CAN MARIJUANA SEEDS BE SEXED?
It's impossible to know the sex of the cannabis seed just by observing its physical features. However, this does not mean that the gender of the seed can't be known. Marijuana sexing refers to knowing the gender of your marijuana seeds. This process can't be easily achieved at the earlier stage, especially during germination, because the male and female cannabis plant still has a lot of similar characteristics and are identical. However, as the plant grows and starts to enter the flowering stage, you'll observe obvious signs that give off the gender of the marijuana plant.
Marijuana sexing is not as difficult as most people think it is, even though it might appear complex and challenging to comprehend at the first time of practice; however, as you do it continuously and gains experience, you start to find it a lot easier and even enjoyable. The primary reason for sexing is to separate the male cannabis seed from the female to stop them from pollinating the female ones and divert their energy from creating strong and resinous THC flowers.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FEMINIZED AND REGULAR SEEDS
The good news is that you don't need to go through the whole marijuana sexing process to secure a garden full of female plants; buying feminized seeds will easily save you the stress. Feminized seeds refer to specially bred seeds with the single purpose of producing only female plants. Even though they do not offer a 100% guarantee, there's only a slim chance of like 1% that the seed they produce won't be female. Therefore, you can rest assured with feminized seeds that you're growing female plants.
Knowing the gender of your cannabis plant right from the start offers you many benefits and prevents you from wasting your time, efforts, and resources on plants you might not have the intention of growing. However, some growers enjoy growing regular cannabis seeds and even prefer it to grow feminized seeds. A regular seed refers to a seed that's randomly picked from an old seed bank. You have no way of knowing its gender till after it enters the flowering stage.
Regular cannabis seeds are the best to grow in some cases, especially when you're carrying out a breeding project or searching for excellent old-school genetics that was never feminized, especially the ones before the 2000s. Furthermore, some growers dislike feminized seeds because, most times, they have been mixed with chemical compounds, and they can't be considered natural. At the same time, some growers want to go about it old-fashioned with regular seeds. They want to enjoy the process, learn from the challenges and become better at marijuana sexing. After all, knowing the gender of your marijuana seeds right from the start is not fun.
Whatever your reason for growing regular seeds is, it's essential to know that regular seeds have a 50/50 chance of producing a male and female plant, which means that you will have some male cannabis plants that will eventually need to be culled. Therefore, you need to learn how to sex your cannabis plants.
A QUICK LOOK INTO HOW FEMINIZED CANNABIS SEEDS ARE MADE
There are some methods that you can try out, especially if you're a veteran cannabis grower and you want to influence the will of your cannabis seed into producing a female plant. The most common way is using the colloidal solution, which involves continuous/daily spraying the colloidal solution onto the plant. Colloidal silver is majorly used because other chemicals and compounds are not easily accessible or they're too toxic. This method is best used when the plant is still in the flowering stage. The continuous application of the colloidal silver solution helps to suppress the plant ethylene, the chemical responsible for making male flowers.
Instead, the female plant starts to produce pollen sacs with many female pollens, which the breeder can use to pollinate the female flowers, producing all-female seeds. Another method you can use to create feminized seeds is rodelization. This is more of a natural method than a colloidal silver solution, but it needs to be more reliable and frequently used by breeders. At the end of a growing season, an unpollinated female cannabis plant sometimes produces pollen seeds in a desperate attempt to pollinate herself. The pollen can be made use of to create feminized seeds. However, it is unreliable because the ethylene hasn't been repressed, so there's still a tendency to produce make seeds.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SEXING YOUR CANNABIS PLANTS AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE MALE AND FEMALE PLANTS.
Growers mainly demand the female cannabis plant because of its potent and large THC production. In contrast, the male cannabis plant is only desired for breeding purposes and sowing seeds. Regardless of the reasons, a grower always likes to separate the male plants from the female as soon as possible, and this is because it helps him in focusing his energy and resources on raising his desired gender.
Nonetheless, the male cannabis plant also poses a threat to the female plant, potentially hindering the quality and quantity of its THC production. Male plants are known for producing pollen grains, and when a female cannabis plant gets pollinated by a nearby male, its THC production is significantly reduced. Her energy is diverted to producing more seeds. After reproduction, the female cannabis seed becomes relaxed and weak in producing good-quality size buds. Instead, the buds produced would be lower quality and won't contain much THC and other valuable cannabinoids.
But when a female cannabis plant is left unpollinated, it continues to swell and rapidly becomes resinous. Also, the danger of the male cannabis plant pollinating the female plant shouldn't be taken lightly. This is because a little bit of pollen grains is enough to pollinate a room full of female plants; thus, the necessary care must be taken. This is part of the primary reason workers in a grow room are always in full-body suits. It's to limit the risk of accidental pollen exposure.
WHEN TO SEX CANNABIS PLANT
It profits you, as a grower, when you know the gender of the plant at an early stage. It helps you to quickly separate the male plant from the female, thus protecting its potent THC production. It also saves you from wasting your energy, time, and resources on a male plant you don't want to grow. You can get some clues by observing the plant's growth patterns, but you can't tell the gender of the plant conclusively until the flowering stage is reached. But, of course, the flowering stage is not the same for every cannabis plant. The strain and growth setup (indoors and outdoors) all significantly determine the flowering time.
