How big does the plant need to be

[Lofty]

Hey all, just wondering how big my babies should be before i can accurately tell if they are male or female?

[Guest BudWaver]

As big as you like...I like to work on the principle of them being a foot tall when cloned...wait till the clones have rooted then switch your growing plants over and make whatever clones are females your mums....

 

At a foot tall rather than 6 inches I think you stand a better chance of seeing just how the plant grows and what the buds form like...

 

If ya dont want to take clones u can always reveg them after flowering and sexing...

 

OR turn the main plants to flower...see which ones get balls...or a combo of balls and hairs and rip them out...and then turn em back to grow again....and then work on growing yerself some big plants and then choose a mother from the yields and speed of growth obtained etc

[white_cluster]

wait till mid/late summer mate.

[pipeman]

yeah mate just let them flower and you'll soon be able to tell. read up on cannabutter for when you rip those males

[Guest Wilderbud]

In my experience they usually pre-flower around 8 weeks outdoors [before xmas] but not always.

 

Size doesnt matter when sexing a plant - heh.

Edited October 17, 2003 by Wilderbud

[Luke Skywalker]

If you're talking about planting seed outdoors in spring, and wondering how long it'll be before you see preflowers, then yeah, about 2 months or so, but this is greatly dependent on where you live. Some strains will flower very quickly even in spring and summer near the equator, whereas others need just a short diff between night and day to trigger them...

 

But the thing about MJ is, it's different things to talk about when you "can" flower a plant and when its "ready" to flower.... If we talk about when you can flower a plant, well, you can set it to 12/12 from germ... it'll soon turn to flowering, although you won't end up with squat becuase the plant has had little to no chance to prepare itself. Indoor plants can be grown for relatively short times, and then flowered at will... because you are mother nature... but since this is in outdoor growing, I'm assuming that you're talking about growing seed "naturally" under the trillion watt nuclear hid in the sky. If this is the case, then plants will tell ya when their ready, usually, like I said, after about 2 months... In nature, the plants begin by making opposed nodes, and as the plant matures, they change to alternate nodes. (opposed being two nodes directly across from each other on the stem, alternating being first one side, then a little further up on the other... etc...) This is when the plant usually starts to produce it's first real preflowers, at the junctions of the stem, and you can from these determine sex...

 

Of course, some strains produce preflowers earlier than others, some may be ready to flower in only just over a month or two, some may grow for more than 6 without showing many signs of being ready to go... All of them can, of course, be flowered quite early from seed, but there is always the risk that the plant will take this as a stressful thing, and produce quite substantially reduced yeilds, not to mention chances of hermaphroditism. Clones can be grown to whatever height and flowered, because a clone is not a young plant genetically or hormonally, it's a mature one. So it can be easily turned between each growth phase. A seed plant has a much longer route to flowering, and takes up a lot more space and time, but this is the only way to sexually reproduce, so we can have new and better developments in breeding.

 

I hope that made sense, and didn't confuse you too much.

[Chev]

In my experience they usually pre-flower around 8 weeks outdoors [before xmas] but not always.

Yup. But I'd just wait and see what you get, then rip any males out, as a couple of the guys suggested.