Sexing

[Oriental Girl]

Hello,

Recently I found female preflower on my plant and took macro photo.

preflower_s.jpg

I added larger sized photo (please find following link), you can see much clearly and help you to know what is preflower if you have not seen preflowers.

http://forum.grasscity.com/photopost...preflower2.jpg

[rockgrass]

I'm only 5 days into flowering but it's still kinda difficult to tell maybe you folks could help me out a bit...

[rockgrass]

i had to cut down my two biggest plants today they were males now I'm only down to 2...i hope they're females it was a sad day for me....i need to smoke

[SmknVTEC]

You can show them: Take one of your females and devote her to a cloning mother. That way you can get an infinite amount of plants that are guaranteed female.

[Ladll]

Originally Posted by Spanishfly

There are lots of questions and massive confusion on this issue, so I thought I would write a thread.

MJ is unusual amongst plants, but not unique, in that the plants have two sexes. (Most plants are not like this, they have both male and female organs in the one flower.)

Also, unlike most plants, MJ is pollinated by wind, not insects, and does not then have a brightly coloured flower to attract insects.

The male flower is a sac of pollen, which bursts open to release the pollen to the wind. The female flower is what we call a bud, covered with thousands of pistils, fine hairs coated with trichomes containing sticky THC which catches pollen grains.

When the plant is 6 to 8 weeks old it develops pre-flowers, at the nodes of the plant, that is, where the branches meet the main stem. At this stage, which is long before actual flowering begins, we can identify the sex of the plant.

The male pre-flower is like a ball on a stick, often occurring in groups of two or three.
see top pic.

The female pre-flower can be recognised by the presence of pistils. see bottom pic

Both these are initially very small, and a magnifier is used to identify them. I have a watchmaker´s 9X eyeglass, but the standard lens from a 35mm SLR camera works very well.

This is my first post, but not my first grow I just stumbled across this and it is the BEST PIC I have ever seen on sexing. I think all first time growers should see this wish I had 20 years ago! Spanishfly im gonna read all ur post and will be starting in a few minutes.

[Cap-N-Krunch]

I've read a little bit about taking a cutting off a new plant and flowering that to figure out the sex. I've got 4 good looking plants about 24 days from popping out of the soil. I have 5-6 nodes on them and topped them all 4 days ago. I'd like to get the males out as soon as possible to focus on the females.

Can I take a cutting of each and flower it to tell me the sex? Do I need to root that cutting before trying to flower it? As in, soak in water, use rooting gel, put in a growing medium and humidity dome for a week. Then pull it out and flower it? OR can I take a cutting, soak it in water, stick it in a medium and just leave it in the flowering chamber? Better yet, can I just take a cutting and stick it in a dixie cup in my flowering chamber?

Not sure if any of hese methods work, at this point if I have to root my cuttings, by the time they get roots and then flower for a week, I'll probably have preflowers on my plants. I'm gonna have to start LSTing way before then!

Thanks for your help guys.

C-n-K

[SmknVTEC]

You can take cuttings to determine sex. Just take cutting[s] from each plant and put the cuttings on 12/12. Take cuttings as if you were going to have regular clones [in a soil less medium under the humidity dome]. Don't forget to label them. The whole point of doing this is to keep the parent plants in veg at 18/6 or 24/7. Otherwise, you might as well just put them all in the flower room.

[Cap-N-Krunch]

Hey Smkn, thanks for your help! I'm gonna try to sex my plants this way.

[SmknVTEC]

No problem.
Today, I just cut clones to sex three plants I have using this method. I always thought it was silly to do it this way because it is so much work however; it ensures as little stress goes to the potential mother plants as possible. Sorry to all those I said in the past were crazy for doing it this way. I will let you know how it turns out.

Thank you Spanish Fly for the original info and pics - I'm learning a lot from this forum. Thank you Oriental Girl for a fabulous zoomable pic.

I'm very new to growing and am just building a grow cupboard. I am going to use hydroponics. I need to know how high the cupboard has to be but this is probably not the right place for this question. I will keep reading and see if I can find out......

What a great forum, thank you so much!

[killadaninja]

Originally Posted by Squidgey

Thank you Spanish Fly for the original info and pics - I'm learning a lot from this forum. Thank you Oriental Girl for a fabulous zoomable pic.

I'm very new to growing and am just building a grow cupboard. I am going to use hydroponics. I need to know how high the cupboard has to be but this is probably not the right place for this question. I will keep reading and see if I can find out......

What a great forum, thank you so much!

GROWING SPACE SIZE
The size of your growing space requirement has many many factors very importantly including the strain of plant you will be growing and equipment. how many plants u have, what system your using, what lights your using etc. keeping the heat down in a small place is alwase difficult if using over 400 watts. if your growing 1 plant in a tiny space you might want to think about a high intensity flourescent that will do the trick and let off next to no heat. to give you a rough guide line if your wanting to grow 4 plants in hydro pots with hps or mh(metal halide). you would want atleast 2ft depth 3ft width 5ft height. i wouldent go much smaller than that. a small plant with a high florescent could fit into a 1ft x 1ft x 2 ft space. Maybe thats 1 for dierwolf to try lol. hope this has been of help .ps if u post ur dimensions of ur space and what your plans are i will tell u if its sufficient

[Cap-N-Krunch]

Hey Smokn, I've got roots on my clones! This is a big step for me, Clonex is some good stuff....I'm not seeing any sex traits showing up yet, but my plants are healthy so hopefully they'll show soon.

Now that I've got roots coming out the bottom, I pulled the ziplock off the top of my cup thinking I could just let it sit in my flowering chamber. After about 5 minutes of working on the veg plants, I looked up and my clones had wilted and shriveled up !!!!! I pulled them out and let them sit for about 15 minutes then sprayed the inside of the ziplock and covered them back up. There's lots of air moving around and really low humidity, it was too much for them, obviously!

What's the next step with these clones? They're almost too big for the ziplocks and they'll probably need to be on 12/12 for another week or so before I see sex. Should I make a little separate area for them to be on 12/12 or just keep them in ziplocks in my big area?

This is a great way to not stress my veggies, which by the way are lookin' gr8!

thanks for the help!

[SmknVTEC]

Cap-N-Krunch,

Congrats on the clone roots. Once they have a nice root system, you should be able to put them in their final medium. Interestingly, the clones I took from my plants never really showed sex. I had them on 12/12 from the beginning and after they were about a week old, the plants that I took them from actually showed sex first. The moms [and 1 dad] showed sex at 4 weeks old and on 24/7 light.

[cannabisseed]

Excellent pics! tnx

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