Trouble reading today's article? Click
here: Issue #260 - Sunday, April 9, 2017 Dear Fellow Grower, In today's issue... - Learn where you need to look on young cannabis plants to determine gender as soon as 3-6 weeks from when they first germinated!
- Learn how to turn buds or leaves into dry ice hash that will knock your socks off! The process is easy, quick and safe!
- Check out the Trophy Pic of the Week which features three beautiful outdoor
plants!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "Everything that people say is testable."
~Louis C. K.
How to Determine Sex by Nebula Haze |
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How to Determine Gender of a Young Cannabis Plant
What are cannabis "pre-flowers?" They are little versions of adult flowers that appear on your marijuana plants relatively early in the vegetative stage.
When I first started growing weed, I was incorrectly told that there is no way to determine a cannabis plant's gender until the flowering stage.
But I've since learned that pre-flowers can reveal the plant's sex while it's still in the vegetative stage! Cannabis plants grow pre-flowers as young as 3-4 weeks from germination for male plants, and 4-6 weeks from germination for female plants.
Cannabis Pre-Flowers Are Small Versions of Adult
Flowers. These reveal a plant's gender. Knowing the plant gender is helpful because most hobbyist cannabis growers would like to identify and remove male plants from the grow room early in the growing process. This is due to the fact that only
female plants make potent buds/flowers, while male cannabis plants make non-potent pollen sacs where female plants would grow buds. Additionally, female buds need to avoid pollen from male plants in order to make the highest quality cannabis (sinsemilla or "no seeds").
Cannabis pre-flowers appear at the base of leaves when male plants are about 3-4 weeks old, and female plants are 4-6 weeks old.
Even if you're not 100% sure about every plant from looking at the pre-flowers, it's nice to know which plants you need to watch closely and which are definitely female. However, if precision is very important...
Chemical Leaf Tests Can Determine Sex &
Potency
Chemical leaf testing is getting less expensive every day and can be used on cannabis seedlings with as few as three sets of leaves to test for gender and future potency.
These tests only require a tiny amount of plant tissue (for example a small punch-out from a leaf, or a single cotyledon leaf), so it won't hurt or slow down your seedlings to take a test sample!
There are many reasons growers would like to know plant gender as early as possible, as well as be able estimate the overall THC/CBD ratios of future buds!
But for those of us using our eyes....
Female Pre-Flowers
(these turn into buds) This female pre-flower hasn't released a wispy white pistil quite yet
But for growers starting with "regular" (non-feminized) seeds, about half of the plants can turn out to be male.
And unfortunately, there's no way to look at a seed and be able to tell what gender it is.
Unfortunately, you can't tell a cannabis plant's gender for sure by looking at the seeds :(
How to Figure out Sex of a Cannabis Plant by Examining Pre-flowers
Vegetating plants usually reveal their gender when they're just 3-6 weeks old from seed, but you have to know where to look.
What you're looking for is "pre-flowers." These are tiny versions of adult sex parts, and when you see them you can tell what gender the plant is going to be. They
usually show up in the upper parts of the plant, closer to the lights, but sometimes you'll search the whole plant and only find a pre-flower on a random branch lower down on the plant.
Vegetating cannabis
plants reveal their gender with "pre-flowers" that usually appear 3-6 weeks from when the plant first germinated.
Although these are the general shapes of male and female pre-flowers, if you continue looking through the pictures below, you'll see there's quite a bit of variation on what
pre-flowers look like from strain to strain. Most male plants have grown a pre-flower by week 3-4 from seed, while female plants don't show until week 4-6. Basically all vegetative plants will have revealed their gender by about the 6th week from
seed.
So without further ado, here are pictures showing what you're looking for when it comes to pre-flowers. Remember, pre-flowers are found at the V where stems meet a main stalk. But pre-flowers don't usually show up all over the plant. Make sure to look around in different places, especially near the top of the plant and closer to the lights
Note: Pre-flowers show up most often near the top of the plant and closer to the lights, but could be anywhere on the plant. There may be just one on the whole plant so you may have to search all over!
