at what week do the plants usually start to show themselves? I wanna be on the look out as quickly as possible i know i need to get rid of them males asap. also whats the best way to handle hermies? any in sight or info would be greatly appreciated
1-2 weeks after switiching to 12/12 you will be able to see your plants' genitals... males will usually show first and between the point where you can identify a male and where it starts releasing pollen is at least a week, so no worries. the way to handle hermies depends on the size of your grow - if you have a small grow of say 3 plants, 2 female and 1 hermy, then Id keep the hermy and pick off the male flowers twice a week. youre never gonan be able to eliminate all pollen, but you will lose less bud to seeds than you would if you threw out the hermy. if on the other hand you had a room full of perfectly female plants and no time to check for male flowers, then you shouldnt leave a hermy in there.
A cannabis plant will display it's gender when it's mature enough to do so. After it has developed enough nodes to stretch and begin lateral branching, the next step is sexual maturation. Prematurely flipping the light to 12/12 will speed up the process(es), and LST will cause the lateral branches to develop faster. The fastest I've had a plant show sex was about 18 days from seed, and the longest was five weeks in a window sill. You will be able to see a male before it sheds it's pollen, they are not shy with their intentions at all, and they don't usually develop one sac and open it right away. In my experience they have a healthy little cluster before the sacs start to mature and open. That's not to say it isn't a priority to remove them as soon as possible, just to say it should be obvious before it becomes a problem if you keep an eye on them. Hermaphrodite plants are tricky. In some cases, both stressed and naturally occurring, the plant will only produce on or two pollen sacs, and if you clip them off that will be the end of that. Though in other cases it will just keep producing sacs, at which point it would be advisable to cover it with plastic, chop it at the base and remove it from the grow space as quickly as possible if you would prefer sensimilla bud (or just cover and move it if you have another safe location to let it finish). -I should also note there is also a slim chance the hermaphrodite won't even produce viable pollen, I had it happen with a plant that only produced two male flowers. I didn't see them until too late, as they were close to the stem on a lower node, I only noticed because there was pollen on the bottom branch, but she never seeded herself or anyone else.