Noobie here needs a lil help

hello, this is my first post, and have been lurking around this very helpful site for grow tips n tricks.

I'm new here what are some good places to start? links?

put it in a windowless shed for 12 hours... lol... unno man. sorry

I don't think your friend knows any better. The number of leaves is an indication of the overall health of the plant. If left to veg long enough, a plant will show signs of sex before being in a flowering photoperiod. Some strains are stubborn, so they may take longer....and in the meantime, the plant keeps growing. This can be a problem for indoor growers.

Have you considered growing indoors instead of outdoors? It sounds like with your extreme heat, you should buy some good genetics that can tolerate the heat. Can't recommend any to you tho, I use bagseed.

Almost forgot, with you having your grow outdoors, in extreme heat, are you watering them often enough? You may have to water them everyday. If you don't/didn't, that could partly explain your survival rate. If you want more info, surf over to the outdoor section of this forum. GL

yes pinching it causes stress.. not enough to be concerned with on a plant as big as you have

the number of leafs per fan has no barring over male or female.. so no, dont kill it.. wait until it begins to flower.. then decide what to do..

no there is no way to induce flowering except by using light cycles... some strains can start flowering under a 14/10 cycle.. so you might get lucky and have it start flowering a little early...

if you are seeing balls at the nodes then its male.. no matter how much you want to deny it... pollen sacs are pollen sacs no matter how much you want them not to be.. it sucks that your tree is turning out to be a male.. although seeing pics would help give a concrete answer..

and there are 3 ways to determine sex before flowering.. 1) take the cutting from a female... 2) take a cutting from a plant, root it, and put it under 12/12.. after a week or two it will show preflowers.. once you know if its male or female you can either kill the plant it came from cause its a male or keep flowering the female 3) i dont know if this works but i have read about people sticking a bag over a branch of their plant to simulate darkness.. supposidly only that branch starts flowering.. so you can tell sex.. but i have no experience doing it this way...

hope this helped
sampson