What Happens if You Grow “Hermie” Seeds?

Did you find seeds in your buds even though no male plants were around? “Hermie seeds” refer to seeds you find in your cannabis buds without the presence of male plants. Here are trustworthy feminized seeds that always grow buds but never grow seeds.

Can you grow seeds from a hermie cannabis plant? Yes, but there are pros and cons.

Home Grow Tip: Start with trustworthy feminized seeds (here’s a list of good ones) to ensure every plant makes seedless buds. Save yourself the headache!

Cannabis buds with no seeds = “sinsemilla”
(higher THC and better to smoke than seedy buds)

When you find your homegrown buds have seeds even though zero male plants were in the vicinity, it means a female plant “hermed” (showed hermaphrodite tendencies).

The herm plant released pollen onto surrounding buds, causing seeds to grow. Hermie seeds can appear even if you don’t see any visual signs of herming like pollen sacs or bananas.

Hermie seeds: No male plant was around, but you find seeds in the buds anyway.

But what happens if you grow the hermie seeds from a hermed plant? Will it cause problems? Keep reading to find out!

Here is what cannabis growers can expect when growing hermie cannabis seeds:

Pros 

• Free Seeds – These are seeds you find in your buds. Cannabis seeds cost money, and getting free seeds without any effort is appealing.
• All-Female Plants – If both parents were female (at least mostly female), as is the case with herm seeds, all resulting cannabis plants will be at least mostly female and grow buds. In a way, herm seeds are unplanned, naturally-formed “feminized” seeds.

Cons 

• More Likely to Herm – Unlike professionally feminized seeds (which are created with a special chemical process), hermie seeds come with more uncertainty. Although the resulting plants may or may not show any signs of herming, unfortunately the chances are higher. That’s because for each herm seed, herming is in its genetics.

With high-quality cannabis seeds, plants usually only herm under major stress like nutrient deficiencies, light stress, heat stress, unusual light cycles, etc. With really great genetics, plants won’t herm under any conditions. But a seed from a hermie parent is more likely to herm even in perfect conditions.

The plant went through extreme stress, so it was no surprise to find seeds.

Why growers don’t want cannabis seeds that are more likely to herm:

• Higher Chance of More Seedy Buds – Again, it is possible your buds won’t grow seeds, but seedy buds are more likely. This is because the genetics came from cannabis plants that produced seeds without the presence of a male plant. Even if you don’t see evidence of plants herming, like pollen sacs or yellow hermie bananas on the buds, the buds may have seeds in them after harvest.
• Possibly Worse Yields & Bud Quality – If buds get a few seeds, it won’t affect your yields or bud potency much. But seeds take energy to grow. If your plant grows tons of seeds because it herms, you’ll end up with smaller buds that may have lower potency or smell than expected. Sadly, when growing hermie seeds, it’s impossible to know ahead of time what you may end up with.
• Unknown Genetics – Just like starting with any other bag seeds (seeds you find), hermie or not, you don’t know how the plants will grow. Although it may seem like herm seeds would be an exact clone of the “mother” plant, that’s not how it works, due to the genetic reality of herming. Unlike starting with seeds from a trustworthy breeder, you can’t know what to expect as far as how the plant grows, how long until it’s ready to harvest, the bud structure, smell, potency, etc. It’s really the luck of the draw.

Sometimes you don’t see pollen sacs or banana, but still get hermie seeds. Female plants that produce seeds without visible pollen sacs or bananas are “hidden herms”. These plants often went through some kind of stress, but not always. Regardless, if seeds are there and no male plants were around, the resulting seeds are herm seeds.

This plant suffered from severe light stress. There were no signs of herming, but buds still grew hermie seeds.

Often you can find symptoms of the herm.

Here, there is a male flower right next to the seed that formed. (click for closeup)

Growing Hermie Seeds: Summary (What cannabis growers need to know)

It’s clear to see why growers would want to grow herm seeds. They’re essentially free seeds that appear with no effort, and grow all-female plants. That’s appealing.

The main downside to growing herm seeds is that you’re more likely to end up with more hermie plants and seeds in your buds. If it’s just a few seeds in your buds, most home growers wouldn’t care. But seeds take away from the size and potency of buds. If your buds produce tons of seeds, you’ll end up with very little bud to smoke, and it will be less potent than it could be. On top of that, you won’t know what to expect as far as how the plant grows or bud quality until the grow is over.

Related Article: What causes cannabis plants to herm?

Hermie seeds look the same as regular cannabis seeds, but they’re more unpredictable.

What happens when cannabis growers use herm seeds anyway?

If you’re wondering what happens when growers try to grow hermie seeds, you’re not alone. Lots of growers have given it a shot.

Let’s explore what happens!

First off, there are plenty of fans. I’ve talked to growers who only use hermie seeds and never buy new ones. They aim to breed a line of plants that always herms just a bit. Enough to make a few seeds each generation. That way they get a steady supply of free seeds without having to deal with male plants. The downside is every generation always has at least some seeds in their buds. A few seeds is probably not a big deal for most home growers. But if things go wrong, you may end up with tons of seeds. Buds that are very seedy can be a pain because they drop seeds everywhere, and seedy buds tend to be smaller with lower bud potency.

Pollen, pictured here, is what causes seedy buds. Pollen can come from a male plant or a hermie plant.

So what can happen from growing herm seeds? The main risk is the offspring herming like its parent.

Notice how there are little yellow growths in between the white hairs in these buds? This is a common type of cannabis herm. Each of these yellow “bananas” releases pollen. If your buds grow tons of bananas while buds are early in the flowering stage like this, you could end up with hundreds or thousands of seeds in the surrounding buds.

Yellow “bananas” are a common form of herming.

This next bud is absolutely stuffed with seeds, due to a major herm in the grow room that went unnoticed. There’s little bud left after all the seeds are shaken out. No cannabis grower wants this to happen by accident!

However, if a herm plant only grows only a few bananas or pollen sacs that release only a little pollen, you may only get a few seeds or no seeds. If the herm happens late in the flowering stage, you may not get any seeds. That’s because seeds need several weeks to form. You typically only get fully formed seeds if a cannabis plant herms relatively early in the flowering stage.

A single lone banana won’t make many seeds, especially this late in the cannabis flowering stage.

If your hermie seeds grow buds like the first examples with tons of pollen sacs or bananas, you’ll likely end up with tons of seeds. If a hermie plant grows buds like the second example, you may end up with good buds that have very few seeds. Or the buds may not herm at all and you get perfectly seedless buds. It’s all a part of the genetic lottery you’re playing when growing the offspring of herm plants.

The main takeaway is this: good results are possible with hermie seeds, but you’re increasing your risk of running into problems.

If you want to read an example of a grower getting good results with hermie seeds, check this out.

Fascinating Experience from a GrowWeedEasy.com Reader

Greg, a grower from Australia, recently wrote about his experience growing hermie cannabis seeds.

He grew 8 feminized seeds indoors. In his words, “Unfortunately, the grow room underwent some heat stress early in the flowering stage, which resulted in one of the eight plants herming. Naturally, this seeded up most of the rest of them.”

He decided to try germinating 14 of the resulting hermie seeds. To his surprise, all 14 plants grew into healthy females without any signs of hermaphroditism or seedy buds. He stated, “They have all grown out quite nicely. I have not come across a single seed. The buds are dense, so dense you could hammer a nail into them. And trichome production has been excellent, they are sticky like nothing else.”

His hermie seeds grew these beautiful plants.

Greg said, “I had hypothesized that they would not be feminized and that they would all be hermaphrodites, I’m quite pleased to learn that I was wrong on both counts.”

He mentioned that in the past he had a different experience, “All my previous experience with hermies and the resulting seeds has only been more banana throwing hermies. Those genetics were all bagseed from the shallow gene pool here in Australia though. This last one was the first hermie I have seen since I started purchasing seeds from Seedsman.” He promises to let us know what happens if he tries stressing out a plant on purpose with heat to cause it to herm on purpose.

Here are the plants from Greg’s experiment at harvest.

Greg had different results with these hermie seeds compared to his past experiences, which ended in disaster. It seems he may have found a set of genetics that only herms in stressful conditions. Or perhaps the tendency to herm under stress was not passed down to these particular seeds at all.

These plants are an example of when growing hermie seeds goes “right”. The resulting plants grew dense and frosty buds without any seeds or other problems.

Greg’s experience shows that hermie seeds don’t always produce seedy or banana-filled buds. With the right genetics and stress-free conditions, it’s possible to get quality female plants from seeds made by a hermie mom plant. It just goes to show there can be a lot of variation when it comes to the hermie trait being passed down.

Related Article: Do Feminized Cannabis Seeds Make ‘Hermie’ Plants? [Sometimes]

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are they called “Hermie” cannabis plants?

