What a beast of a plant!
It’s all thanks to the obscene amount of space for the roots to spread out and do their thing. Gorilla Glue #4, The R.I.L., All the Sowahh crosses especially, Pure Knowledge, Bubblehead, Headbanger, etc. are either fairly even 50/50 hybrids (Josey’s GG4 clone was 55/45 Indica dominant, but anything from 60/40 - 50/50, I consider to be a general hybrid, without the need for stipulating which way its genetics lean), & in the case of the Sowahh crosses in particular, they lean pretty heavily sativa, with the Grapefruit Sowahh close to an 80/20 sativa dominant plant.
I grew almost every Sowahh cross that Tony released last year, many from feminized seeds, and never got a single herm. The flowers were incredible. I’ve had only a few grows in the last 12 years of growing & testing for other breeders, & 7 years breeding my own plants. If there’s more than 30% sativa genetics in a plant, which is basically everything I grow, I make sure that they have plenty of extra room to spread out their roots. I’ve gotten herms in sativa dominant or pure sativa plants when the only issue was that they must have had issues comfortably spreading out their roots.
So I stopped running SOGs entirely, except in pheno hunts, & even then usually only when hunting males (I sex all my plants once they’re about 5-6 weeks old, just by taking a cutting, putting it in a glass of water, & placing them in a spare closet I have a grow light & a timer installed pushed my minimum pot size up to 10 gallons from 5. Although 5 gallons should be plenty of space for any plant - even sativas that love their large root systems. But I increased yields by 25%-50% across the board, so it was a small price to pay to ensure that all my plants were absolutely free from any stress. Plus it resulted in double yields a lot of the time.
All cannabis plants have genes that they’ll turn on in order to produce pollen if they aren’t pollinated. The reason that the Rodelization technique requires leaving the plant to keep growing several weeks past its harvest date is because almost all sinsemilla producing, all female gardens, WILL herm, almost always, regardless of the genetics, around the time we harvest them in an attempt to force seed production in the population - I don’t know how complex the mechanisms are - i.e. whether the plants will communicate with each other through their roots or by releasing a gaseous chemical message, or what, but the girls will know that none of them are carrying seeds, & the individuals who herm most easily will herm if not most of them. We harvest our plants before the seeds have a chance to form (although I’ve definitely found some premature, early signs of seed formation in the calyx’s of sinsemilla grown at home both indoors and outdoors, as well as several times I picked up flower from a dispensary.
I’ve seen nanners on a several occasions when I was pulling my harvests - even on plants that never have herm issues - once on a Star Pupil, once on a Rootbeer, on a TGA Chernobyl, Jillybean Lime, & Jack The Ripper, on a Loompa’s Headband, on an Exotic Mr. Clean & Kimbo Kush, on Biker Kush, on Forbidden Fruit, on a MAC, on a GGG Mendo Montage, on an original Green Crack, on a Mtn. Trop. cut of Tropicana Cookies, on ACE Malawi, Purple Haze, & Honduras, on Cannabiogen Pure Durban Poison & Destroyer, on Snowhigh Panama Red Preservation, Epiz, Acapulco Gold x C99, Oaxacan, Jamaican Lamb’s Breath, & Colombia Punto Rojo, on a Lebanese Blonde cut that my cousin had been running since the ‘90s that never hermed, on a Sour Diesel clone from ‘99 from the same garden.
I’ve seen the same thing on clone only cuts of Lemon Meringue, Lemontini, Golden Goat, Cheetah Piss, Runtz, Zuchi, Ya Hemi, the Compound cut of Apples & Bananas, Tiki Madman’s Purple Peach Ringz, Detroit Runtz, & White Runtz Bx, a Doja Pak RS-11, on a Gelonade cut, on a Grapefruit Romulan, on SSSC plants, on really rare Neville cuts of Haze A & Skunk #1, on HA-OG, SFV OG, DNA Kosher Kush, Cannalope Haze, Tangie, Las Vegas Lemon Kush, on Crockett Clementine & Strawberry Fields, & on my MMSCUT of Rick’s Pupil, which I’d held for 7 years before I lost her recently. I looked extremely carefully, but there were usually only a couple freshly sprouted nanners, but they were there. And that’s not even an exhaustive list.
Most are plants that never herm, & I never had an issue with any of them, except visually observing nanners at harvest or while trimming. And many were grown outdoors or in a no-till raised bed in my greenhouse. And the ones that were flowered indoors didn’t ever get even a little stressed.
I supplement cal-mag indoors through week 5, since indoor gardens are almost always magnesium deficient even if it doesn’t show, then I switch to Epsom Salt until the end to support the production of the best terpenes possible. I have zero light leaks or pests, I’m 100% organic, have total control over the temperature and humidity in my nursery, grow rooms, tents, & my drying / curing room, never spray anything in flower unless I’m reversing some females, have everything hooked up to a perfectly dialed in drip watering system, keep the 75% RO water, 25% filtered tap waters pH perfect even though it’s totally unnecessary in an organic system, have worms in every container, rarely if ever have issues with Powdery Mildew anymore since I started feeding my plants silicon both via their roots & with their bi-weekly foliar feeding & have also added insect chitin & diatomaceous earth to my own, carefully balanced , specialized, water only (in theory - in reality, I add several things to help with the health & growth of the plants once a week, in 2 of the 3-4 separate water tank refills) organic soil recipe which I spent years getting just right.