Pre-flowers are reproductive organs that begin developing before the plant fully enters the reproductive stage and can be used as a means to identify the gender of the plant. At week 4, after germination, most cannabis plants start to pre-flower, and at week 6, the gender of the plant would have become so evident and easy to identify with the tips that would be discussed later on in the article. While at week 8, you can tell just the male plant apart from the female plant so quickly. But before that stage, the plants need to be treated equally.
HOW TO TELL THE MALE PLANT APART FROM THE FEMALE DURING PRE-FLOWER.
Sexing the cannabis plant requires you to have a good knowledge of plant anatomy in general. Both the male and female cannabis seeds share the exact location for producing pre-flowers, and that's at the junction between the branches and stem. The pre-flower starts in the crook between the male plant stalk and a fan leaf stem (petiole), usually near the top of the plant. However, you can always expect the male plant to show signs before the female plant. Check for plant pre-flowers at the junction between the stem and branches.
A magnifying tool such as the Jeweler's loupe, the same magnifying device popularly used for observing the trichomes and determining the plant readiness for harvest, is encouraged. Then find out where the stipule is, there's a leafy pointed flap that shoots from the junction. Furthermore, you must be careful to distinguish the stipule for a pre-flower. The cannabis sex parts can be found at the back of the stipule. Also, at the back of the sex parts, you can expect taller growth tips to emerge. They are the future auxiliary branch that produces buds.
HOW TO IDENTIFY A MALE CANNABIS PLANT
As mentioned earlier, the male plant produces pre-flower earlier than the female plant. The male pre-flower, which refers to the early pollen sacs, appears to be more round than the female pre-flower part. As it grows and shapes, the male pre-flower starts to resemble a ball. Often, the male cannabis plant tends to be leggier than female plants with a longer internodal length. In contrast, the female plant is squatter with more leaves and a bushier aspect. The male pre-flower is easily visible to the eyes, even though a magnifying glass makes the job easier. The male pre-flower is called the staminate, and as it develops into a pollen sac, it starts to resemble a long-hanging sack of a baby banana. It will help if you can identify the male plant and separate it from the family before it reaches this stage.
HOW TO IDENTIFY A FEMALE CANNABIS PLANT
Like the male plant, a female plant can also be identified from its pre-flowers. The early pre-flower of the female plant is more ovate and pear-like but with a thin pointed tip. This is called the calyx, and right from the calyx, we can see two white hair-like protruding structures called the pistils. However, not every female cannabis plant in the pre-flowering stage produces pistils.
If, after checking all these and you're unsure or you can't identify the sex of the cannabis plant, then there's no need to rush to make any rash decision. You can wait for a few more days when the organs would have been more mature and become easier to identify. After all, the male ones are still very far from producing pollen, so there's no harm in waiting.
HOW TO ACHIEVE EARLY SEXING
If you're impatient and can't wait for the plant to reveal its gender usually, you can do a few things, especially if you're a veteran cannabis grower.
- Quicken up flowering by exposing the plant to a 12/12 light cycle. The disadvantage of this method is that separate rooms or grow spaces are needed. Also, the plants become hormonally confused when switched between vegging to flowering and then back to vegging and flowering again. With this method, you'll be able to identify your male plants and cull them earlier, but it will significantly increase your harvest by a few weeks.
- Use a black plastic cut from a garbage bag to cover the lower plant, but avoid using a thin bag that light can penetrate through. You've to put it on the lower branch for 12 hours and have it removed for 12 hours at the same time repeatedly. The branch will eventually reveal its sex long before the rest of the plant, allowing it to be ordinarily vegetative.
WHAT IS A HERMAPHRODITE PLANT AND HOW DOES IT LOOK?
The hermaphrodite cannabis plant, often refers to as the hermies, contains both the characteristics of the male and female cannabis plant. It's often caused as a last attempt by the cannabis plant to produce seeds before it dies off. Hermaphrodism can also be caused by stress. When the cannabis plant observes the flowering conditions to be too hard, it perceives hermaphroditism as an effective way to shorten the period. Thus it pollinates the female flowers with the pollen of a few male clusters. Often the best thing to do when you observe a hermaphrodite plant is to cut them off from the rest of the female plants, as it has a strong tendency to pollinate them and affect the quality of the THC production.
CONCLUSION
Most growers prefer the female cannabis plant because it produces the fattest, most resinous, and most potent flowers. However, it's not possible to distinguish the female cannabis plant from the female, most especially before the flowering stage. Thus, growers are forced to wait till the flowering stage to know the gender of the plant, except they purchase feminized seeds, which have a very high guarantee of producing female seeds. At the flowering stage, the male cannabis plant produces a staminate, a round pollen sac at the junction between the stem and the branches.
Also, the female produces the calyx at the exact location, which often has a pair of pistils or white hair-like protrusion. Marijuana sexing is a must for every grower as it helps save them from wasting their time, efforts, and resources in growing male plants they wouldn't use.