“Herm” or “hermie” is a common nickname for “hemaphrodite”, and hermie seeds come from a plant that grew buds like a female plant, but also pollen like a male plant.

Whether it comes from a male or herm plant, pollen gets on nearby buds and causes seeds to grow. But herms are especially tricky because you may only see the buds and not notice any signs of herming until pollen has already been released.

Learn more about hermie plants.

Male flowers (“pollen sacs”) can look somewhat like traditional flowers when they open up.

Closeup of a herm “banana” among the buds. By the time you can see yellow, it has usually already released pollen.

What causes hermie plants?

Cannabis plants become hermies in 3 ways:

• Genetics – Some plants herm no matter what you do, due to their genetics. There’s nothing growers can do about this kind of herming.
• Stress – Some plants may only herm if they experience a lot of stress. That could include irregular light schedules, heat, high humidity, certain flowering supplements, and other stressful conditions. However, the best cannabis strains are ironclad and won’t herm no matter what.
• Chemicals – Spraying healthy young cannabis plants with certain chemicals like colloidal silver or gibberellic acid forces them to grow pollen sacs instead of buds. The resulting pollen is used to make commercial feminized seeds.

Stressed plants are more likely to herm.

How do I prevent hermie plants?

The best way to avoid growing hermie cannabis plants is to start with good genetics from a trustworthy breeder. Good feminized seeds don’t herm no matter way. On top of starting with good genetics, you should take care of your plants and try not to stress them. Lastly, take a second to look at your buds every day, and keep an eye out for signs of herming so you catch it early and quickly dispose of the offending plants.

Watch out for pollen sacs or yellow growths among your buds!

Why did I find seeds in my buds even though the plant didn’t herm?

Sometimes you don’t see pollen sacs or banana, but still get hermie seeds. Female plants that produce seeds without visible pollen sacs or bananas are “hidden herms”. These plants often went through some kind of stress, but not always. Regardless, if seeds are there and no male plants were around, the resulting seeds are herm seeds.

This “hidden herm” suffered from severe light stress. No visual signs of herming, but buds still had seeds.

How do breeders make feminized cannabis seeds?

The feminized seeds you buy from breeders are created when growers use chemical means to force a female plant to herm. They use that resulting pollen to make the seeds. Since each “parent” plant is a female, and without a male in the mix, all the resulting seeds are all female. As long as the breeders are careful to only choose plants that never herm in natural conditions, the resulting seeds are unlikely to herm.

This female plant was forced to make pollen sacs using colloidal silver. This “feminized” pollen is used to create all-female seeds.

Will herm seeds always grow like the parent?

No, expect variation from herm seeds! It’s intuitive to think that herm seeds are essentially a “clone” of the parent plant. But that’s not how it always works. Why? Pollen and buds each receive a random set of chromosomes from the parent plant.

That means herm seeds might turn out like the original plant, but they might not. The more genetic diversity in the recent history of the plant, the more diverse the resulting seeds might turn out. The genes passed down through pollen is not the same as the genes passed down in the buds, even when coming from the same plant.

This plant from a herm seed is growing like a male plant with some female flowers. (opposite of a typical herm)

What happens if I grow herm seeds for many generations?

Herm seeds tend to become more consistent with each subsequent generation. Eventually all plants tend to grow in a uniform way due to inbreeding, and become almost like clones of each other. Just remember, the one thing that often becomes most consistent is the tendency to herm each generation.

Conclusion

Should you grow hermie seeds? It depends on you and your situation.

I personally don’t, but I understand why a grower might do it, especially if money is tight. That being said, even expensive cannabis seeds don’t cost much in the grand scheme of a cannabis grow. If you’re going to spend 3-5 months growing a plant, the $100 it costs to buy a bunch of professionally feminized seeds will reward you with plants that grow as expected and produce good yields of beautiful seedless buds. You deserve the best!

Let me know what you think. Have you grown hermie seeds? What happened? Fill out our contact form and let us hear your experience!

~Nebula Haze, co-founder of GrowWeedEasy.com

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The post What happens if I grow seeds from a hermie plant? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Cannabis plants can be male or female, but only female cannabis plants make buds. Female cannabis flowers are buds, and male cannabis flowers are pollen sacs, which contain low THC and are poor to smoke. Male pollen sacs eventually open and release pollen, which pollinates the female cannabis plants, and causes buds to grow seeds, which also results in smaller buds with lower THC levels.

These days, most home cannabis growers start with feminized cannabis seeds because they grow only female plants, which means every plant will make buds. Other growers watch their cannabis plants as flowers start developing, then identify and remove male cannabis plants.

Feminized cannabis seeds are the best way to ensure that every plant is female. This way you don’t need to worry about identifying the sex of plants!

But if you can’t buy cannabis seeds online, and must start with another source of seeds, there is a strong chance that about half the plants will be male and half will be female.

With standard, non-feminized cannabis seeds, plants grow 50/50 male vs female plants. That means half of the plants won’t make buds and, even worse, cause the buds you do have to make seeds.

If you’re worried some of your plants may be male, here is the easiest way to determine the sex of your cannabis plants while they’re still in the vegetative stagae.

How to Identify the Sex of a Cannabis Plant

Here’s how to identify the sex of your cannabis plants even if they’re still in the vegetative stage.

1.) Take a cutting (clone) from the unverified cannabis plant and put it in a glass of water.

I take stems off the plant and put them in a cup of water. You don’t need your cuttings to make roots before identifying the sex. As long as you give light and make sure the cup always has water, the cutting should stay alive long enough to identify the sex.

If you have extra stems, you can take multiple cuttings and put them in the same cup. Some cuttings will show their sex sooner than others, so taking multiple cuttings may speed up the process by a few days in some cases.

2.) Label both the clone and the mother plant with the name of the strain so you know which clone came from which corresponding mother plant.

I use disposable cups and write the name on the cup. You could also put a piece of tape on a cup and write the name on that. You should do this step if you’re identifying the sex of more than one marijuana plant at a time. If you don’t label your clones, then all your effort will be for naught because you won’t know which clone is which!

3.) Give clones a light schedule with 12+ hours of darkness every day to initiate flowering and get the cuttings to reveal their sex.

Again, you don’t need to wait for the clones to establish roots before changing the light schedule. You can start this immediately after you take the cutting. The cuttings will start flowering even if their roots haven’t formed yet. However, you should make sure they get at least some direct light during their “day” to keep them healthy long enough to reveal their sex.

4.) Clones will reveal their sex in 1-3 weeks.

Look to the joints where leaves meet the stem. Males develop balls and females develop white hairs. Click here for more information and pictures about how to sex a cannabis plant.

Female cannabis plant – The first flowers of a female cannabis plant looks like this. You will see white hairs coming where leaves meet the stem.

Notice the white wispy hairs at the “joints” where the leaves meet the stem. You can see from my fingers at the top, for scale.

This is what female cannabis flowers look like at the top of the plant. You will notice white hairs emerging from the leaves.

Male cannabis plant – The first flowers of a male cannabis plant look like this. You will see little balls, like grapes, that appear in the same place as female plants. Male pollen sacs often also appear at the top of the cutting.

Male pollen sacs are tiny and hard to see at first, but pollen sacs quickly start growing in bunches that are easy to identify. Look how tiny this pollen sac is compared to my finger.

Here are male pollen sacs after they start growing in bunches. You know for sure this is a male plant when you see bunches of balls without any white hairs.

5.) Remove male cannabis plants. 

Once you have determined the sex of your clones, you should make sure you throw away any corresponding male plants. Or at least move them to somewhere safe so their pollen can’t get to the buds of your female cannabis plants by accident.

Now you can grow your known-female cannabis plants with confidence. Once they start flowering, they will make the same type of flowers as the cuttings you took. Continue to care for your female cannabis plants with a ton of light, no nutrient deficiencies, and consistent 12-hour dark periods, and don’t let them get hot during the last 2-3 weeks before harvest.

Mission Complete: You know the sex of your cannabis plants and have only bud-making plants left.

It’s bud time!

Click here for a list of recommended beginner cannabis strains (all-female seeds unless otherwise indicated)

The post How to Use a Cup of Water to Identify Cannabis Sex in the Vegetative Stage appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Male cannabis plants don’t make buds, only female cannabis plants make buds. Yet naturally, with regular cannabis seeds, about 50% of cannabis plants end up being male.

Cannabis Sex Matters: Female Buds vs Male Pollen Sacs (click for closeup). Male plants don’t make buds!

Only female cannabis plants make buds. Male plants produce pollen sacs that are low in THC, not good to smoke, and cause nearby female buds to grow seeds.

Unfortunately, male pollen sacs are not useful to most home cannabis growers unless you’re a breeder. Identify and remove male cannabis plants ASAP.

