How to tell if a marijuana plant is female or male

Bob Marley

With feminized seeds dominating today’s market, growers very seldom need to check the gender of their plants. Our article is addressed to novice users who may not know how to tell a female cannabis plant from a male one. So what is the difference between male and female cannabis plants? Which sex of marijuana is better? How to deal with male plants? These topics are covered by our text.

Male or female cannabis – why is it important?

    For starters, what is the essential difference between male cannabis and female plants? The answer is simple – only female plants produce buds appropriate for smoking. Male cannabis has low levels of THC, CBD and other substances, and as such, is only used for reproduction and breeding.

Why remove male plants?

    In nature, every living being is primarily interested in reproduction. Resins and cannabinoids are only produced in the cannabis bush before pollination. Once pollination has occurred, the plant devotes all its vital forces solely to seed formation. Unpollinated cannabis is called sensimilla. Technically, only unpollinated buds are considered as valid for smoking – only sensimilla. In practise, buds with seeds are often sold / consumed, however their quality is lower.  

    For these reasons, male plants should be removed immediately before flowering occurs and pollen gets on all your female plants, rendering further cultivation pointless. They are going to make your girls all about kids and marriage, not about fun! 

How to figure out the gender of cannabis at an early stage?

    Many people google "the sex of a cannabis seed" or "seeds of female marijuana plants", "how to distinguish male seeds from female seeds". Unfortunately, the seeds themselves are genderless. There are only two questions you can be asking about seeds: 

1    Are they feminised?

2    Is the seed bank / breeder reliable?   

    Seed banks that only pretend to be selling professionally grown seeds may “reward” your trust with feminized seeds that will turn out male or hermaphrodite. ?    

How to determine the gender of a marijuana plant?

    We can only find out the sex of a plant at pre-bloom. So, a hundred percent way to find out the sex of marijuana is to focus on the following indicators:

• growth, size, and rate of maturation;
• timing of pre-flower appearance;
• type of pre-flowers.

    Pre-flowers are thickenings that appear on the stem at the junctions with branches growing from it (or between branches and shoots growing from them) after 3-5 weeks of the vegetative period if we are talking about autoflowering plants – photoperiod cannabis will show pre-flowers once the vegetation is over. 

    It should be noted that male cannabis is 1-3 weeks faster to mature and grow. Thus, if one bush is 10-20 cm taller and more developed than the others, you may suspect it is male even before pre-flowering begins. The height of the bush is not an exact indicator, but nature has designed the male flowers to be taller so that pollen is blown by the wind onto the lower-height female flowers.

    100% way to tell which sex your plant is: take a loupe and look closely at the neoplasms.

    Female pre-flowers grow from the stem itself, close to it. The male ones grow on a small stalk. 

Telling the sex of cannabis by a clone

    There is an equally reliable method, more relevant to outdoor growing: a clone is cut off from a bush and placed under 12/12 lighting. Within 2 weeks it will switch to flowering, enabling you to see its sex – the mother plant will undoubtedly be of the same sex! An outdoor mother plant will take longer to flower than the 12/12 illuminated clone, so this method allows you to save unnecessary expense and effort if you have an outdoor plantation.

What to do with male marijuana plants?

    There is no use smoking male cannabis, especially when it hasn’t matured. Carefully remove the dangerous plants from your planting without touching the pollen pods (if they’ve grown already). You can finely chop the males, fry them in oil and eat them. A psychedelic tripping is very unlikely, but it may be healthy.  

How can you avoid male plants?

    First of all, do your best to minimize any stress that your plants may suffer from: monitor your temperature, humidity, pH level. Do watering the correct way. Examine your marijuana for diseases and insects and make sure that fertilizers are carefully dosed.

Feminized seeds are the best solution against male plants appearing, but how the plants are handled is important as well!

Similar topic: Female or male: how to tell the gender of cannabis 

29.01.2017

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