How To Sex Cannabis Plants

For you to have a flourishing cannabis grow, you must master the art of distinguishing the sex of your cannabis plant. This is more critical if you are doing it for flower. You must understand how to identify the male and separate them from the rest.

Knowing how to harvest the pollen and storing it in the right conditions away from the females is also crucial. What is more, being able to spot the hermaphrodite cannabis plant will help to maximize production.

Why Is Sex important?

A cannabis plant can be male, female or hermaphrodite. In other terms, cannabis is dioecious and hermaphroditic species. The sex of your cannabis plant is important because each sex has different uses and features. Make sure to know how to identify the different sexes from the early stages

Why Cannabis Growers Prefer Female Plants

In the cannabis plant, it is only the female flower that produces sensimilla. However, this will only occur if the female is not fertilized up to the time it matures. The flowers ripe have a lot of trichomes but do not contain bagseed. (Cannabis seeds)

In the flip side, if the female is pollinated, it will produce buds of poor quality. This is because pollination makes it to focus all of its resources on growing seeds at the expense of quality flowers. Therefore, they will produce flowers with low CBD and THC levels.

Male Cannabis Plants Have Less Cannabinoids

Compared to their female counterparts, male cannabis plants contain very low levels of cannabinoids.  In another twist, many growers also get rid of them at early growing stages to prevent them from fertilizing the females so that they don’t compromise the quality of the flowers.

How To Guarantee A Female Cannabis Plant

Conventionally, the ratio of male to female in cannabis plants is roughly 1:1. This means that if you are growing for flower, you will get rid of almost half of your grow. At 3 – 6 weeks after germination, you can distinguish between the male and female plant. Nonetheless, there are better ways to guarantee male-free cannabis seeds for you to grow

Getting Clones

This means that you get a cutting of another female mother plant. This cloning process assures you of female-only seeds since the mother plant is female

How Are Male Cannabis Plants Used?

Apart from not being good for flowering purposes, having a male cannabis plant in your grow will also ruin your yields by pollinating the females and compromising the quality of your flowers. But on the brighter side let us discuss their importance:

Used in Breeding

The female cannabis plant needs pollen from the male to produce seeds. However, you should consider factors like structure, susceptibility and growth rate of the male that you intend to use for pollination. This will help you get quality offspring.

Producing Concentrates

They have lower levels of compounds like cannabinoids and terpenes compared to females. However, they still contain a significant amount on their stems, leaves and sacs which can be extracted and used in concentrates.

They Have Stronger  Fiber

The male cannabis fibre is more flexible, stronger and softer than the fibre from female cannabis. The female produces a coarse fibre which is mostly used for rough fabric like canvas. The softer fibre from male cannabis is suitable for most household fabric products like and clothes.

Incredible Pest Repellent

This is an outstanding benefit of the male cannabis plant. It goes beyond consumption. They have compounds that efficiently repel pest in your garden. Try intercropping them with other plants, you will not have to worry about the pest. The male cannabis offers perfect protection.

What Are Hermaphrodite Cannabis Plants?

This refers to cannabis plants that present both female and male characteristics. There are two categories of hermaphrodites; nanner and the hermines producers. They all can pollinate themselves and also pollinate a female cannabis plant.

Causes Of Cannabis Hermaphroditism

The two major causes of hermaphroditism are; environmental stress and genetics.

Genetically influenced hermaphrodites are plants that germinated from hermaphrodite seeds. They are called ‘true hermaphrodites’. If they are well looked after, true hermies may not present the male and female sexes. However, environmental elements cam make a true hermie to exhibit its characteristics.  Even though most hybrid strains are not very sensitive to this gynandgomorphism,   Particular strains like Thai Sative are at high risk.

Apart from genetics, female cannabis plants can be influenced by environmental stresses to develop banana-like outgrowth called nanners, which are male parts. They are then able to pollinate the females in the grow and also self- pollinate.

Why Do Cannabis Plants Try To Self-Pollinate When Stressed?

This happens when a female cannabis plant feels that her survival is under serious stress. Conditions like extreme heat, pests, physical trauma, deceases, extended flowering periods and many others can be registered as life-threatening threats by the female cannabis plant. In such occurrences, She will try to self-pollinate to ensure continuity of her DNA by leaving seeds in the flower in case she dies. That is interesting. Isn’t it?

What To Do If Your Cannabis Hermies

There are two options when your cannabis plant exhibits signs of hermaphroditism. You either Treat it or get Uproot it.

Uproot the plant if it has many nanners. But in the event it doesn’t have substantial numbers, use tweezers that are sanitized with alcohol or peroxide to remove the male parts and sterilize with water to prevent pollination. While removing the male parts, make sure they don’t touch your females. Thereafter, keep checking on the plant for any male flowers.

How To Identify The Sex Of Cannabis Plants

Differentiating the cannabis plant sex is the first step to ensuring a high-quality harvest. You should do at the earliest stage possible. Establish the sex as soon as possible.

These are the early signs of a cannabis plant’s sex

A Male cannabis plant will produce outgrowth 3-4weeks after germination which will then grown into sac that fills with pollen upon maturity.

Female plants will show a pre-flowers that looks like pollen sacs 4 to 6 weeks after germination. Some white pistils will appear a few days thereafter.

To identify a true Hermaphrodites check to see if a plant shows both pollen sacs and buds during the early flowering stages. A nanner on the other hand will tend to appear at a later stage. They are usually elongated and lime green or yellow.

Sexing Your Cherries

There are two credible techniques for determining the sex of your cannabis plant.

1. Pre-Flower Technique

This is the traditional way in which you patiently wait for the pre-flowers to wait and observe patiently. This is the most practised technique that takes between 3-6weeks from germination to yield results.

1. Flower-Forcing Clones Technique

In this method, clones are separately induced to produce pre-flowers to help determine the sex. This is achieved without exposing the mother to pollen.

You start by obtaining a clone from the mother plant and label it and its corresponding mother plant. Wait until the clones form roots subject them into a 12 hour of light alternating with 12 hours of darkness schedule. Within a week of doing so, the plant will reveal its sex.

Master The skills Of Growing High Quality Cannabis

Equipping yourself with information is crucial if you want to have a successful cannabis growing venture. Identifying the sex of cannabis is a must-have skill in this business. It is a skill that needs patience, a sharp eye and precise judgement. You must know the exact stage and the distinguishing feature to look out for.  The males are the biggest threat to your grow. So once you identify and get rid of them, you can take a breath.  Once the males are out, you can breathe and concentrate on raising a healthy female grow.

That is exactly how to sex cannabis plants.