Spanishfly
Well-Known Member
Determining the gender of your plants, and when you can do this, appears to be a subject that attracts huge confusion.
´I have been flowering for a week now - when will my plants show sex?´ is typical of the questions that I often come across.
First of all, looking at the seed does not tell you the gender of the plant - seeds are usually grey or brown, often spotted or striped - they can be male or female.
Neither can you do anything to influence how they will turn out - I have read so many Old Wives´Tales - anything from planting seeds under a full moon to grinding up your wife´s (or Mum´s) birth control pills - all total hokum. The only way to be SURE of getting females is to pay the extra and buy feminised seeds.
OK, so you have bought regular seed or have planted bagseed - how do we tell the sex of our plants? After about 6 to 8 weeks, when the plants are about 12 to 18" tall, and still very much in the vegetative stage, they will produce preflowers. These are formed at the axils, where the branches join the main stem.
Male preflowers are like a ball, as shown:
View attachment 1104930
Female preflowers are a pair of fine, feathery hairs called pistils:
View attachment 1104931
Once you see these they are unmistakeable for anything else.
A magnifier can assist in identifying preflowers, I use a 9X watchmaker´s eyeglass.
So now you can ditch the males and concentrate your efforts on known females. Flowering proper will occur when the days shorten (for outdoor folks) or when you switch to 12/12. You then get masses of white pistils forming at branch tips.
Good luck everybody.
´I have been flowering for a week now - when will my plants show sex?´ is typical of the questions that I often come across.
First of all, looking at the seed does not tell you the gender of the plant - seeds are usually grey or brown, often spotted or striped - they can be male or female.
Neither can you do anything to influence how they will turn out - I have read so many Old Wives´Tales - anything from planting seeds under a full moon to grinding up your wife´s (or Mum´s) birth control pills - all total hokum. The only way to be SURE of getting females is to pay the extra and buy feminised seeds.
OK, so you have bought regular seed or have planted bagseed - how do we tell the sex of our plants? After about 6 to 8 weeks, when the plants are about 12 to 18" tall, and still very much in the vegetative stage, they will produce preflowers. These are formed at the axils, where the branches join the main stem.
Male preflowers are like a ball, as shown:
View attachment 1104930
Female preflowers are a pair of fine, feathery hairs called pistils:
View attachment 1104931
Once you see these they are unmistakeable for anything else.
A magnifier can assist in identifying preflowers, I use a 9X watchmaker´s eyeglass.
So now you can ditch the males and concentrate your efforts on known females. Flowering proper will occur when the days shorten (for outdoor folks) or when you switch to 12/12. You then get masses of white pistils forming at branch tips.
Good luck everybody.
