Determining sex via cloning

I've search the forum and the internet tubes for this answer and I can't seem to find anything definitive:

Does the plant need to be a specific age in order to clone for sex? More specifically, do preflower need to be present for the clones to show sex when put under 12/12?

I've read that clones should be taken after 2 months, but is that two months of veg time or two months from seed pop?

I have regular photo plants that I am trying to cull males from. They popped 3/17 and entered veg 4/7. Pre flowers are starting to form on some, but not all. My plan is to clone and move right into a tent with 12/12 or 10/14 light schedule.

BlandMeow said:

More specifically, do preflower need to be present for the clones to show sex when put under 12/12?

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By the time your plants have preflowers, you've already sexed them from the preflowers. So obviously that can't be right.

I don't know about this sexing by cloning thing. I tried it once, and by the time the clones started to show sex about 3 weeks later (near death), my plants I took them from were already showing their sex in the form of preflowers for over a week. Doh on me!

Of course your experience might turn out different though. Give it a try as you don't have anything to lose really.

Northwood said:

By the time your plants have preflowers, you've already sexed them from the preflowers. So obviously that can't be right.

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Thanks for weighing in.

Strains and pheno can present at different ages though, right? ,So if this is a late bloomer in terms of showing, it may still be worth it. When I say they are showing, I mean I can maybe see something different at the top most node, but can't definitely say it's a male/female. If I throw clones right into the flower cycle, that should show in couple weeks.

Like you said, no harm in just doing it, but didn't want to spin my wheels either.

BlandMeow said:

Strains and pheno can present at different ages though, right?

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Oh most definitely. Most of the plants I've grown show their sex upon getting alternating nodes, around 6 or 7 weeks or so from sprout. But once I grew what was supposed to be indica dominant, but they grew and looked like landrace sativas. 10 weeks of veg they still didn't show preflowers even after having alternating nodes for weeks. It wasn't until I flipped that they showed their sex. Took 16 weeks to ripen those flowers. It's been a few years since that grow, but I remember it well! Lol

I should have tried the clone technique for that one! Grrr...

You can do that but why bother ? Put it on 12/12 and wait for pistils or bananas then if female put it back on 18/6 !

Doing a small pheno hunt and will keep all the females for mother's for a couple cycles until I have a winner, unless they are really trash. So I want to treat them right.

Would putting them to 12/12 and then back to veg hurt them down the road?

They be fine, as soon as pistils show put them back 18/6 ! No harm down the road I promise !

I’ve done this many times. You can take the clone as soon as your “mother” plant is big enough to give you decent size cuttings without it hurting the mother plant. Then either put the clone into flower once it’s rooted, or keep the rooted clone and put the mother plant into flower. I prefer this method to avoid adding extra stress to the genetics by switching back and forth from 12/12 to 18/6. In the end it doesn’t take any longer because you don’t have to wait for plants to or grow weird when they do.

Plants won’t start flowering before they are mature enough. If you’ve already vegged the plants a few weeks, then by the time you put the clones into flower after being rooted they will probably be old enough to show sex.

You can 12/12 from seed and it will still take several weeks before the plants actual show sex and then start to flower.

What I do is take cuts of everything and when I know what I have from male/female or 99% of the time I'm finding nice phenos, when I pick what I'm keeping I gift the rest ! This can be a process which means you have to look after small plants in small pots till the plants you took cuts of are being chopped, dried, cured and my favourite, SMOKE ! You know then how she smoke, how she yield, like training or not etc etc

I have done it the way I told you originally, many many times ! If you need to know sex it's the only easy sensible way ! Find out if your growing a girl before going all the way !!