When pollen sacs open up, they look like white, yellow, green, or purple flowers (pretty!), but they spread pollen everywhere, which pollinates your female plants. They can also accidentally pollinate any nearby female plants in the area. This is not good for bud quality for you and any of your neighbors who grows. Additionally, male pollen sacs are harsh to smoke and don’t contain high levels of THC or other cannabinoids.

Male pollen also causes female plants to produce small yields of lower-potency, seedy buds. Most home growers should try to get male plants out of the grow room as soon as possible.

How to tell if a cannabis plant is male or female before flowering?

Visually, you usually can’t tell the difference between male and female plants until they start flowering (making either male flowers/pollen sacs or female flowers/buds), especially when it comes to younger plants.

There are 3 main ways to tell a marijuana plant’s sex while it is still in the vegetative stage.

As a result, most cannabis growers identify and toss male plants as soon as possible. That means for a home cannabis grower starting with regular seeds (for example, seeds you find in your weed), about half of your plants won’t make buds and will need to be tossed. Those are terrible odds, and as a grower, you deserve better.

Luckily, there are 3 different ways to determine cannabis plant sex before the flowering stage, but only one way to ensure that all your plants are female. It’s important to get rid of any male plants as soon as possible, because not only do they take up room that could be filled with bud-making plants, the pollen released by male cannabis plants will pollinate all your female plants and cause seedy buds.

3 ways to tell if a plant is male or female before initiating the marijuana flowering stage

1. Start with feminized seeds (or female clones) – Best for most home cannabis growers. Starting with feminized seeds or female clones from a trustworthy source guarantees that 99.9% of cannabis plants end up being bud-making female plants.
2. Genetic testing – Send a piece of a leaf from your young plant to a lab to test for the sex. This can be expensive and is often not 100% accurate.
3. Examine the “pre-flowers” – Look at the cannabis pre-flowers (little versions of male or female flowers that sometimes appear in the vegetative stage at the joints where the fan leaf meets the stem). This technique works better for some cannabis strains than others, as some plants start growing pre-flowers within 3 weeks of germination, while others may not grow any pre-flowers until 6+ weeks after germination. Pictures below.

1.) Start with feminized cannabis seeds (or female clones)

This is the best option for most home cannabis growers. Starting with feminized seeds or female clones guarantees  that nearly 100% of cannabis plants are bud-making female plants. The good news is that feminized cannabis seeds are widely available almost anywhere in the world. Learn more about feminized cannabis seeds.

Learn where to safely buy cannabis seeds online.

2.) Genetic testing

You can send a piece of a leaf from a 3-week old cannabis seedling and get them to do a genetic test to determine if it’s male or female. The downside of this technique is cannabis genetics are a bit odd. Plants don’t always have neatly separated male and female chromosomes, which means lab testing can occasionally produce false positives and negatives. In other words, some plants marked as “female” may be male, and some plants marked as “male” may actually be female. Some plants may end up being hermaphrodites. However, lab testing is used by some commercial growers as it does greatly increase the chance that all plants end up being female.

You usually can’t look at a cannabis plant this young and tell if it’s male or female, but a genetic test from the lab can sometimes give you a clue…

3.) Examine the “pre-flowers”

The usefulness of this last method depends heavily on your genetics, as some strains show pre-flowers at a very young age, while others may take weeks or months before they reveal their sex via pre-flowers in the vegetative stage. Male plants tend to show their pre-flowers before female plants.

Essentially, the goal with this method is to examine the vegetative cannabis plant at future bud sites, where pre-flowers can grow, and look for early signs of male or female plants. Pre-flowers are small buds/pollen sacs that develop at the nodes (the junction where the stems and leaves meet) while the plant is still in the vegetative stage.

The base of a leaf is the best place to look for pre-flowers. Pre-flowers appear as soon as 3 weeks from germination for some strains. However, some strains may take 6+ weeks before they produce pre-flowers.

Look for pre-flowers at the base of the leaf. Typically males show before females.

This is what male vs female cannabis preflowers look like.

Female pre-flowers will also produce wispy white “hairs” that emerge. These are technically called stigmas, and commonly mistakenly called “pistils” by cannabis growers.

If you see these white hairs, that means you’re looking at female pre-flowers.

If you see bunches of balls, you know for sure you’re looking at male pre-flowers. However, it’s extremely rare to see more than 1-2 pollen sacs per joint when the plant is still in the vegetative stage.

Hint: Male cannabis pre-flowers tend to be shaped somewhat like a spade from a deck of cards.

Here is a diagram to help you know exactly what you’re looking for. White hairs (aka “stigmas” or sometimes called “pistils”) means female flowers.

Note: If you see green hairs, those are “stipules” and not pre-flowers. Ignore the stipules.

Read the complete tutorial on how to check male vs female preflowers.

Hermies, bananas, and random pollen sacs

Note: Some cannabis plants produce both male and female flowers. These hermaphrodite plants (affectionately called hermies) should be tossed just like male plants because their pollen sacs also can cause all the buds in your grow room to get seedy if the pollen gets released. Starting with good genetics and taking good care of cannabis plants is the best way to prevent them from “herming”.

If you see a mix of pollen sacs and buds (or little pale or yellow “bananas” growing among the buds), you have a “hermie” which should be treated like a male plant and tossed to prevent pollination.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

How can I make a male plant female?

• You can’t – There is no safe or reliable way to consistently turn a male cannabis plant into a female cannabis plant. It is a better idea to try to start with all-female plants, or identify and remove male cannabis plants as soon as possible. Oddly enough, it is possible to make a female plant grow sacs like a male for the purposes of making feminized seeds.

What are the early signs of a male plant?

• Spade-shaped “balls” at the joints – Look where leaves meet the stem. If you see “balls” (pictured above) then it is not a female plant.

When can you tell if your plant is male or female?

• 3 weeks at the soonest – 3 weeks from germination is typically the earliest a lab will take a leaf sample from a plant to test for sex. Visually, some cannabis plants reveal their sex as early as 3 weeks from germination via pre-flowers. These appear even in the vegetative stage for many strains. However, some strains may take 6+ weeks before they grow pre-flowers, so this isn’t the most reliable method. Your best bet is to start with all-female plants!

When you know every single plant is female, you can fill your grow space like this and know every plant will make buds.

Summary: How to tell if a cannabis plant is male or female before flowering?

There are three main ways to identify the sex of marijuana plants before they start flowering:

1. Start with feminized seeds or clones. This is the best option since it guarantees 100% female plants (as long as you start with a good breeder). Feminized seeds can be purchased from reputable seed banks (currently, I’m using Seed Supreme, though there are many excellent cannabis seed banks).
2. Genetic testing can identify sex early on, but results aren’t always accurate. It also tends to be expensive.
3. Examine preflowers once they emerge. This works better for fast-showing strains. Check for female wispy white hairs or male spade-shaped flowers at the joints where leaves meet the stem.

While genetic testing and preflowers can help, the ideal solution is to start with feminized seeds or all-female clones. This avoids wasting time and space on male plants that don’t produce buds. Be sure to get feminized seeds from a trusted source and confirm the seller has a solid reputation.

Remove male plants to prevent pollination so you end up with sinsemilla (seedless buds), which are more potent and considered higher quality than seedy buds. Growing only female plants is the best way to guarantee heavy, potent, seed-free yields from your cannabis garden.

About the Author: Nebula Haze

Nebula Haze is an experienced cannabis cultivator and co-founder of GrowWeedEasy.com, the web’s most comprehensive online resource for growing marijuana indoors at home. Since creating the website in 2010, Nebula has dedicated her life to understanding the cannabis plant and teaching fellow growers how to produce huge yields and captivating bud quality at home. Stop paying other people a ton of money for sub-par weed and start growing better weed for a fraction of the cost today!

Check out my easy 10-step guide to growing cannabis.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Sexing Cannabis Plants Before the Flowering Stage appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

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If you’re reading this right now, you want to grow great cannabis at home.

Cannabis plants isn’t a regular house plant, but learning how to grow isn’t as complicated growers make it seem. We’ve spent the last 16 years breaking down the home grow process so anyone can learn it.

The key to consistent harvest results is simple: follow a proven system developed for home growers.

You could waste an entire grow learning through trial and error…

Or take the shortcut and harvest a sea of fat, dense, beautiful buds that smell great. At home!

Follow our 5-week course and get walked through each part step-by-step. Build by experienced home growers and honed with hundreds of students since 2019, we ensure you achieve great results on your very next harvest.

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You may be asking yourself these common growing questions:

“How do I grow marijuana indoors?”

Read this guide on how to grow marijuana indoors. Or check out this article to learn what materials you need to get started growing your own marijuana!

Luckily, it’s really easy to get a cannabis seed to sprout!

“How much money will it cost to get started?”

