# Making fem seeds with colloidal silver



## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

Through my course of study I have come across information on making fem seeds in a way that involves non toxic or at least less toxic materials. It works very very well and I am yet to get a hermy from the seeds I made for my own personal use. The only thing I have against the process is I have seen numerous people develop a strain that they want to keep as is but the only seeds they have is female so they are stuck. The genetics will only get watered down from there unless they mix it with a male of a different strain but then they are back to square one. With that said here is the technique.

The technique I use involves colloidal silver. Its sold at health food stores as a cure all basically. the stuff that is sold is too low of a potency to work properly. First I'll describe how to make it and then how to use it.

Colloidal silver is made by electrolysis by passing a current through two silver electrodes suspended in distilled water.

The way I do this is I use a 12 volt 1.5 amp (1500 ma) ac to dc adapter. The average household probably has a box of these things laying around. Other reports show that 9 volt 600 ma ones will also work. Anyways you cut the end of this off and pull the 2 wires apart by about a foot. Strip about 1/4 inch of the coating off and solder an alligator clip to each piece of wire and then heat heatshrink over the exposed soldered wires.

At each end of the alligator clips you will need to clip on either a piece of fine silver wire (can be found online) or an old silver coin that has been cleaned of tarnish (can be found at hobby shops and such around town). Try to stay away from sterling silver, it is less pure. 

In an open air enviroment, submerge the silver on both ends of the adapter into a glass quart jar of distilled water. Make sure only the silver is touching the water. If the clips or any other type of metal is touching the water during the process it will produce rust amongst other nasty stuff.

Now plug it in and let it sit for 12 hours (making sure to check on it regularly so you dont burn down the house or something.) I put plastic wrap over it to protect it from stuff floating in the air. After 12 hours you should have a jar full of a brownish/amber colored liquid with possibly some white/metalic gunk which is just some corrosion. You can filter this out through a tee shirt if you'd like but I never do.

This brown liquid is colloidal silver. As is it is safe for you to drink just like the health food store colloidal silver. But I wouldn't recommend it, since it is a bit stronger than the health food stuff and too much of it ingested could turn your skin blue after a lot of use hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa2OpNTX9Ck 

Anyways back on topic. Take this brown liquid and pour it inside a spray bottle (1 dollar at walmart.) Now you are ready to make femanised seeds.. well kinda. You need a female plant and right after it shows its sex you can give whole or part of it a good misting of colloidal silver 2-3 times a day for 1 week. Some people will do this all the way until it starts pollinating but Ive never done it for more than a week. If you do the entire plant the entire thing will start growing pollen sacks soon after and you can use this pollen to pollinate other female plants to produce femanised seeds. If you do only one branch of the plant then you could turn around and use the pollen from the plant on the rest of it. 

I have done this quite a few times and am yet to end up with femanised seeds that hermie on their own and I have even done this a couple times from breeder femanized seeds that I wanted more of. If the plant already has the hermie genes in it though it would most likely show up at one point or another though.

With all that said if you want to skip the hole soldering alligator clips onto wire you could always wrap the wire around the silver as long as you make sure not to expose any of the water to non silver material.

I hope this helps you all with your adventures in breeding. Be safe.

I'll update this later on with pictures of my finished colloidal silver generator once I can find where I put the damn thing when I moved weeks ago.

UPDATE:

Below is the CS generator





Below is Distilled water




Below is an empty jar




Fill jar with distilled water and put silver ends in the water making sure the metal of the alligator clips doesn't come in contact with the water.




Put some plastic wrap over it all to keep bugs out. 




Plug it in and let it sit for 12 hours and.. colloidal silver!! Ready to be put in a spray bottle and sprayed on plants. 2-3 times a day for 2 weeks once first signs of sex appear.


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## Lemmongrass (Jun 4, 2009)

I wonder, that if there are so many ways to produce fem seeds, if one or two doesnt cause them to pass along the psuedo-herm trait?


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## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

That is an interesting idea. Unfortunately that would require a lot of space and time to figure out. The use of colloidal silver has made me ponder about what other ways their could be to make them herm, even if its just from electrolysis of different metals. Even with that though you never know how one way would effect it over the other in a drastically negative way such as poisoning the plant and you.


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## SherwoodForest (Jun 4, 2009)

That is cool as hell, thanks! I'm wondering if you do this to auto strains, will they produce seeds?


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## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

My first time doing it was with lowryder#2 and it did in fact work. After spending so much on LR2 beans I decided I didnt want to buy them ever again so I bought some GA to make fem seeds but after a butt load of research I came across a lot of information on CS. Now I don't know what to use all this GA for.

Also In my readings into the subject to gather more information. Allegedly the lower voltage and amperage adapters will produce a more potent CS that has less silver gunk falling out into the bottom. It is said that you should keep it between 9 and 12 volt and between 300 and 1500 ma. So go grab an old phone charger that you dont use and look at the side of the plug and it should say on it how strong it is. Also if you are not planning on drinking any of it sterling silver will be fine to use but using non distilled water is not an option. 

and last of all, CS is said to work for this because "the silver inhibits hormones needed to produce a female flower, causing a male flower to be produced. This means that the pollen doesn't carry any altered genetic traits that lead to increased chances of growing into hermies or genetics that make a plant more likely to go hermie under stress."

So the fem seeds will have the same chance of turning hermie on a normal grow as they would if they were not fem seeds.


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## Lemmongrass (Jun 4, 2009)

any chance you have a reference for that last bit? i really would like to settle this.


