How long do you have to grow seedlings before you can switch to 12/12 to sex them?

im pretty sure i read you can do this and when you find out their sex you can veg them once again until the end of the season. i want these for outdoor but im not too sure when i should start germinating my seeds. or should i just grow 3 seeds and hope for at least one female and wait till they show sex by themselves? strain is Kish BTW if that makes a difference. Cheers

That is one method of sexing your plants but remember that by doing that, you are also going to stress the plants. I have grown cannabis for years, stress..any kind of stress on your plants is just not a good practice. I have seen all kinds of shit go wrong because I have made every mistake in the book...thats what happens when you grow for years. First off...I assume you are using regular seed and not fem.....with regular seed I can say with pretty good accuracy that you should expect about a 50/50 ratio of male to female....now with experience you can increase those numbers by making adjustments to the micro climate when you first start the seed. Slightly lower temps, less hours of light for first few weeks...like 16 hrs of light 8 of dark and it has to be absolutly dark ...no light leaks ..also slightly higher nitrogen levels at germinatiion assists in producing more females.

You should not ever switch to 12/12 until your plants have shown preflowers...at that point they are sexually mature and can handle the light switch.

When should you start...that depends on where you live and the climate. I grow at 8500 ft in the high rockies. I start germinating April 25 and by june first my plants are sexed and ready for the outdoors. I hope this helps

I start everything indoors under florecent lights. I sex my plants naturally....trust me stress is a growers worst enemy. Buy the Cannabis Grow Bible by Greg Green or Marijuana Horticulture by Jorge Cervantes...great books for new growers and experienced growers..I dont care how long a person has been growing...you should never stop learning about this magnificent plant!! Peace

ok, thanks. i think ill wait a bit then to start them. i just received my seeds today 10 regular seeds, not fem. i believe my climate would be pretty close to yours. im in BC in the mountains beside the rockies. one more question though. if i do end up with a male, which im kinda hoping to so i can get some seeds for next year, how should i grow it so that it doesnt pollinate my whole plant and get seeds through out my weed. how far away should it be so i can collect pollen and pollinate a small portion of the plant?

yeah i have some cfls im planning on using to start my seeds. just deciding on when to do it. how long should i grow indoors before i plant them outside?
yeah im for sure going to invest in a book. might even do that right now. which one is better in your opinion?

I have every dam book in print on the planet regarding cannabis...I have been growing for YEARS but I still read new material all the time...my advice...buy them both you wont regret that 60 dollar investment when your curled up by the fire smoking that killer herb!!! Expect to make mistakes and know that shit is gonna go wrong...it just is...its Newtons law...For every action, there is an opposite even reaction!!! And Murphy is always hanging around to sooooo!

Well when do you get your last freeze up there....What is that strain and what is the sativa to indica ratio or is it pure sativa or pure indica? Your Male...how do you plan on growing..in the dirt holes in the earth or in containers?

im pretty sure mid may is last frost usually. im gonna be putting them in standard home depot buckets, i believe they are 5 gallons but i could be wrong. dont want my plants getting too massive as they are gonna be in my backyard. i grew a couple last year but they went moldy before they finished so it was a write off. got a faster finishing strain this year. this is the description of the strain,
Kish

"This has been the fastest budding plant I have ever worked with. It also has the most crystal of any plant that I have worked with and the hardest nugget buds. As a small plant it likes to grow with one huge cola.
Grown in large pots it still yields well but is best in a high plant per light ratio. This last mother that I used for this particular batch of seed is by far the strongest, tastiest and most resinous I've ever seen!" - CCK.

Height: 5 feet

Flowering time: 42 days

Yield: High

Harvest Outdoor: mid September


10 seeds

Price: $70.00
not sure about ratios but im pretty sure its an indica as its shishkaberry x shishkaberry, i believe shishkaberry is afghani x blueberry.

Yes it is an Indica....It will not take long to finish but what is more critical will be when it actually starts to flower...Cannabis is funny that way. I ordered 20 seeds from resin seeds out of spain... the strain Cannatonic. I did not personally grow them but a friend of mine did....the breeder described two major pheno types one more Sativa looking and another more Indica looking. We noticed that every pheno type that resembled the short Indica bush started to flower almost 3 weeks earlier then its taller Sativa looking pheno...the result was that the short Indica looking pheno finished before hard freeze....the taller Sativa looking Pheno never had a chance. Cannatonic is a equal 50/50 cross of Sativa and Indica. You can start them April 25th and have them out by first of June and they will still grow 5 to 6 feet tall. Do you know if this strain is mold resistant? You may need to look for strains that do well out there in that climate.