If you’re considering growing weed, it costs as little as $300 to get started growing or a bit more for a semi-automatic, high-yielding bubbleponics grow system. See examples of yields to expect, electricity use & startup costs for different setups. Read this article to see even more growing styles with different price ranges.

“Where can I get marijuana seeds?”

Check out our How to Buy Marijuana Seeds Online Guide (with delivery to every state of the USA) to safely get your hands on good genetics. Starting with good seeds lets you choose the looks, smell, and effects of your buds!

Learn where it’s safe to buy cannabis seeds online (2026 update).

What do good cannabis seeds look like?

Learn about the best marijuana beginner strains and how to research and find the right strain.

Cannabis buds are generally green, but can also be pink or purple with certain strains.

“How much will electricity cost each month?”

If you’re just growing a few marijuana plants for personal use, it will cost you $20-$100+/month for electricity, depending on what grow lights (electricity) and nutrients you use. On average, I’d say a hobby-size grower might pay about $50/month to grow, but it depends greatly on your setup and local electricity costs! How much will electricity cost each month?

“How can I increase my marijuana yields?”

We have quite a few techniques to choose from or combine! See some of our most popular pages:

• Super Cropping – A simple technique to bigger yields
• Simplest Guide to Growing Short & Bushy Marijuana Plants
• LST (Low Stress Training) – Training your plants can easily double your harvest!
• Or check out our page on the controversial defoliation technique

Even More Ways to Increase Cannabis Yields

1. Increase Light Intensity (plus choose right light for desired yields & possibly add CO2)
2. Manipulate How Plants Grow (a free way to yield more bud indoors)
3. Provide Right Nutrients (low Nitrogen in the flowering stage, and remember sometimes less is more!)
4. Control Growing Environment (let the growing environment work for you)
5. Harvest Plants Properly (most importantly, don’t harvest early!)
6. Lastly, it’s important to remember that the strain has a major effect on yields!

Two small cannabis plants can yield several ounces of premium weed!

“How can I grow weed privately?”

Read guide on growing weed indoors without anyone knowing. But remember the most important factors to stealth growing: “No tell, no smell, no sell.” Never tell anyone, not even your best friend, that you’re growing. Be on top of preventing smells, and never ever sell cannabis. Breaking one of those 3 principles is how 99% of growers get found out!

“What if my plants get sick?”

The most common issue a grower runs into is a pH imbalance. Barring that, your marijuana plants likely either have a nutrient deficiency, heat or light stress, or are being attacked by some sort of marijuana mold, pest or bug. Whether you call it weed, cannabis, sinsemilla, skunk, pot, marijuana, or something else, the plant known as Cannabis Sativa is a hardy weed in the wild and can actually be easy to grow indoors at home when you know what to do.

Growing Medical Marijuana

“Medical marijuana” has become a household name. The body of evidence for medical marijuana in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses is growing every day. And for those who need medical marijuana, growing weed indoors is the perfect way to ensure a safe, regular supply of buds, for cheap.

In fact, when you grow weed indoors for personal use, you often end up with way too much. If you catch the growing bug like I did, and if you start enjoying the process of tending your cannabis garden just for the sake of gardening, you’re going to have to find a way to press, cook, freeze, and concentrate all your extra buds. 🙂

As you probably know, both medical marijuana and recreational cannabis have been decriminalized or legalized in many places around the world and weed is becoming legal in more places every day! Yet there still aren’t many simple indoor “how to grow weed” guides for beginners (even for those who legally grow, such as medical marijuana users and those who live in places where marijuana is legalized for personal use).

If so, I know how you feel. It can be hard to weed out all the bad information on the internet and find well-researched, free tips or instructions on how to grow your own cannabis. That’s why Grow Weed Easy.com aims to be a simple online resource that explains from start to finish what you need to do when growing cannabis so you can learn how to grow cannabis with great yields and potent buds, even if you only have a small grow space like a closet or even a computer case.

We’ve grown cannabis out of closets and have gotten ounces of buds and you can too. Grow Weed Easy.com covers many popular cannabis cultivation topics, including:

• A comparison between different cannabis grow lights including experience-based information about LED grow lights
• A page that teaches you the basics of how to grow weed
• Detailed how-to weed growing tutorials
• How to start growing weed tomorrow  (simplest cannabis growing guide!)
• Grow 4 oz with a 100W LED <– An Easy Way to Start Growing!
• Our famous grow guide that teaches you how to grow weed using bubbleponics (hydro).

Start Growing Weed Today!

Grow Weed Easy is run by a panel of experienced cannabis growers, including the founders Nebula Haze and Sirius Fourside, who originally teamed together to bring you GrowWeedEasy.com. Due to the demand for more marijuana growing information, we’ve also started an inbox magazine all about how to grow weed, with additional tutorials, tips, and tactics sent to you each week. Simply sign up to start getting free expert growing articles delivered to you! All the information available at GrowWeedEasy.com is completely free and we regularly update the site and make new additions.

Looking for a growing book?

If you are interested in doing a bit of reading or would like to know more about the science behind marijuana hydroponics or horticulture, I strongly recommend viewing our page of Marijuana Grow Book Reviews. Read reviews of marijuana grow books. We would love to hear about your experiences with growing cannabis. Whether you are a pro grower already or are just starting your first plant, we have learned so much from our readers both beginners and masters! If you have any suggestions, comments, concerns, or just want to ask some questions about your marijuana grow, please contact us!

Happy Growing!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside

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Table of Contents

Introduction: How to Feminize Cannabis Seeds at Home

5 Steps to Feminized Seeds – Learn how to force female plants to make pollen and create feminized cannabis seeds

• Overview
• Step-by-Step Instructions with Pictures
• Picture Grow Journal Showing Complete Process

Frequently Asked Questions

• How to identify sex in the vegetative stage? Learn 5 different ways to determine whether a plant is male or female before flowering begins
• Can I breed new strains using only feminized seeds?
• Will feminized seeds produce hermaphrodites (hermies)?
• Can I pollinate the same plant I used to make feminized pollen?

Introduction to Feminizing Your Own Cannabis Seeds

First of all, what are “feminized” marijuana seeds? Although male and female plants look the same when young, only female cannabis plants make buds. Male cannabis plants grow non-potent pollen sacs instead. Male plants also lower yields and cause seedy buds if they’re left among your female plants for too long. Because male plants don’t make buds and their presence reduces the quality of buds, most growers toss male plants the moment they see pollen sacs forming. However, since about half of regular cannabis seeds end up being male, that means you end up tossing half your plants once they start flowering.

Feminized seeds come from two female plants being bred together, causing all offspring to be female (which means every plant makes buds)

While regular seeds make female plants about half the time, feminized seeds only create female plants. That means you won’t need to toss half the plants once they start flowering. But how are feminized seeds made and can you make them at home?

Feminized seeds are created by breeding two female plants together. Because there are no male parents, all the resulting seeds end up being bud-bearing female plants. With feminized seeds, you can count on every plant to produce buds. Learn more about male vs female plants and feminized cannabis seeds.

Feminized seeds are available from seed banks for nearly every popular or famous strain. Breeders understand that a lot of people just want to grow plants for buds, and don’t care about making a robust breeding program (which is one of the main reasons growers want male plants).

You can’t see the difference between male and female plants until they start flowering (unless you do a genetic test). Feminized seeds ensure all plants are female so you don’t need to worry about it. You know that every plant is female from germination.

So how do seed banks feminize their seeds? How do you breed two female plants together?

The main idea is to force a female plant to produce pollen sacs like a male plant. These flowers (growing on a female plant) create pollen, which can be harvested and used to pollinate another female cannabis plant. The resulting seeds will all end up being female. Can feminizing seeds cause hermaphrodite plants?

Growers can force a female plant to make pollen sacs, and the “feminized” pollen produced can be used to fertilize another female plant. The resulting seeds will only produce female plants.

How do you force a female plant to make pollen?

There are two main ways to make feminized pollen:

1. Induce feminized pollen chemically (Recommended) – This is the professional way to feminize seeds and is how reputable seed banks and breeders create feminized seeds to sell to the public. Substances that interact with plant processes such as colloidal silver or gibberellic acid are applied to bud sites of a female plant when they start flowering. Bud sites are drenched daily for the first 3-4 weeks after the switch to 12/12. This causes a female plant to produce pollen sacs which release feminized pollen when they open up. This pollen is used on another female plant to produce feminized seeds. This article will give you step-by-step instructions on how to feminize cannabis seeds using this method.
2. Rhodelization (Not Recommended!) – In some cases, a female cannabis plant may naturally start making male pollen sacs or bananas, which can self-pollinate the plant. This happens if the plant is stressed, or if the plant is not harvested in time and buds start to die of old age. The plant is basically doing everything it can to make seeds and save the next generation. This method is “natural” and these seeds end up being mostly female. The problem with this method is you’re selecting for plants that naturally turn into hermies (grow both male and female sex organs) without any chemical induction. This means the resulting seeds are much more likely to turn hermie in natural conditions, too. That’s a problem if you don’t want seedy buds every time you harvest. For that reason, it’s highly recommended you don’t feminize seeds this way. It’s also a good idea to toss any and all seeds that are the result of natural herming (for example seeds you find in your buds even though you didn’t grow any male plants).

