Boggits
Member
Grrrrr....is anyone else here going to ask a newb question? 18 hours light, 6 hours dark beginning through the end of vegging/beginning of flowering. switch to 12 hours light, 12 hours dark with absolutely no light interrupting the dark(unless you have a Green Light, which is a special kind of led light designed to allow you to enter a grow room without interrupting the night cycle, thus stressing the plant, causing it to revert back to its vegetative phase or even hermaphrodite. I probably shouldn't have mentioned the Green Light, because I feel it may confuse a newb or two). MOVING ON....
Sexing is an important part of the growing processing for marijuana. It is the source of much unnecessary worry for beginning growers. The reason you will want to sex your plants is so that you can remove males. Males have little potency of their own, it is the flowers of the female that you will want to cultivate. Without chemical extractions, the flower of the female is the best part of the plant to be used for medicinal and recreational use.
Lets dig a little deeper now... A female plant that is not pollinated (hopefully I don't need a definition here) will direct the bulk of its energy later in its growth phase into developing the flower buds and swelling them with the resin that carries the bulk of marijuana's potency. The plant does this so that the large sticky flowers are more likely to catch pollen. If the flower is pollinated it will instead direct the bulk of its energy to seed production. This is where "low quality, dirt weed" comes from. The more seeds contained in the pot the lower the quality. And of course seeds add dramatically to the weight since they weigh more than the bud itself, this is sharply contrasted with stems that are mostly water weight and have a little weight compared to the bud.
Plants generally should demonstrate their sex one to two weeks into flowering. During the first ten days of flowering there is very little need for concern about males pollinating your crop. Additionally, if you reproduce by cloning you will only have to worry about males once.
Identifying the Male
Males can be identified by looking at the inter-nodes, where leaf and branch stems connect with the main stalk. Male flowers will contain balls somewhere between the size of a marijuana seed and a popcorn seed. One ball is not definitive since female pistils sometimes split from a small single ball that opens. But two or three balls in a cluster is sure confirmation that you have a male. Males should be carefully removed and destroyed to prevent them from releasing pollen. The pollen transports easily so the males can not be safely grown anywhere that shares a ventilation system unless special precautions are taken.
Identifying the Female
Females are very simple to identify. They sprout white hairs, called pistils. A small ball will form and split and two tiny white hairs like translucent threads will split out. They are intended to catch pollen. Later when the plant is not pollinated these hairs will change color.
Pistils may guarantee that your plant is not a male but your plant could still be a hermaphrodite. You must watch plants grown from seed carefully for male flowers and even a trusted clone if it has undergone stress such as light during its dark period, lack of watering, or being left to flower far past maturity. Someone earlier had mentioned you can start flowing the first week of growth or two years later. This is true, but is a very dangerous practice due to the complications you may, and probably will, run into such as grow space, root binding, and the plant just not being able to hold itself up anymore. With the right research and tools available though, none of these should become a problem for you, maybe just a challenge or inconvenience.
Pre-flowers
On certain strains, what are known as pre-flowers may appear while the plant is still in vegetative growth. This is perfectly normal.
Cloning for Sex
You can always revert a mother to veg in order to take cuttings and can even take cuttings during flowering (although success rates will be lower and rooting will take longer), but this process induces stress on the plant that can and does cause hormonal and genetic changes. It is much better to have a mother plant that has never been flowering.
Recognizing this, people have begun taking clones from their vegetating plants when they reach maturity. Once the clone is rooted, you would either flower the original plant or the clone and keep the other under 18hr or 24hr light indefinitely. Thus, the flowering plant(clone or mother depending on your choice) will begin to flower, revealing the gender of the two(being copies of one other).
