If you’re new to growing marijuana, you might not know that there are female and male cannabis plants. In fact, you need to figure out which sex your plant is in order to produce usable bud. This guide will provide you with the info you need to master this area of cannabis cultivation.
Why Do I Need to Know?
There’s one important reason why you need to know the sex of your plants. Male plants mostly produce pollen that makes your female plants produce seeds.Female plants are the ones that produce the big, fat buds you’re looking for.
When you’re growing, you need to be sure you’re only using feminized plants. If you have male plants mixed in with your females, they will not produce any buds and you might ruin your female plants.
That’s because if there are mature female and male plants in close proximity, the male plant will pollinate the female plant. When that happens, she starts producing tons of seeds. So, if you’d like to maximize your usable bud, and coax your plants into producing fat, seed-free flowers, then you’ve got to carefully identify what sex your plants are. Once that’s done, you need to remove all the male plants before they start pollinating the female ones.
How To Tell The Sex of Your Cannabis Plants
When your plants turn six weeks old, it’s time to figure out what sex they are. To do this, look at all the joints where branches and stems connect.This is where the tell-tale signs will first show up.
If a plant is male, little balls will start showing up at the joints between branches. As they grow larger they’ll start to resemble clusters of grapes. These are actually the pollen sacs. If the plant reaches the flowering stage, these sacs will open up and the pollen will spread all over the place. If it happens to land on a female plant, it will fertilize the flowers and they’ll start to produce a lot of seeds.
On the other hand, if your plant is female, it will not produce those little balls. Instead, look for a wispy, white, hair-looking thing to show up at the joints of branches. These are the plant’s pistils, and they’ll eventually pave the way for your plant to start producing buds.
Every one in a while, you’ll find a plant that grows both pollen sacs and feminized pistils. If this is the case, move the plant away from your other females because its pollen sacs will eventually open up. These plants will often pollinate themselves, but they’ll also pollinate any other female plants in the vicinity.
Isolate Female Plants
Once you know the sex of all your plants, you’ve got to isolate the female ones. If you want usable bud, these are the only plants you should be growing.
Simply remove all the male plants and any plants that produce both pistils and pollen sacs. At this point, your grown operation should be full of only healthy,strong female plants.
Now it’s just a matter of keeping them well fed and helping them grow into the flowering phase.Once they reach that stage, they’ll start producing beautiful, crystal-covered flowers.
Buy Feminized Seeds
One final thing. If you want to avoid all of this, you can always buy feminized seeds from a reliable seed seller. These seeds should only produce female plants.
Even if you go this route, you should still double check your plants when they’re six weeks old. Nature is unpredictable, and it’s not uncommon for a male plant to sneak in.
