Hey guys, I’m a new member and love your show. My question is about early signs of plant sex, until now I’ve only grown autos, but now I’m germinating 5 Alchemy seeds and they are regular beans. I’ve read countless times that you can tell the sex anywhere between 4 and 6 weeks, females 4, and males 6. I’m just wondering if that means 4-6 wks. into the veg. stage, or 4-6 wks. into the flowering stage? Basically I want to know the very earliest that I can tell so I don’t have to waste more time and effort on taking care of males that I’ll end up culling anyway. I’d appreciate any of your help or suggestions. Thanks very much. CouchKushn.
Some genetics will not show sex until a change in the light schedule. Most fast flowering varieties will show their sex in veg. But this could take more than a month. When I pop beans I want to know asap. they way I do this is to induce preflowers by manipulating the light schedule. Most plants are mature enough to show sex at about a foot tall which takes about a month. I will start seedlings under 20-22 hours of light for the first two weeks. At the beginning of week 3 I bring the hours of light down to 16. This reduction in hours of light will signal them to preflower. Between weeks 4 and 5 they will preflower. At this time I will bring the hours of light up to 18 to keep them in veg and kill unwanted males.
I’ve always been able to make a solid identification from preflowers within the first 4-6 weeks of veg, usually while plants are still in 2 gals. I actually think this is a really important skill for growers to have, and I highly recommend all growers learn to identify preflowers.
It takes some practice to know what to look for, but its not difficult to tell sex from preflowers.
Males will get a little spade shaped structure growing at the node. Eventually it starts to look like a little claw, and then starts to develop little balls/ pollen sacks soon after.
Females will get a little spike growing in the same place, and eventually it will develop a little white hair growing out of the tip of the spike. If you see pistils, the white hairs you typically see growing out of a cannabis flower, its a good indication that you’ve got a lady plant.
Preflowers are a very accurate indicator, but it is possible to misidentify them when preflowers are still developing. Looking too early might result in a false identification. My advice is to mark any suspected males when you find them, but wait a few days and double check them again before you make any eliminations.
There’s a ton of good info and pics of male and female preflowers here:
https://www.growweedeasy.com/preflowers
You can also do a google image search for cannabis preflowers to get a lot of example pics you can use for comparison.
Also just gotta say… I see a lot of people freeking out about male plants or worrying about wasting resources on them. Male plants are a part of growing, and not a big deal. Everyone should grow a few male plants just to learn and check them out! Unless you throw a male into your flowering room or let a big male start dumping pollen everywhere, you really don’t have anything to be afraid of. Even then, the absolute worst thing that could happen is you get a few seeds in your bud.
Male plants are a part of growing cannabis. They can teach you a lot and you can use them to make your own seeds. I really wish people would get over the fear and embrace all the cool stuff you can do with male plants.
Here’s a growcast episode where they talk about sexing and go in depth what to look for.
http://growcastpodcast.libsyn.com/increasing-yield-pest-management-and-sexing-plants-with-cloestninja