SO, my word of advice to anyone considering growing or doing it for the first time already, DO YOUR RESEARCH! It would be a slap in the face to myself and others to say it is easy to cultivate this crop, but its not really too complicated either. But with some of the post I've read lately, I ask myself why does it seem that sometimes people wake up and just decided, "I'm going to grow some dank in my basement." It doesn't work that way. You need to KNOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW. Good luck to all, hope this helps, and apologies to all who it offends and if it was already posted elsewhere...just thought this thread was headed nowhere like a hitter in a crowd of smokers.
Sexing is an important part of the growing processing for marijuana. It is the source of much unnecessary worry for beginning growers. The reason you will want to sex your plants is so that you can remove males. Males have little potency of their own, it is the flowers of the female that you will want to cultivate. Without chemical extractions, the flower of the female is the best part of the plant to be used for medicinal and recreational use.
Lets dig a little deeper now... A female plant that is not pollinated (hopefully I don't need a definition here) will direct the bulk of its energy later in its growth phase into developing the flower buds and swelling them with the resin that carries the bulk of marijuana's potency. The plant does this so that the large sticky flowers are more likely to catch pollen. If the flower is pollinated it will instead direct the bulk of its energy to seed production. This is where "low quality, dirt weed" comes from. The more seeds contained in the pot the lower the quality. And of course seeds add dramatically to the weight since they weigh more than the bud itself, this is sharply contrasted with stems that are mostly water weight and have a little weight compared to the bud.
Plants generally should demonstrate their sex one to two weeks into flowering. During the first ten days of flowering there is very little need for concern about males pollinating your crop. Additionally, if you reproduce by cloning you will only have to worry about males once.
Identifying the Male
Males can be identified by looking at the inter-nodes, where leaf and branch stems connect with the main stalk. Male flowers will contain balls somewhere between the size of a marijuana seed and a popcorn seed. One ball is not definitive since female pistils sometimes split from a small single ball that opens. But two or three balls in a cluster is sure confirmation that you have a male. Males should be carefully removed and destroyed to prevent them from releasing pollen. The pollen transports easily so the males can not be safely grown anywhere that shares a ventilation system unless special precautions are taken.
Identifying the Female
Females are very simple to identify. They sprout white hairs, called pistils. A small ball will form and split and two tiny white hairs like translucent threads will split out. They are intended to catch pollen. Later when the plant is not pollinated these hairs will change color.
Pistils may guarantee that your plant is not a male but your plant could still be a hermaphrodite. You must watch plants grown from seed carefully for male flowers and even a trusted clone if it has undergone stress such as light during its dark period, lack of watering, or being left to flower far past maturity. Someone earlier had mentioned you can start flowing the first week of growth or two years later. This is true, but is a very dangerous practice due to the complications you may, and probably will, run into such as grow space, root binding, and the plant just not being able to hold itself up anymore. With the right research and tools available though, none of these should become a problem for you, maybe just a challenge or inconvenience.
Pre-flowers
On certain strains, what are known as pre-flowers may appear while the plant is still in vegetative growth. This is perfectly normal.
Cloning for Sex
You can always revert a mother to veg in order to take cuttings and can even take cuttings during flowering (although success rates will be lower and rooting will take longer), but this process induces stress on the plant that can and does cause hormonal and genetic changes. It is much better to have a mother plant that has never been flowering.
Recognizing this, people have begun taking clones from their vegetating plants when they reach maturity. Once the clone is rooted, you would either flower the original plant or the clone and keep the other under 18hr or 24hr light indefinitely. Thus, the flowering plant(clone or mother depending on your choice) will begin to flower, revealing the gender of the two(being copies of one other).
SO, my word of advice to anyone considering growing or doing it for the first time already, DO YOUR RESEARCH! It would be a slap in the face to myself and others to say it is easy to cultivate this crop, but its not really too complicated either. But with some of the post I've read lately, I ask myself why does it seem that sometimes people wake up and just decided, "I'm going to grow some dank in my basement." It doesn't work that way. You need to KNOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW. Good luck to all, hope this helps, and apologies to all who it offends and if it was already posted elsewhere...just thought this thread was headed nowhere like a hitter in a crowd of smokers.