Read this article for more in-depth discussion about the pros and cons of each method, and how to avoid hermaphrodite plants when producing your own feminized seeds.

Overview: How to Make Feminized Seeds

This is a quick overview of the process, and then I’ll give the full details and steps below.

1.) Buy or Make Colloidal Silver – The article below will teach you how to make colloidal silver at home, as well as show you where to buy it if you don’t want to make it (it’s actually pretty cheap). It’s basically a solution of silver suspended in water and is available online and in health stores as a dietary supplement.

What about gibberellic acid? From what I understand it can be used exactly the same way as colloidal silver to induce female plants to produce pollen, but I don’t know the recipe for an effective gibberellic acid solution. On the other hand, I know that this exact colloidal silver method works for making feminized seeds. That’s why I’ve only included instructions for colloidal silver.  If you’ve used gibberellic acid to make feminized seeds; we’d love to hear from you.

2.) Spray the bud sites of your known female plant daily during the first 3-4 weeks of the flowering stage (until pollen sacs form and start splitting open) – After switching to a 12/12 light schedule to initiate the flowering stage, choose bud sites on your known female plant, and spray/drench them daily with colloidal silver (or gibberellic acid). As the treated flowers develop, they will form into male pollen sacs instead of regular buds. Untreated bud sites on the plant will form into female buds as usual; however, these buds are unsafe to smoke unless you’ve been very careful to make sure they didn’t come into contact with colloidal silver or gibberellic acid during the feminization process as these are unsafe for smoking.

3.) Harvest “Feminized” Pollen – When pollen sacs are ready to be harvested they swell like a balloon and start to open up. Don’t harvest early! Keep spraying the bud sites daily until pollen sacs open or you might end up with empty pollen sacs. When the pollen sacs are ready, the leaf section protecting the pollen will start to crack. At this point, it’s time to collect the feminized pollen. One of the easiest ways to do this is to collect the pollen sacs directly and let them dry for a week. At that point, they can be placed in a bag and shaken to collect all the pollen.

4.) Pollinate Another Female Plant – At this point, take the feminized pollen you’ve collected and use it to pollinate a female plant that has been flowering for about 2-3 weeks (full detailed instructions with a video on how to do this below). Although it’s possible to pollinate the same plant as the original, it’s not recommended in part because the timing doesn’t match up (pollinating buds late in the flowering stage doesn’t produce many seeds). It’s best to pollinate a different female plant that you started budding a few weeks after the original. This increases the number of seeds produced as well as gives the new female plant enough time to develop them to maturity. It also increases genetic diversity compared to self-pollination.

5.) Wait ~6 Weeks After Pollination to Harvest Seeds – After about 6 weeks from pollination, the calyxes on the buds of your female plant will be swollen and fat. You know it’s time to harvest your seeds when they start bursting out. At this point, it’s time to congratulate yourself because you’ve got feminized seeds!

Now that you’ve gotten the overview, here’s the feminization process with detailed step-by-step instructions…

Step-By-Step Instructions (with pics!)

1.) Buy or Make Colloidal Silver (or Gibberellic Acid)

Where to get Colloidal Silver (your options):

1. Buy Ready-To-Use Colloidal Silver: Colloidal silver is sometimes used as a dietary supplement, so it’s relatively easy to find (never take it without talking to a doctor first though!). If you’re purchasing colloidal silver, try to find a solution that has at least 30 PPM (parts per million) of silver or higher.
2. Buy A Colloidal Silver Generator Kit: If you plan on feminizing a lot of seeds, you may want to invest in a generator kit so you can easily make your own endless supply of colloidal silver. This is cheaper in the long run compared to buying it ready-to-use.
3. Make Your Own: You can make your own colloidal silver generator at home. The following diagram illustrates what you need to do.

Note: You can purchase gibberellic acid online (a gibberellic acid solution can be used the same way as colloidal silver for feminizing seeds). However, I do not have experience with the gibberellic acid method and don’t know the best way to prepare the solution.

2.) Spray the bud sites of your known female plant daily during the first 3-4 weeks of the flowering stage (until pollen sacs form and start splitting open)

Wait until your plant is 5-6 weeks old before initiating the flowering stage. Some young plants seem to have trouble (and take much longer) to go through the feminization process, and their pollen may not be as fertile, so start with a more mature plant.

When plants are ready, change to a 12/12 light schedule to initiate flower formation and put cannabis plants in the flowering stage. Note: If you’re feminizing an auto-flowering plant, start spraying daily when the plant is about 20 days old from seed. This is when most auto-flowering cannabis strains start making flowers.

As soon as you change the light schedule (and maybe even a day or two before) start spraying your plants thoroughly with colloidal silver at every bud site you want to form into pollen sacs.

Spray bud sites thoroughly, drenching them with colloidal silver every single day. Bud sites are located wherever leaves meet stems.

The above pic shows you where pollen sacs form on the plant (the same places female buds form).

Important! Keep spraying daily until pollen sacs open up. Don’t stop spraying early, even if pollen sacs appear to be already formed, otherwise they may not produce much pollen

A spray bottle / mister is really helpful for spraying bud sites evenly and thoroughly

You can choose to treat a single bud site or all the bud sites on the plant. Any untreated bud sites will develop into female buds as usual. If you want to smoke these buds, it’s incredibly important to avoid letting them come into contact with colloidal silver because silver is not safe to smoke. (Don’t worry, feminized seeds don’t contain any silver). I highly recommend letting the whole plant be your test subject so you don’t have to worry about that 🙂

3.) Harvest Your Feminized Pollen

When pollen sacs are starting to crack and look like they’re about to open up (or if you can see one has already opened) then your pollen is ready for harvest!

When pollen sacs are cracking and opening up, you’re ready to harvest your pollen!

Pollen spilling onto a nearby leaf

One way to harvest your pollen is to gently and carefully remove all the pollen sacs. Let them dry in open air for a week, and then put them in a resealable bag. If you shake the bag the pollen should easily spill out. You may need to cut a few open yourself.

How to Store Feminized Pollen: Moisture is your main enemy when storing pollen. It can help to double the mass of the pollen collected by adding regular cooking flour. This absorbs moisture during storage and as an added bonus, it increases the volume to make application easier when you get to pollinating. If pollen is totally dry and you triple-bag the pollen-flour mixture and stick it in the freezer (with a good nametag so you know where the pollen came from), your pollen can be stored for a year or longer. You can add a few silica packs (which suck out any remaining moisture) in the bag to make extra sure that the pollen stays totally dry.

4.) Pollinate Another Female Plant

When your chosen mother is 2-3 weeks into the flowering stage, take a small paintbrush or powder brush and ‘paint’ your feminized pollen on the developing bud sites you want to pollinate. Bud sites (for both male and female plants) are located wherever you can see leaves meet a stem.

Buds are ready to get pollinated when they look like little bunches of white hairs

Only the buds that come in contact with pollen will grow seeds. You can choose to pollinate all of your buds or just a few on the plant.

Here’s a video by Ed Rosenthal on Youtube showing you how to pollinate buds with pollen. Make sure to touch all the female pistils/hairs with your pollen.

5.) Wait About 6 Weeks Then Harvest Seeds

It usually takes about 6 weeks for your feminized seeds to fully develop. Some plants are literally dying right as the seeds become ready, so to get the most viable seeds, you need to try to keep it alive until the seeds actually start dropping. The seeds can be used right away, or stored in a cool, dry place for a few years. Don’t forget to label them with the date.

This seed is about to burst out of its calyx

This is what it looks like when the seed is exposed

Now it’s time to germinate your feminized seeds!

Picture Journal of Making Feminized Pollen with Colloidal Silver

This grower initiated the feminization process on a seedling that was only a few weeks old. As a result, the plant wasn’t able to get big enough to produce many pollen sacs. You will get even better results if you start with a plant that is at least 5 weeks old 🙂

October 18 – Plant right before the switch to 12/12

October 27 – After being drenched with colloidal silver daily for a little over a week

October 30 – Pollen sacs are forming

November 15 – Pollen sacs appear to be almost fully formed and are swelling in size, but haven’t opened up yet. Don’t stop spraying colloidal silver or you may end up with empty sacs!

November 27 – Pollen sacs are opening up! Collect the pollen before they’re all open!

FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions

How can I identify plant gender before the plant actually starts flowering?

There are a few ways to identify plant gender before the plant actually starts flowering, and each is helpful in different situations.

