I was reading Greg Green's grow bible book and he says you should wait till MJ naturally expresses sex with preflowers before changing the light schedule to flowering. He says force flowering before preflowers have shown naturally stresses the plant and makes male/herm more likely. I get the impression here that most indoor growers posting here pay no attention to that advice and flower whenever it is convenient... Anyone have any personal experience to share on that?
ya i'm curious to know too... in my bubbleponics system i'm gonna try to do 6 plants with not much room (as i think u know pungent ) so i want to flower at about 12 or 14in...
I think most of us want a faster turn-around time than that. If you were to wait for the plant to naturally express gender (under artificial lighting) you could be waiting months. For my first grow I put them under 12/12 (which meant moving them to a closet) when I felt they were getting too big for the CFL lights I had for them. I couldn't tell you how old they were at the time because my grow journal was pretty crappy. I keep better notes now. For my second plant, a clone of the first, I put it under 12/12 when it reached 9 1/2 inches. About two and a half weeks later, it's grown to 21 inches and is just beginning to show flowers. That seems about right to me, but I'm sure I'll tinker with it in future grows. I've seen opinions that range anywhere from 10 days from rooting clones on up. I really think it depends on what you're trying to do and what your personal style is. There is no wrong answer.
from what i understand, clones are a completely separate consideration. from seed, plants start out as genetic babies. clones start at the same genetic age as the mother afaik. i was asking about weed from seed. probably a "mother" has already indicated it's gender although i guess not technically necessary if you determined its gender from flowering a clone or something.