Males and growth :D

[LoveMeBucket]

high everyone

well, my babies are a bit better. I posted in a different forum before.. OD'd them on nutes when they were too little *DOH* anyways just had a few questions

 

1. they are about 3 weeks old (grown from seeds) and 3 of them are about 2 inches high, the other 3, 1 inch high and have about 10 leaves on them each.. is this about normal growth? i have the light cycles 22hrs on, 2 hrs off but my mate seems to think they are small for that length of time?

 

2. I read somewhere that to sex the plants you cut the light cycle to 12hrs on/ 12hrs off when the plant is one-third the size you want it to be eventually and to rip out the males ASAP... but i got my seeds out of a bag of buds and some ppl have said that if the males are left in the buds will be the same but just have seeds in them while other ppl have said that the males will make the buds fukd and ruin the females? im confused!

 

Thanks guys!

Love to all

LoveMeBucket

[pipeman]

males will most definitely reduce the size and quality of your buds, plus they are wasting valuable space in your growroom. so after putting them in flower check them every day and remove males and hermies.

 

that being said, my first crop of seedy buds kept me stoned for 6 months. but it would have been better with no seeds........

[LoveMeBucket]

do you think they are normal size pipeman? a friend of mine reckons they r small & will take ages but he is used to growing from clones...... will have to get a digicam soon

[pipeman]

I dunno mate, maybe a bit on the small side. If you burned them with nutes that may be the reason. NO reason they can't go great from hear on in though.

 

Not a good idea to tell friends you grow. What if this mate ever decides he wants to bring you down?

[LoveMeBucket]

only a few ppl know about my grow.......... out of necessity tho (one person lives with me and the other is helping me coz he has grown before and is giving me some clones) apart from that no-one knows & they are all stoners themselves and would rather have a share of the weed than dob me in

[Luke Skywalker]

They could also take it or tell others. The chances of a secret being disseminated to those you don't want it to is exponentially proportional to the amount of people who know said secret. In english, that means that if someone else can gain from your growing, they will probably try to, and there are all kinds of reasons that they will...

 

That said, good luck, and I hope your buds grow big and strong.

 

Okay, these plants are 1 inch tall with 10 leaves? 10 leaflets (like the blades of a whole leaf, which is attached to the stem by a petiole, or leaf stem) or is this 10 leaves in total, all squashed up close together really tightly? The nodes are close together then? I have to tell you, a one inch plant with 10 leaves, (which I'm taking here to mean 5 sets of leaves, first one of one blade, second with three blades on the leaf, third set with 5 etc etc) is an interesting image in my mind, but if you do have this then you're doing bloody well mate, I have to tell you... If this isn't the case then I'm sure you'll amend your description.

 

As pipeman has said, if males are allowed to flower and set seed in the females in a growroom then the potency of the female plants will most certainly be affected. This is not to say it won't be good pot, but it won't be the best pot it could be, which is sinsemilla, or seedless buds. This is because when a female plant is left unfertilised the energy which would normally go into seed production, is instead directed to excess resin production in the female flowers. At maturity, (between 6 and 16 weeks from start of flowering, totally dependent on the strain) these buds are glistening with trichomes and juicy sweet. No seeds to remove and far greater potency than would be the case should the same strain be exposed to pollen early in its life, thus directing the energy of the plant to creating seeds.

 

Some growers get the best of both worlds by growing males in isolated, (and I mean completely isolated, otherwise you'll have plants screwing each other all over the place) growrooms and selectively pollinating single or a few branches of a plant, leaving the majority to grow on unfertilised and thus sinsemilla buds. The seeded branches are then used as the next generation, or tested out and used potentially for further breeding. The average home grower tho, who just wants to grow their own buds is probably best advised to steer clear of breeding, be it intentional or unintentional until they've got a good understanding of the process and management and also the resources to do so effectively.

 

Aaaaaaanyway, back to the plants in question, yeah, given good treatment from here on and even given just marginal you'll pull some good buds. Remove any male plants as soon as they appear and before they can release any pollen. Grow on the females and keep a close eye on these for hermaphroditism... (male flowers on predominantly female plants, they're a bitch. ) and all going well you should have a lovely harvest in a few months.

 

One more thing. Make sure you veg your plants for a good month and a half before you start thinking about turning them to flowering. The height restriction may force you to go before this, but there are many ways to keep plants short and compact indoors through this time. Check out the faq for info on tipping and training. Anyway, this is done to allow the plants to fully mature to sexual readiness before flowering... If thrown into flower too early it may stress the plant into hermaphroditism as well, although this is something also governed by the individual circumstances and strain. Some take it well, others will pop male flowers all over the place if they're turned too early. The indicator of sexual maturity? Preflowers..... Now, you can sex the plants by simply turning down the light cycle like you've said, but to get the best you should allow them to veg out, training and perhaps pruning to get them nice and bushy, and when they've reached maturity they'll produce single flowers on the nodes, where the branch and leaf meets the stem. The stems themselves will also start to grow differently, with nodes now alternating on the stem, first on one side then the other, rather than the opposite form they were taking before. This indicates the plant is ready to flower, and turning the lights down at this point will ensure the best harvest possible. The longer you veg, the larger the yeild of course, but there is a minimum time really for the plants to be ready for flowering. Some strains do it better than others, some need longer to mature than others, and some just don't give a rat's arse what you do to them, but the guidelines above are generally true of MJ.

 

Of course, any and all disagreements on this from other members is most welcome, without discussion and debate there is no progress of knowledge.

 

So basically, try and grow em out until maturity, and keep em short, the 1/3 height from veg to flower rule you mentioned is about right, but some strains are shorter than others... Some will only double, some less, some more, it depends. The sativa strains tend to grow longer, fluffier buds than the indica strains.

 

Whew... Well, hope that helps mate, if there's anything that didn't make sense or you need me to elaborate on then just ask, I'm here to help. Good luck with your (hopefully) girls, and may they bring you much stondedness in the coming months.

 

p.s. a pic would be probably the most helpful thing you could offer as an id to any problems.... digicams are so cheap even little ol poor me can afford one, and I'm on a pension, so get on down there and get yourself one! You'll thank yourself a million times in the future for it.

[white_cluster]

I seen this plant that was like one inch tall with probably 6-7 leaf sets, outdoors, was apparentyl few months old, the leaves were amazingly small, a true bonsai, very cute, but would never get out of its stunted state and become a plant again, I've tried and tried to make a plant grow like that, but nothing works, even half a rw cube I still get close to normal sized leaves, anyway, sounds stunted.

[LoveMeBucket]

cheers guys

yeah there are like 2 small leaves (the first one's that opened) and then another couple of individual leaves shooting out from the top of them and another set shooting out the top of them (half the plants are about 2" tall) but one of the plants is really weird..... it is tiny, almost with no stalk but it is sprouting 8 individual leaves, the biggest about 1cm long and that particular one has the greenest leaves out of all of them. and yeah the nodes are really close together, the leaves almost on top of each other.

Peace