1. Use feminized seeds – All your plants will be female if you start with pre-made feminized seeds.
2. Start with a clone – A clone is an exact copy of another plant. If the “mother” of the clone is a female plant, it means the clone is also female
3. Look at preflowers (identify plants when they’re 3-6 weeks from seed) – If you know where to look, cannabis plants will actually reveal their gender in the vegetative stage when they’re just 3-6 weeks from seeds. Male plants usually show their gender by 3-6 weeks and female plants usually show their gender around week 4-8 from seed. Learn how to determine the sex in the veg stage by looking at preflowers.
4. Test the leaves of your seedling in a lab – It’s possible to send in a leaf from a young cannabis plant to a specialized testing company, and they will be able to determine the gender as soon as 3 weeks from seed! Although I haven’t used any of these companies and can’t recommend any in particular, here’s a link to one example just so you can see what I’m talking about. From talking to other growers who use this method, it appears to be accurate.
5. Take a clone and force it to start flowering – if you take a clone from a vegetative plant, you can force that clone to start flowering and reveal its gender. You’ll know the sex of the “parent” plant by the sex expressed by the clone. This is what I do to determine the sex. I cut off a piece of the plant, stick it in a glass of water (don’t forget to label it with the strain), and give it a 12/12 light schedule until the little piece starts forming either pollen sacs or buds.

The easiest way to identify sex with unknown seedlings? Cut off a small branch of the plant, stick it in a cup of water with a label, and keep it in a sunny window on a 12/12 light schedule until buds or pollen sacs start forming. As long as the plant is getting bright light in the day and long dark nights, it will reveal its sex in just a few weeks (you don’t even need to wait for roots to form).

Can I Make a Breeding Program Using Just Female Plants and Feminized Seeds?

Yes, it’s possible to use just female plants and feminized seeds for further breeding, with one major caveat.

Without careful and thorough testing, it may be possible to accidentally select cannabis plants that tend to herm (make male flowers or pollen) and cause seedy buds when you don’t want them to.

For each possible “mother,” clones should be grown in several different environments and tested thoroughly to make sure that the mother plant does not have any tendency to make pollen naturally in normal or stressful conditions. It’s okay if plants grow pollen sacs if induced chemically since that is very unlikely to happen in someone’s garden on accident, but you don’t want plants that will start growing male flowers on their own without chemical induction. Thorough testing of plant hardiness is always important when breeding, but it may be especially important when breeding feminized seeds together.

Are there other reasons I should avoid breeding seeds without males?

The most common reason growers say you shouldn’t do this is because it’s “unnatural” or doesn’t “seem right.” Some growers say you need male plants for genetic diversity. I’ve also heard growers say that the resulting plants will be weaker, sterile, and less potent. Someone once even told me that resulting plants “will be worse in every way.”

As of yet, I haven’t seen any of these claims backed by actual personal experience, or any real-life examples showing why using feminized seeds is not a viable way to breed new strains.

To those who say this type of reproduction just doesn’t seem right, the evolutionary strategy of plants using only female and hermaphrodite plants to breed is actually pretty common and is known as gynodioecy. One example of a plant that only reproduces this way is a flower found in Canada and the US called Lobelia siphilitica, also known as the Great Lobelia. Obviously, this reproduction method isn’t exactly the same as artificial feminization since the pollen production is caused naturally instead of induced chemically, but examples of gynodioecy show that a female flower-based breeding population can exist in the wild even when no plants are purely male.

The Great Lobelia naturally reproduces using only female and hermaphrodite plants. This is similar to the cannabis feminization process because it results in a population of plants that all primarily grow female flowers, with no pure male plants

When it comes to genetic diversity, the ability to cross out to thousands of different cannabis strains allows you to dramatically increase the gene pool without using male plants. So those are my answers to the common objections of a feminized seed-based breeding program, however I am just a theory-crafter when it comes to this topic. It certainly seems possible that a feminized-only breeding program could run into unforeseen problems down the road, but as far as I know there isn’t any evidence of that so far.

Although I have a few anecdotes from growers who have used only feminized seeds for a few generations, it would be much better to share information from someone who has conducted plenty of testing over several generations. We’d love to hear from you if you have bred more than a few generations using only feminized seeds and want to share your experience.

What are the positive aspects of breeding two feminized seeds together?

Besides not having to worry about male plants in the next generation, the main advantage of doing this is you have a much better idea of what you’re working with when it comes to producing the type of buds you’re looking for. When you’re growing a male plant, it has several genes it will pass to its offspring that has to do with how buds develop, but since it’s a male plant those genes aren’t expressed and it’s hard to figure out what they are.

Historically, the way to learn more about the “hidden genes” contained in a male plant is to breed it to several well-known female plants and see how the offspring compare to each other. The genes that don’t come from the known mother plant are assumed to come from the male. Another way of going about this is to take several clones of the same well-known female plant and breed them with many different male plants to see which ones produce the best offspring.

After testing with several pairings, you start to get an idea of the hidden genes a male plant has to offer to its female offspring. This time-consuming process of documenting and identifying good male plants is why proven stud male plants are one of the most valuable and closely guarded types of clones available today.

But the process of finding the right “father” is a little different when you start with two female plants. In this case, you already know quite a bit about the genes of both parents because you can just look at and test the buds of both plants directly. This allows you to pinpoint desirable genes with less guessing and much less time spent growing out and cataloging plants.

Breeding two female plants together offer hints about what kind of buds their genes will produce

Why even have male plants then?

In nature, male plants are effective at increasing genetic diversity by ensuring cross-pollination. With only purely male and purely female plants, every resulting seed will have two different parents.

Another big advantage in the wild of having separate female and male plants is sexual specialization. In other words, plants are able to evolve male and female traits separately, so each type of flower can become more specialized at its unique “job.”

However, this isn’t the only successful breeding strategy for plants. In fact, only 6-7% of plants have completely separate male and female plants like cannabis plants do (known as dioecious plants). Most plants grow some mix of male and female flowers on each plant, with different combinations offering different evolutionary benefits.

You might enjoy this scientific article if you want to learn more about the evolution of sex determination in plants and animals: Sex Determination: Why So Many Ways of Doing It?

And although most cannabis strains (at least the good ones) display either purely male or purely female flowers, there are some wild populations (and some strains of hemp) that regularly produce plants with male and female parts on the same plant.

When it comes to artificial selection for breeding new strains, the grower is in charge of cross-pollination, so there’s no need for the plant to specialize in male parts. Pretty much the only thing most growers care about is how female flowers develop. So (unlike in nature) growers have the freedom to choose plants that improve female buds without even having to consider how it might affect male plants.

Only a small percentage of plant species produce male plants like cannabis.

Can feminizing seeds result in hermaphrodite plants?

The answer is yes. If you do it the wrong way then feminization can lead to plants with an increased chance of herming. However, with a well-tested and well-bred feminization program, one of the main goals is to breed out any plants with hermaphroditic tendencies that show up under normal conditions. When you buy feminized seeds from trustworthy breeders, you can count on the fact that every plant will end up growing only female flowers and that’s it.

This is a relatively big topic with a lot of opposing opinions so I wrote a whole article about it.

Feminizing seeds the wrong way can result in hermaphrodite plants.

Can I pollinate the same plant I collected the pollen from?

Yes, it’s possible. However, it’s not really recommended because, for one, the timing doesn’t match up. By the time your pollen is ready to use, your original plant will already be several weeks past the optimum pollination point. It’s best to pollinate a female plant that has only been flowering about 2-3 weeks, but pollen sacs need more time before pollen is ready to use. It’s also possible to run into unwanted side effects from self-pollination/in-breeding.

One thing to keep in mind is even if you pollinate a plant to itself, the resulting seeds are likely not going to be exact copies of the original (unless the original plant is extremely inbred). The resulting seeds include not just the mother’s expressed genes but also her hidden ones.

Learn more about breeding methods, backcrossing, and how to create & stabilize a new strain

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• What Equipment Do I Need?
• Germinate Your Seeds
• 7 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I First Started Growing Weed
• How to Save Money When Growing Weed
• How to Store Weed Properly (so it never loses smell or potency!)
• Ask Questions & Get Answers From Real Growers! (In Our Free Growing Community)
• Cannabis Grower’s Glossary

Problems & Symptoms

• Cannabis Problems Guide
  • How to Help Yellow Seedlings
  • How to Fix Yellow Cannabis Leaves
  • How to Fix Curling and Clawing Cannabis Leaves
  • What Causes Dry or Crispy Leaves?
  • What Causes Brown Spots on Cannabis Leaves?
  • What Causes Bananas (“Nanners”) on Cannabis Buds?
  • Is This Nutrient Burn on My Marijuana Plant?
  • What causes red stems in cannabis plants?
• Diagnose Your Sick Plant
• Bugs & Other Cannabis Pests
• How to Prevent Nutrient Deficiencies
  • Which Nutrient Deficiencies are Caused by pH? (picture guide)
  • How to Stop Flowering Stage Nutrient Deficiencies
• 7 Reasons Why Cannabis Plants Grow Slow
• 5-Step Remedy That Fixes 99% of Grow Problems
• All-Natural Pesticides – Safe Up to Harvest!

