to the seed. And that's what will limit the viability over time. More than, uh, more than temperature, more than, um, the air exposure. It's gonna be moisture that is a danger to seed.

Uh, so we've now, we've got them cured and we've got them stored and we know that we wanna bring it back to temperature, um, before we open the the container. Especially if we're only gonna take out some of the seeds. We don't wanna reclose the container with all that condensation that it suddenly pulled outta the air. Um, because you, you'd risk either mold or heck, maybe even potentially, uh, accidental germination, eh.

Yeah, if you're taking out a little pack and you're gonna plant all the seed, then you, you know, you don't have to wait. But if it's like a stored seed that you're taking a little qua out of, you don't want to damage the seed that goes back into storage. Qua, there's my word for the day, . I haven't heard that in a long time.

Um, alright, great. So, um, so before, before we wrap up and I let you go, Brandon, is there, is there anything else that, um, you know, you've done this process so many times and, and now you're doing it, uh, professionally. Is there, is there anything else looking back on this show where you're all like, you're like, actually there's one more thing that the, um,

that the new breeder, uh, is gonna wanna know. Is there, is there anything that jumps out into your brain right away that, uh, that we may not have covered that we wanna go back and, and punctuate before, before we wrap up? There might be a couple points. If someone were to ask me advice as a new grower, the first thing I would say is know your germ plasm that you're working with

and what is available before you start designing your program. Uh, don't just cross things cuz you like the name or whatever, and also expect things to react differently than you think they're going to when you cross them. Um. When you say know your germplasm, break that out a little bit. What exactly do you mean? Like, know, know the two lines that you're working with and have grown them and things like that.

I, yes, I would say have grown them and have some ex at least have seen the flower people in cannabis especially, will attach to names and have these, I was guilty of this where you, you get these idea, you fantasize about a plant, uh, based on its description or something, and then it's not what it is when you get it.

Or you have the plant and you fantasize about a cross because oh, these will, this plant and this plant would make a really good intermediate, but then you cross them and the intermediate doesn't exist, that's totally different. Um, so you need to be flexible and just, uh, work with what you have not, you know, the fantasy of what you have . Yeah, I actually have been running into a problem with that myself. I have this fantasy of crossing, um, sour diesel, the jet fuel og, um,

because I like both of those very much. Um, but, you know, having grown sour diesel a couple times, it is, uh, so, um, likely to both, um, uh, throw mail flowers and express itself with intersex flowers. Um, that I just, I'm just not willing to, you know, breed with it and cause all these potential problems down the line.

And I didn't realize that until I, you know, started growing the sour diesel that we have today and realizing that, that most of the folks who are, you know, working with sour diesel are expecting male flowers and intersex flowers. And, and I'm like, well, I guess I probably won't go down that path because I, I did my research on the germplasm. Yes. It's also surprising, I have some things that are prone to intersex that when you cross them, none of the plants in the cross will be intersex.

Maybe if I took it another generation, it would start causing problems. But if you're just so, I, I don't wanna discourage people either. If you're just trying to make an F one, you know, and one of them is intersect, it might solve the problem. And alternatively, I've had plants that were, you know, never produced a Mayo flower. I crossed them,

all of the seeds are intersex. Mm. Uh and neither of the parents, seemingly, one of the parents was deep chunk, which I, I'm not aware of intersex problems with deep chunk. And the other was a clone Les Bardo. So I don't know the background of Les Bardo, but the clone itself, you know, never had had a problem. But every, almost every single seed is just almost 50 50. Right on. Um, right on. So do you have anything else to add before we, before we wrap up?

Um, lastly, the, the, the last like, uh, kind of point that I try to impose on newer growers is, uh, you know, consider working with higher populations even if you have a small, uh, space. So this might be breaking plant count numbers for

a lot of people. And this is why I would prefer say, uh, if you're going to regulate gardens, do it on space rather than plant counts because I can, you can fit a hundred plants or more in a two by four if you have them stunted in little, uh, trays, something like that. And if you're not selecting, especially when you're making cross initial crosses and you're introducing genes where you're just selecting for one major gene, but you want to keep the gene pool, uh, broad.

Like if I'm doing a photo auto cross and I'm not trying to select specific phenotypes yet, I'll do those original generations as populations in small tents. So you, you're still hitting large selection numbers and I still, still will make, especially selections against plants that get diseased and things like that, but you're in a very small. Space, that's probably not something that's gonna happen with the first time BRI year.

But that sounds like it might be a really good set too, because as soon as you do this once and you have success, you're suddenly gonna wanna do way bigger sifts. So you have more options, I'm guessing. Mm-hmm. . Uh, well, cool. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for, uh, coming on shaping fire and sharing your experience. I appreciated a great deal. I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you for having me.

So if you want to follow along, uh, with Brandon, uh, there are three different places that you can, um, uh, you can be in contact with him if you wish. Uh, the first, I definitely recommend following his personal Instagram at Growing Higher. Um, he, first of all, there's a lot of great plant photos, um, but the commentary that Brandon offers on, on this or that project that he's working on, um, is engaging in educational.

So that's a good thing. Um, second, I'm a big fan of, uh, the company that Brandon has started, uh, with a couple of his friends Mic Fight Solutions, uh, which, uh, focuses on, uh, uh, crop advising, um, with a regenerative and, um, ology mindset for, uh, uh, for agriculture. And, and their Instagram is at MiFi Solutions. And, uh, if Mic Fight is a, is new vocabulary for you, that's M Y C O P H Y T E,

MiFi Mic Fight Solutions. And then, uh, and then you can find out more about their actual consulting services and what they can offer@mifi.com. You can find more episodes of the Shaping Fire podcast and subscribe to the show@shapingfire.com and wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you would leave a positive review of the podcast. Wherever you download your review will help others find the show so they can

enjoy it too. On the Shaping Fire website, you can also subscribe to the newsletter for insights into the latest cannabis news exclusive videos and giveaways on the Shaping Fire website. You also find transcripts of today's podcast as well. Be sure to follow on Instagram. For all original content not found on the podcast, that'ss at Shaping Fire and at shingle lo on Instagram, be sure to check out the Shaping Fire YouTube channel for exclusive interviews, farm tours, and cannabis lectures.

Does your company wanna reach our national audience of cannabis enthusiasts? Email hotspot shaping fire.com to find out how. Thanks for listening to Shaping Fire. I've been your host, Shangle Lo.