Questions about follicles

I am new to breeding so i plan on only doing one pairing just to get more familiar with it.
the pairing is a 1100gram banana male to a 2000gram black pastel mojave spider female.
i paired them together for 2 days about a week ago and they locked immediately for 18 hours, stopped, and locked again the next day.
my question is, will a female only breed if she has follicles, or will she allow the male to breed if she doesnt have any? When and how fast does follicle growth occur? And when is the stage when they eat literally everything, and when do they stop eating?
she was bought as a proven breeder and laid her last clutch in summer of 2018.