Plant Training (Indoor Tricks for Bigger Yields)

• Simplest Plant Training Guide Ever!
• How to Control Height of Indoor Cannabis Plants
• Complete Plant Training Guide
• Breakdown of Techniques​
  • Low Stress Training (LST) Tutorial
  • Topping vs FIMing Tutorial
  • LBH’s Famous ScrOG Tutorial
  • Supercropping: Magic Technique to Control Cannabis Plant Height
  • Sea of Green (SoG) Tutorial
  • 12-12 from Seed – Flowering Plants Early
  • Nebula’s Manifold Tutorial
  • How to Manifold Clones
  • Nebula’s Bud-Based Defoliation Tutorial
  • Alternate Defoliation Tutorial ​
  • What is Re-Vegging / Monstercropping?
• How Can I Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• 7 Unfortunate Plant Training Mistakes

Grow Mediums

• What’s the Best Growing Medium?
• Soil vs Coco vs Hydro
• Basic Soil Guide
• Organic Soil Compost Guide (Super Soil) – Just Add Water!
• Coco Coir Guide
  • Coco Coir: The Most Flexible Cannabis Grow Medium
• Hydro/DWC/Bubbleponics Guide
• “True” Organic Growing vs Just Using Organic Nutrients
• Can You Use Miracle-Gro?

Nutrients

• Which Nutrients Are Best For Growing Cannabis?
• Soil Nutrients
• Coco Coir Nutrients
• Hydroponic Nutrients

Grow Lights

• 5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
• Compare Types of Cannabis Grow Lights
  • Fluorescents (T5s) – Good for Seedlings Only (not powerful enough to produce potent buds or big yields)
  • CFLs (Spiral Bulbs) – Not Recommended (LEDs are much better)
  • LED Grow Lights – Recommended for Most Home Growers
  • MH/HPS Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
  • CMH / LEC Grow Lights – Good Alternative to LEDs, But Run Much Hotter
  • Plasma / Magnetic Induction Grow Lights – Not Recommended (poor cannabis growth)
• How Does Light Spectrum Affect Marijuana Plants?
• How Far Away Do I Keep My Grow Lights?
• You Can Actually Give Plants Too Much Light?!
• Grow Light Upgrade Guide: Yields & Potency Explained
• Cannabis Grow Lights: What’s the Best Size?

Best LED Grow Light Articles

• 5 Best LED Grow Lights 2025 (Yields, Speed, & Bud Quality)
• LED Grow Lights: Too Much or Not Enough Light?
• LED Grow Journal: Mars Hydro TSL-2000W vs Spider Farmer SF-2000
• LEC vs LED Grow Lights: Side-by-Side Cannabis Grow Journal
• Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural) – cannabis plants are grown under LED grow lights

Environment

• Create the Perfect Growing Environment
  • Temperature Tutorial
  • 5 Secrets to Heat Control
  • Control Humidity for Better Buds
  • How to Use Reflective Walls to Increase Yields Indoors
  • How to Make Plants Grow Faster with CO2
• Where’s the Best Place in the House to Grow Your Plants?
• How to Control Odors
• How to Set Up an Exhaust
• How to Set Up a Grow Tent for Better Yields (and Stealth)

Plant Care Tutorials

• Cloning
  • How to clone weed in a cup of water (easy!)
  • How to make cannabis clones with an aero cloner
• Intro to Plant Training for Bigger Yields Indoors
• How Often to Water Plants
  • The Easiest Way to Water Plants & Remove Runoff
• How (and When) to Transplant Cannabis
• Male vs Female Plants
• When to Harvest?
• Drying & Curing

How to Improve…

• Yields
• Bud Quality
  • 7 Environment Effects on Bud Quality
  • The Secret to Excellent Bud Quality
• THC Levels
• CBD Levels
• Smell/Taste
• Density
• Bud Color (How to Grow Pink or Purple Buds)
• Glitter (Make Buds Sparkle with More Trichomes)
• Bonus: What Determines Yields?

Buying Seeds

• Where to Get Seeds
• How to Find the Right Strain
• What are “Feminized” Seeds?
• Which Breeders to Trust?
• Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering Cannabis Strains
• Bag Seed vs Hype Seed: Is it worth it to buy cannabis seeds?

Recommended Strains

• Best Autoflowering Cannabis Strains for Yields & Potency
• List of Sugar-Dusted Strains (Heavy Trichome Genetics)
• 10 Cold-Resistant Cannabis Strains
• 14 Heat-Resistant Cannabis Strains
• Which cannabis strains stay short? (Best strains for small spaces)

Auto-Flowering Strains

• Nebula’s Guide to Cannabis Auto-Flowering Strains (Photoperiod vs Auto-Flowering)
• Should I “Top” or Train an Auto-Flowering Plant?
• What’s the best light schedule for auto-flowering strains?
• Nebula’s Auto-Flowering Grow Journal (Topping vs Natural)

Edibles

• Decarboxylation: How to Decarb Your Weed (crucial step for just about every edible recipe)
• Best Weed Butter Recipe
  • How to Make Great Brownies with Weed Butter
• Canna Caps
• How to Make Cannabis Gummies (Weed Gummy Bears)
• How to Make Cannabis Tinctures
• How to Make Hash Oil (aka Cannabis Extract Oil, Rick Simpson Oil, or RSO)

Extracts (No Solvents Used in Any Recipe)

• Solventless Extraction Showdown – Bubble Hash vs. Dry-Ice Hash!
• Dry Ice Hash (Made with Dry Ice)
• How to Make Bubble Hash (Made with Ice Water)
• How To Make Your Own Homemade Rosin (dabs)

And Lots More!

• How Long Does it Take to Grow Weed?
• Vegetative vs Flowering Stage (Long Days vs Long Nights)
• Germination & Seedling Mistakes
• Simple Guide to Plant Training
• What’s the Best Pot / Container?
• Perpetual Harvest
• What Determines Yields?
• 5 Time-Savers for Busy Growers
• Breeding Techniques
• 7 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers
• Grow Journals
• How long can I store nutrient water?
• What is High-Frequency Fertigation?
• Where is it legal to grow weed in the USA?
• See EVERYTHING on the Site!

Safety & Preparation

• Fire Protection in the Grow Room
• Electrical Safety Tips & Tricks
• Prepare Yourself for Growing Emergencies
• Stealth Growing Indoors: How to NOT get Caught Growing Weed

Just for Fun

• Weird or What? Cannabis Mutations & More!
• Creatures on Cannabis (Cute Photo Gallery)
• 10 Gift Ideas for Cannabis Growers

Submit Pics

• Submit Trophy Pictures of your Plants!
• How to Take Better Plant Pics
• How to Fix Yellow HPS Pics

Want More?

• Complete List of EVERYTHING on GWE  ← Full List (Over 500 articles & growing!)

Thanks for visiting! We hope our website helps you find the growing tutorials you were looking for. We’ve written hundreds of growing marijuana articles and unfortunately we can’t fit them all on this page, so we encourage you to use the search bar on the right side (or top of the page for mobile users) to search for articles you don’t see here.

Happy growing!
Nebula & Sirius

Use this “Navigation” page to find the pot growing topic you’re interested in, or click here to see every single page on the website!

The post Link Guide to Growing Cannabis Tutorials appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Why should every home grower start with “feminized” cannabis seeds? It saves time and money, prevents seedy buds, and maximizes yields for an efficient home cannabis grow. (Where can I get cannabis seeds?)

Every feminized seed grows buds (check out my review of feminized Blue Dream)

What are “feminized” cannabis seeds and how are they different from regular cannabis seeds?

Feminized cannabis seeds are created to ensure that all the resulting cannabis plants are female. This is extremely convenient for home growers. Why? Because only female cannabis plants make buds.

“Regular” (or non-feminized) seeds will produce about half male, and half female plants.

Having male plants can be an asset to a breeding program, but having to watch over and throw away half the plants can feel like a waste of time and space for growers who just want to grow their own supply of bud!

By starting your grow with feminized cannabis seeds from a reputable breeder, you can stop worrying about plant gender altogether and know that every one of your plants will be female and make buds!

Seed Supreme is a trustworthy source of feminized cannabis seeds (it’s the company I currently use for seeds)

Non-Feminized Seeds Produce Half Male, Half Female Plants
(learn more more about cannabis plant sex)

Feminized Seeds Only Produce Female Plants

Get Feminized Seeds From a Trustworthy Seed Source

How Do Breeders Make Feminized Seeds?

