Sex testing management in a crowded tent when growing from seed

T

Tender Bias

Member
I foresee a space issue in my grow tent. I am growing 8 plants from seed in a 3x3x6 tent. It is currently day 51 since I first germinated the seed. I am somewhere in the vegetation phase. I can't keep all the plants but I don't know which ones are male or female at this point. Plant Sex testing kits are expensive. I have researched ways to determine if the plant is a male or female but I will only know their sex prior to flowering. I am pretty sure I am stressing my plants as they are currently crowded. How have others managed this issue?

https://imgur.com/F6xAGpC
 
StareCase

StareCase

Well-Known Member
Tender Bias said:
...How have others managed this issue? ...
Click to expand...
My plant sexing kit is a 30x magnifying glass that I can pick up at Dollarama for less than $2.00.

Flip the lights to 12/12 and check them in a couple of days. Grab your magnifying glass and check for pre-flowers at one of the nodes. If you see a thin white hairy pistil poking out of the internodes, you know they are females - and congratulations! If they display green stems with what will look like little balls, remove those plants pronto. They are the males.

Cannabis is the only life form on Planet Earth where we don't want the males and females to party together.

Once you have removed all the young dudes, you can go back to your 18/6 vegetative light cycle - or whatever light cycle you are using - to complete your veg. Then you can go to 12/12 when you are ready to flower them for real. That temporary flip to 12/12 won't affect the remaining girls.

But I wager that if they are 51 days from seed means they are already a pretty good sized bush?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
Don't buy a silly sexing kit. Just look at them closely everyday especially about 9 days after you set the lights to 12/12. If you are worried about the boys throwing pollen you can mitigate it slightly by spraying the plants down with water.
Boys usually show first so kill them as soon as you know they are. Delayed plants are more likely to be girls. God made it so the boys are ready to go by the time the girls begin shooting pistils; further proof of intelligent design. If you have the patience to put the girls back in veg for a couple weeks the reward could be some seriously monster size buds.
 
T

Tender Bias

Member
StareCase said:
My plant sexing kit is a 30x magnifying glass that I can pick up at Dollarama for less than $2.00.

Flip the lights to 12/12 and check them in a couple of days. Grab your magnifying glass and check for pre-flowers at one of the nodes. If you see a thin white hairy pistil poking out of the internodes, you know they are females - and congratulations! If they display green stems with what will look like little balls, remove those plants pronto. They are the males.

Cannabis is the only life form on Planet Earth where we don't want the males and females to party together.

Once you have removed all the young dudes, you can go back to your 18/6 vegetative light cycle - or whatever light cycle you are using - to complete your veg. Then you can go to 12/12 when you are ready to flower them for real. That temporary flip to 12/12 won't affect the remaining girls.

But I wager that if they are 51 days from seed means they are already a pretty good sized bush?
Click to expand...
I would not say a good sized bush just yet.

https://imgur.com/F6xAGpC
 
Blue back

Blue back

Well-Known Member
Another way you could have or still could clone each one and sex the clone while the plant carries on growing. This takes time so wouldn't work to good in your case. Unless you plan on a really long veg. 51 days
 
Blue back

Blue back

Well-Known Member
A lot of us do just the opposite. Clone each plant and once the sex is showing on the mother plant, throw out all the male clones. This you could still do.
 
T

Tender Bias

Member
Richard Drysift said:
Don't buy a silly sexing kit. Just look at them closely everyday especially about 9 days after you set the lights to 12/12. If you are worried about the boys throwing pollen you can mitigate it slightly by spraying the plants down with water.
Boys usually show first so kill them as soon as you know they are. Delayed plants are more likely to be girls. God made it so the boys are ready to go by the time the girls begin shooting pistils; further proof of intelligent design. If you have the patience to put the girls back in veg for a couple weeks the reward could be some seriously monster size buds.
Click to expand...

Is there any reason I would not want to switch to flowering for 1-2 weeks to determine the sex of my plants and then switch back to veg after I have culled the males? Can I hurt the plant?
 
Richard Drysift

Richard Drysift

Well-Known Member
Tender Bias said:
Is there any reason I would not want to switch to flowering for 1-2 weeks to determine the sex of my plants and then switch back to veg after I have culled the males? Can I hurt the plant?
Click to expand...
If you lack the patience to do a reveg aka "monster crop" just let them go into bloom phase. No shame in that. You could also select a mother to clone and reveg only her if you have the space. The only way I could keep it going perpetually was to use the power of 3: three separate grow areas. One for clones/seedlings, one for vegging, and a dedicated flower area. May not even need all 3 at once but it's nice to have the option. Manipulating the light cycle won't hurt anything but interrupting the dark cycle could cause hermaphrodites. Like if one time you forget the lights are off & open the tent during the dark cycle that's no problem but if it occurs regularly like the one time I had light coming in through a crack in a closet door that had to be covered with tape which caused plants to herm from the stress and then seed out. Sucked.
Monster cropping forms nice tight nodal branching but there's another way to do it besides a reveg. Just lower the hours of light gradually by say an hour per week. Go from 18/6 to 17/7 and so forth. When you get down to around 15/9 some strains will begin to show sex. The plants will be vegging and blooming at the same time which helps reduce stretching and increases bud mass. You can continue to reduce gradually or go straight to 12/12. Whatever you decide messing around with the light cycle doesn't do anything bad to the plants but if dark cycle is interrupted you can have problems.
 
The Gram Reaper

The Gram Reaper

Well-Known Member
I think if you posted pics on this site and not imgur you would get more help with your issues in the future. I can only offer what I know from my experiences.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top