I didn’t want to have to add any PK booster during mid-late flowering, but I still wanted a PK boost. So I figured out how to add inaccessible Phosphorus that would begin to become available whenever I decided it was time. I just had to add some new microbes to the soil that could begin to naturally release the extra P that was already plentiful, but was locked up and unavailable to the plants. Then I only had to give the plants a one time extra dose of potassium supplementation mixed into their halfway through blooming compost tea dose, so there’s no issues with over feeding, overwatering, or Humic / Fulvic overdoses, etc. I even ensure that I prune lightly & mostly have the plants trained and trimmed at the flip so that I wouldn’t cause them any stress during flowering at all. It took a little practice but I figured that out as well, so I’d only ever have to do the most minimal of pruning or training adjustments once flowering had begun, usually when some new growth had cast some flowers into shadow. But I’d already pruned their legs & lollipopped them before I ever hit the switch to flip. I’m fortunate since my main grow room has extra high ceilings. So I can flower stretchy sativas in there that take twice as long as most plants to bloom. The ceilings are over 18 feet in there, so I never have to worry about flowering seedlings, or doing some crazy training or adjusting after I start flowering. I still run my gardens - all of them - at 11/13 & I’ll sometimes adjust that to 10/14 if I’m growing an extra long flowering cultivar. So my plants enjoy a seriously stress free existence.
They live some of the healthiest and happiest lives a cannabis plant can possibly hope to live. But even with all that extra effort, I still see the occasional nanner at harvest time. I think there’s gotta be some way they’re signaling each other that none have produced seeds or been pollinated, since it’s always only just a few - occasionally even just one - plant, that herms at harvest, & it’s not usually the same cut that I saw a herm on previously.
Some of those plants just don’t have any issues with herms, ever, and yet I’ll still occasionally find that one or more plants have hermed at or around harvest time anyway. Just never in time to cause any issues. This isn’t just happening in my garden. Most people don’t notice, but it’s happening in most sinsemilla gardens. At least when the plants are connected underground. Running them in containers on top of beds has also increased their yields although I’m not sure why. Even in the greenhouse, I’ve run plants in separate containers & the same plants in an interconnected no-till bed. When they’re able to communicate with each other via their roots - even when it seems like they would compete for space or nutrients, they always yield more. It’s not substantial. Maybe another ounce or two per plant. But that adds up. Especially when making seeds. That adds up to hundreds of extra beans per plant.
I’ve tested pollinating a single plant in a grow room of 30+ plants, and when I do, I can’t seem to find any herms at harvest. Which just supports my signaling theory. I don’t know how they’re doing it - probably through the mycelium of the mycorrhizae & the roots, or else via a specific exudate that communicates to the other plants via some microbe or specific molecule through the rhizosphere. My grow room is set up so that the plants grow a giant bed beneath the separate pots, in case the plants feel they need even more space to root. And because it increases their yield. Although I still haven’t been able to figure out how or why. I could be running all different genetics or growing all the same cut. Regardless, they’ll increase their yields when they are interconnected through the soil.
I have noticed the occasional harvest herm in tents with totally separate pots. But I assume that in those instances, one of the plants force themselves to herm before any of the others & as soon as the others notice the pollen they likely stop the same attempts in themselves.
So it’s likely a signal via the rhizosphere, whether through the mycorrhizae and roots or through some chemical exudate. I’m pretty sure that they’re not signaling the other plants to herm. They’re just passing on the information - at least that’s what it seems like, since I will only find one or two plants with harvest herms. But it makes sense.
It’s why Rodelization worked for almost every cultivar as an effective method of producing feminized seed stock before Colloidal Silver & Silver-Thio-Sulfate changed the reversal game.
We’ve simply been pulling our plants on time for the best harvest conditions, which doesn’t give their pollen a chance to even begin to form seeds in most cases. Or if your plants aren’t connected through the soil and all have separate containers maybe it’s something you haven’t noticed. I’ve seen the occasional harvest herm in those conditions but they’re much less frequent. And I’ve also noticed that plants that are really difficult to reverse - like Sour Diesel - very rarely are the ones that herm at harvest. But that makes sense. If their genetic ability to reverse is less well developed, or if it’s been altered in the breeding process or has suffered a mutation, it makes sense that they’re way less likely to herm. But as far as I can tell, if you can reverse the plant, it has the same chance to herm at harvest as the rest - even if it’s a plant that never herms.
And I don’t know why my Tony Green’s R.I.L. or Sowahh crosses didn’t ever herm. But they all flowered perfectly without an errant seed among them. And Gorilla Glue genetics love to herm. But my grows, with virtually all of the Sowahh crosses & the feminized R.I.L. beans never had any herm issues. I did find the occasional herm at harvest like I sometimes do, but just like the other cases, the plant or few plants that hermed, hermed too late to do any seeding of my sinsemilla when I didn’t want them to.