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## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

There is very many forums with information of CS being used for making Fem seeds. I would of listed a bunch of them but I'm not sure if it would conflict with any rules. If you google search "colloidal silver fem seeds" you will get a lot of information on it. Even the wiki that shows up as a result says 

hxxp://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Marijuana_Cultivation/Producing_Seeds



> Colloidal Silver (CS)
> 
> This is the least expensive and most privacy concious way to produce fem seed. CS has gotten a bad name because there is so much bad information spread around about its production and concentrations. It doesn't help that there are those who believe in drinking low concentration colloidal silver for good health and there is information mixed in about how to produce that low concentration food grade product. Follow the information here and you will consistently produce effective CS and know how to apply it to get consistent results.
> 
> ...



Sadly the forum planetganja that had a majority of the information including documented grows with pictures was taken down. At least some of the information is still floating around though.


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## Lemmongrass (Jun 4, 2009)

So does that mean MP'd collective hysteria about femseeds is misguided, or should we just be scared of GA produced seeds and other techniques?


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## umbra (Jun 4, 2009)

its really about stress induced hermi, which is a genetic trait. coloidal water induces hermi chemically and its is not passed to offspring. however, when using femmed seeds, you have no way of knowing how the seeds were created...well until you grow them out


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## Cannabiscotti (Jun 4, 2009)

good stuff!


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## The Hemp Goddess (Jun 4, 2009)

Well, my question is if CS produces fem seeds with no hermies, why do most breeders go through the time, effort, and money to do numerous breedings and back breedings to get fem seeds?

"The silver inhibits female flowering hormones in cannabis and so the result is that male flowering hormone dominates and male flowers are produced."  Do you have any scientific backing for this statement (anybody can write anything in wiki--it doesn't have to be true)?


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## umbra (Jun 4, 2009)

I don't believe there are any scientific papers that prove it. Most published research is about human consumption of silver and its antibiotic properties. Snake oil in my opinion. The risk of developing argyria is too great for me to eat it. However, I believe that using cs to create feminized seed is relatively new. Most info is from european breeders trying to find an alternative to stress induced femmed seed. At this point, they know that they are producing seed that is likely to hermi, but the financial incentives are too great to ignore.


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## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

With the legality of this profession I'm guessing there is not enough scientific studies to back anything up. all I know is of a good 250 or so beans that I've made and tested with help from friends, that I havent ended up with any hermies. 

No one knows for sure which method the breeders use to fem their seeds, if we did then they wouldnt be worth as much. A search on many different cannabis related forums for info on colloidal silver would show that a majority if not all people who have used it didnt get any hermies. 

There is no evidence that a majority of these breeders even go through the time to breed things "properly" instead of just mixing two plants to make seeds and throwing their label on them. There is no way to be sure of anything unless you did it yourself.


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## leafminer (Jun 4, 2009)

This could be of real use to me because I have no males available and all my seed is female because of my backbreeding methods.
First, won't ordinary sterilising solution work? It is colloidal silver. I mean the little bottles that we use to sterilise salad veg.
Second, do you think I could use it to get pollen from one of my indica female clones? I have NO seed for that line and I like it a LOT!
Third, if that worked and I used it to get pollen from one of my 75/25 backbreed sat doms, and pollinated one of the females I produced as all-fem seed, would it produce fem seed or regular mixed seed?


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## FrozenReality (Jun 4, 2009)

Store bought colloidal silver I'snt strong enough to get the job done. At least that is there hasn't been any information available about it. It cost me less than 5 dollars to build my generator which is a lot less than buying colloidal silver already made anyways. As long as there is no pollen coming from a male plant it will produce fem seeds. So it will work on your female clones and also on your backbreed sat doms and will produce female seeds. So if you use it on a female plant of one strain and give that pollen to a female plant of another strain than you will end up with a femanised mix of the two strains.


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## Rockster (Jun 4, 2009)

The Hemp Goddess said:
			
		

> Well, my question is if CS produces fem seeds with no hermies, why do most breeders go through the time, effort, and money to do numerous breedings and back breedings to get fem seeds?
> 
> "The silver inhibits female flowering hormones in cannabis and so the result is that male flowering hormone dominates and male flowers are produced."  Do you have any scientific backing for this statement (anybody can write anything in wiki--it doesn't have to be true)?



I think that is because reversing a hybrid plant gives rise to an F2 population(otherwise true femmed Cheese seeds would be about) so traits have to be first fixed although there are plenty of 'breeders' about reversing hybrids and claiming they are exactly like the reversed F1 female.

This femmed thing has caught on mainly in Europe methinks?


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## Lemmongrass (Jun 4, 2009)

silver isnt %100 snake oil, it actually is an antiseptic. spoons made of silver are naturally clean and a fair degree more steril than say a steel spoon. some surgical devices are made from silver aswell. something about it's surface either kills Bacteria or prevents them from breeding/living on it. tho i dunno about the voodoo consumable things tho, that sounds iffy.

What if the herm trait is a symptom of weak chromosome pairing? like when animals inbreed you are far more likely to develop diseases and deformities because all sets of genes have similar if nto the same recessive and dominant traits. Could it be that the plant diagnoses this and herms it's self as a preventative measure against failure? herming inst a sickness, it is a calculated response in the plant kingdom. it is a great way to ensure reproduction in the natural world as many phenomenon can cut your life short such as a year of bad weather, new bugs, animals, flood, whatever.

man we can talk about this forever but its still nothing but psuedo science and hobbiest intellect. we need the ability to research... to run mendelian grows with tens of thousands of plants. record keeping, security, long experiment runs... i wish man...

what does the research on hemp say about herming? or what about another plant in the same phylum/family? there is always information on other similarly growing plants that can be transfered, we just need someone skilled and familiar enough to make the calls on it.


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