Male Pre-Flowers
Male pre-flowers tend to have a "spade" shape, like the spades from a deck of cards. Male cannabis plants often (but not always) reveal their gender sooner than female plants.
Male pre-flowers tend to be shaped somewhat like a
spade This male plant was only 3 weeks when it made its first preflower. Notice how tiny it is compared to the giant-sized thumb! Often it's unclear what the gender is when a
pre-flower is this small (unless you've got a lot of experience) so if you're not sure, it's a good idea to wait and see how it develops, just in case. Just to give you an idea how small these can be when they show up... This is the exact same picture as above, but with the pre-flower made bigger so you can see it. Pretty tiny, isn't it? I've also noticed that sometimes (though not always!) the stipules on male plants seem more "leafy" and less "pointy" than stipules on female plants (the stipules are the
green hair-like growths near where pre-flowers show up). However, this is just a generality, and should be used together with other factors to determine if a plant is male! There are definitely male plants with pointy stipules and vice versa, but it's sort of a general difference. This particular pre-flower is really tough to determine. However, in the end it was a male plant. The little "stem" is one clue it may be
male Just like the above male plant, sometimes you get almost what looks like two tiny little leaves that the pre-flower pollen sac "unfurls" from. In the above picture the pollen sac
is still mostly hidden, while in this next picture, the tiny growths have opened up to fully reveal the pollen sac. This can be confusing because these extra growths don't appear on all plants, and are not a pre-flower or a stipule. Here's another male pollen sac pre-flower that's on a little "stem" A single male pre-flower appears Once you see multiple pollen sacs and no white pistils, you can be confident it's a male plant Although this plant ended up being male, the stipules are long, pointy and crossed like you'd normally see with a female plant. That's why you need to confirm gender with the
pre-flowers and not just look at other factors on the plant! Sometimes the pollen sacs look a little unusual when they first start growing in, but you know it's male when you see several pre-flowers without any pistils stacked on top of
each other like bunches of grapes If you click the following picture and zoom in close, you can see pollen sacs scattered among the leaves This is what male pollen sacs look like when the plant actually starts flowering This is what a male plant looks like at maturity, when it's starting to spill its pollen For those who've never seen a male cannabis plant in its full glory :)
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When it comes to making hash (very concentrated form of cannabis), there's several different ways to go about it. Each method is different and has it's pros and cons but in my opinion there's one method to rule them all!
I like the "dry ice hash" method because
it's easy, cheap, quick, safe and doesn't use any solvents like butane! You can use this to instantly make hash from buds or leaves.
It is also one of the highest yielding ways to get hash! |
Closeup of dry ice hash - it's basically a pile of pure trichomes! Dry ice hash is made by putting your buds or leaves into a
specially made bag with dry ice (which can be found at certain grocery stores). The bag has a very fine mesh screen at the bottom that will let trichomes (glitter on your buds) through, but not any plant matter. The dry ice is so cold that it literally freezes the trichomes off the buds and they fall through the mesh screen!
You put cannabis and dry ice in a specially made bag and shake. The hash literally falls out the bottom!
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I just want to thank you for the GREAT website. I have been able to systematically work my way through everything that I was doing wrong, my crops are 10 times better. Thanks so much!
Ted |
Trophy Picture of the Week! |
I felt like sharing today. I've grown all my life and I'll be fifty-three tomorrow, but I must say these three beautiful ladies may be the prettiest I've ever grown. Two Haze and one Jock Horror from Nirvana. They're two weeks from flowering. The one on top has five mains. She was topped and because of the weight of the two it pushed her over so she grew two mains almost out of the root. Can't wait to see
what they produce!
Peace out
Kenny |
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Who Runs This
Newsletter? |
Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to
make it easier for new growers to get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
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Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture, bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis can be a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water
doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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