Bear Country said:

I start everything indoors under florecent lights. I sex my plants naturally....trust me stress is a growers worst enemy. Buy the Cannabis Grow Bible by Greg Green or Marijuana Horticulture by Jorge Cervantes...great books for new growers and experienced growers..I dont care how long a person has been growing...you should never stop learning about this magnificent plant!! Peace

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I disagree with this. Stress like topping and supercropping are very beneficial to plants and increases yields. Great breeders like Soma swears by it!

im not sure about this strain being mold resistant or not so i ordered 5 fem heribei from sannies as well, which is bred for hollands weather . its really rainy there much like here and is mold resistant. im gonna pop one of those seeds and grow it just to make sure i get something for the season. really wanted to try this kish strain though because i remember smoking shishkaberry a couple years ago and it was one of my favorite strains i smoked and its sold at the VSB under early finishers outdoors so i assumed it would be good for this area.
Fazer i think thats true too. last year i topped my plants numerous times as well as LSTed them and they were really nice looking. just wish they would have finished. i dont necessarily need to sex my plants before i put them out i can wait but i just want to make sure i get at least one female from the kish seeds i have. im onlyb gonna pop 3 seeds of those though just because over 4 plants and you get into the mandatory minimum bs.

Stress...I should clarify. I was refering to light cycle stress, heat stress, Nutrient stress ( over fertilization ) over watering.. Common sense issues. Your plant gets stressed when you transplant but shortly there after it recovers. Cannabis is extremly hardy and can take allot of punishment. Topping , supercropping, bending..ETC are benificial in meeting the growers goals but again you do these things in a gradual process in an attempt to meet your goals....so some stress is normal and to be expected but some stress factors are unacceptable and can bring on all kinds of problems. If your grow room is dialed in as to attempt optimum growing conditions, your more likely to avoid problems and have good results. There are a shit ton of things that the grower can do to F*** things up. I have grown for many years and have made many many mistakes along the way and still do to this day. One thing I have done is design my indoor grow room to provide my plants with a very stable micro climate and the money I have spent in doing so shows at the end at harvest time with big, beautiful, sticky potent buds....and of course...genetics plays a role as well as good growing skills. Keep your grow rooms clean!!! Peace

Bucket...outdoors ...your at the mercy of mother nature. I grow outdoors as well and I have had seasons where it looks like your going to have bumper crops only to have a hail storm come through and aniliate your grow....or in my area...Elk and deer love young cannabis plants. Rain for days on end right at harvest time!!!! So there are plenty of variables in what amounts to a very long long season!!! LOL Good Luck

thanks for your help! im growing in my backyard in town so its a bit sketchy as i dont have a vehicle to find a good spot out in the mountains somewhere. im hoping that the street lights, and peoples lights in their backyard dont mess things up come flowering time. i guess only time will tell. who knows it might have even been that, that caused my last year plants to flower so late. then again they were a sativa dom, so im hoping that was the issue. Good luck to you too this year! happy growing

if i do end up with a male, which i should, would it be smarter to flower it inside and collect the pollen or is it possible to do it in my backyard? i dont want a plant full of seeds just a branch for next season.

BUCKET said:

if i do end up with a male, which i should, would it be smarter to flower it inside and collect the pollen or is it possible to do it in my backyard? i dont want a plant full of seeds just a branch for next season.

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Keep the male inside, if you put it in the yard with the girls and wait to collect pollen your females will turn into seed machines lol

figured as much, thanks for the tip. is there a light requirement to flower a male to get enough pollen to pollinate one of my ladies? or will a couple cfls do the trick?

You can flip them straight away - but it's not like you're just telling the sex, by putting them in 12/12 you are flowering them. Good rule of thumb is that even if you start them on 12/12 they won't be ready to start showing for at least 2 weeks. So leave them under veg light schedule for 2 weeks and then flip - you should see sex between 7 and 20 days later.

but the thing is i dont want to flower them indoors, i want to grow them outside. the idea was to flower them indoors until they show sex, and then cull the males then so i dont waste time and energy on plants that dont produce buds, and then put them back into veg mode and put the females outside continue flowering the male inside to collect the pollen and pollinate a branch for seeds for next year. but youre saying if i do do this, to wait for 2 weeks then flip them?

To be honest and most people will argue against this but I was in your situation once when I first picked up the hobby and I grew my seedlings to about 6 nodes high and flipped to 12/12 and flowered them just long enough to show sex then flipped back. Like many will say yes you are giving some un necessary stress on the plant but I had no problem with hermies or anything and I did that to 10 seedlings 8 of which were female. So my advice if you wanna do it then do it because you will anyways lol. It worked for me it can work for you. I'm not saying that your plants will react the same as mine did but who knows till you try. A lot of people will flower a plant and harvest majority before re vegging and flipping all over again without problem and I would say that's a lot more stress then what your wanting to do.

I have bred on a large scale and on very small scale projects. It is possible to grow your males outside with your girls, which is what I would do, lets say you sprout 5 seeds and three turn out male and two are female, I would grow all three males and select one of the three as they start to develope, each one may be different, so based on the one you like...maybe its putting out a nice skunk smell to it or whatever the case might be your going to have to select one...perhaps one stants out more then the others...but I have left the male right there with one or two girls and just slightly pollenated them, then jerked him out of there and destroyed him. Your plants will make some seed and go right back to making bud. A little pollen goes A LONG WAY so watch that.....but I have done that many times with great results....very little seed and enough bud to get by on... food for thought...this also saves you the hastle of having to create another space, light ETC inside.