Breeders create feminized seeds by breeding two female cannabis plants together, which means that all the resulting offspring will be female. This is done by spraying developing flowers with a substance that changes flower development (often colloidal silver or gibberellic acid). This process forces one of the female cannabis plants to start producing pollen sacs, just like a male plant.

By harvesting the pollen sacs and using the “female” pollen to pollinate buds of a different female plant, you are giving the resulting seeds only female genes (there is no “father”), so none of the cannabis seedlings end up being male.

Learn how to make your own feminized seeds at home!

Jump to…

How to Germinate Your Marijuana Seeds

What Are “Auto-Flowering” Strains?

How to Improve Bud Quality

5 Ways to Increase Yields (with any strain)

The post What Are “Feminized” Cannabis Seeds? appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Growing Marijuana Flowering Stage Timeline

Week 1-3 – Transition to Flowering

Week 3-4 – Budlets Form

Week 4-6 – Buds Start Fattening Up

Week 6-8 – Buds Ripen, Pistils Darken – some strains spend longer in this stage

Week 8+ – Flowering Ends, Final Flush, Harvest

Introduction to the Cannabis Flowering Stage

Do you want to know what to expect when growing marijuana in the flowering stage? First, let’s talk a little bit about the beginning of your plant’s life so you can understand exactly how the flowering stage comes in. During the phase known as the vegetative stage (the first stage of life for marijuana), a cannabis plant grows about how you’d expect… like a weed! In the vegetative stage, a cannabis plant only grows new stems and leaves, and can grow several inches a day with the added ability to recover from just about anything.

Even if you run into major problems in the vegetative stage, you can bring your plant back from the brink of death simply by addressing the problem and giving your plant some TLC.

In the vegetative stage, your cannabis plant only grows stems and leaves and is resistant to problems. It grows like a weed!

However, things aren’t so rosy in the cannabis flowering stage. In the flowering stage, your cannabis plant grows very differently and is much more sensitive to problems. The tricky thing about the flowering stage is that you don’t have much room for error and big mistakes can lower your yields.

In order to maximize your yields, it’s important to know what to focus on during each part of the flowering stage. It’s also really helpful to know what to expect so you know when something is going wrong!

Week-by-Week Timeline of the Flowering Cycle (with pictures)

This marijuana flowering stage “walk through” will explain exactly what to expect week-by-week while your plant is making buds, and it’ll tell you what you need to do to ensure you get to harvest with the best bud quality and yields possible!

Week 1-3: Transition to Flowering

When growing cannabis indoors, the flowering stage begins when you change your grow lights to a 12/12 light cycle (12 hours light, 12 hours darkness each day). Getting those 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness each day gives your plant the signal that it’s time to start flowering. In a way the plant “thinks” winter is coming because the days are getting short.

Note: It’s common to think that a cannabis plant getting 12 or fewer hours of light is what initiates flowering, but it’s actually uninterrupted darkness that does the trick! If the plant gets any light during the dark period, even for just a minute, it won’t make buds! In fact, a flowering plant may even revert back or express hermaphroditism if it gets any light at night!

Outdoors, it’s also the days getting shorter that cause a cannabis plant to start making buds in late summer, but outdoor buds develop on different schedules depending on the local climate. This tutorial is meant to explain how a cannabis plant usually develops when grown indoors since that is done under controlled conditions, and plants tend to grow the same way.

For the purposes of this indoor cannabis growing tutorial, the flowering stage starts the day you switch to 12/12.

Autoflowering strains of cannabis don’t need special light periods to start flowering, however the cannabis flowering timeline in this tutorial is a good general guideline for indoor auto-flowering strains, too. Their “vegetative stage” lasts about 3-4 weeks, so as long as you start counting at week 3-4 from seed (when they start getting their first pistils) this flowering timeline will generally apply to autos too, though sometimes they finish up faster.

During the first few weeks after being switched to a 12/12 schedule, your plant will be growing like crazy and rapidly gaining height. In fact, a cannabis plant can (and frequently will) almost double in height after the switch to 12/12. This period of super-fast and often stretchy growth is sometimes referred to as the “flowering stretch.”

Example of flowering stretch – what to expect

Pre-Stretch – just before 12/12

Post-Stretch – 4 weeks after 12/12

Although your female plants will start sprouting lots of white pistils, they usually won’t start growing “real” buds with substance quite yet. If you’re new to growing cannabis, it’s very important to note that only female cannabis plants make buds.

Did you know you can figure out if a plant is male or female while it’s still in the vegetative stage?

If your plant is male, it will start growing distinct pollen sacs and should be removed from the grow room immediately to prevent it from pollinating your female plants and causing ‘seedy’ buds. Learn where to get feminized (all-female) seeds online so you don’t have to worry about male plants.

Remove any plants growing pollen sacs instead of pistils, because they are male and won’t make buds. Plus they can pollinate your female plants and cause them to grow seeds!  What if my plant is growing both pistils and pollen sacs?

Female plants should be growing pistils wherever a fan leaf meets a main stem. They look like white wispy hairs emerging from the joints

During the first few weeks of the flowering stage, you will see bunches of single leaves forming at the tops of your main colas (like in this pic). Soon white pistils will start coming out of the middle of the bunches, and they will become your main buds!

During week 1-3 of the flowering stage, your plant will mostly be producing new stems and leaves as it grows taller. Right now your plant is still very resilient and can handle problems just like in the vegetative stage. However, it’s still very important to avoid problems and take great care of your plant!

As part of the stretch, your plant will be growing out its bud sites. Stunting growth at this point could cause the plant to make smaller and fewer bud sites than it would if it were healthy and growing fast.

If you have more room in your grow space under the light to spread your plants out, or if you are running out of headroom, it is important to gently bend stretching stems down and away from the center of the plant to help maintain a flat canopy (a technique known as low stress training).

During the stretch, gently bend new stems down to try to maintain a flat, even canopy.

If you keep up with it during the stretch, you can prevent any one stem from getting much taller than the others.

When stems are new, they are flexible and easy to bend, but they quickly harden up and turn woody. By keeping a close eye on your plant and bending any too-tall branches down and away from the center of the plant as soon as you can, you will maximize your yields since that flat shape will most efficiently use your grow lights. If all your main bud sites are spread out and about the same height, you can increase your yields by up to 40% or more!

Spreading out your bud sites and maintaining a flat canopy can increase cannabis yields by as much as 40%…or even more!

At this point, you only have a few weeks left until you lose the ability to do any further training, so don’t miss this last opportunity to control the shape of your plant, especially if you’re running out of room!

Week 3-4: Budlets Form

The mad stretching of the first few weeks will start to slow down in week 3-4, but your cannabis plant will still be growing upward. At this point you’ll actually start to see real buds instead of just hairs (I like to call them “budlets” during this stage) and all the pistils will be white and sticking almost straight out.

“Budlets” start forming where buds will be, with white pistils sticking straight out.

Your plant is going to start getting a little picky about the environment and nutrients in week 3-4 so it’s important to keep a close eye on your garden. You need to make sure your plant stays healthy all the way to the end of the flowering stage, and you’ve still got more than a month to go so you don’t want your plant to run into any major health problems now!

Be especially aware of leaf symptoms, for example: discolored/yellow leaves, or if your plant starts rapidly losing leaves. It’s completely normal to lose a few leaves at this stage, especially leaves that aren’t getting light (which often look like they may have a nutrient deficiency and then fall off, but it’s just your plant cannibalizing the leaf since it isn’t getting any more light). That being said, overall your entire plant should still be lush and green in week 3-4 while your budlets are forming.

As your plant continues through the flowering stage, it’s normal to see a few yellow or discolored leaves near the bottom of the plant, especially in the places where the leaves are no longer getting light. This isn’t anything to worry about if it’s just a few leaves as the plant is putting its energy to the top of the plant and the buds.

But it’s not normal for your plant to be yellowing or losing leaves rapidly like this

Diagnose sick plants as soon as possible!

Another thing to be aware of is nutrient burn. This is what happens when you give your plants too-high levels of nutrients – the tips of all the leaves actually get “burned.” While a little bit of nutrient burn won’t hurt your plant, it’s important to try to avoid it if you can. Your plant can never recover the parts of the leaves lost to nutrient burn, so if you accidentally give too much nutrients in the future, the burning will start “climbing” up the “fingers” of the leaves. Cannabis leaves tend to look much less appealing/pretty as more of each leaf gets burned. However, even cannabis plants with severe nutrient burn can produce good bud, so don’t give up if you run into thi problem!

Try your best to avoid nutrient burn (burnt leaf tips caused by too-high levels of nutrients), as it can only get worse as the flowering stage continues.

When nutrient burn starts getting bad, it can actually start discoloring your sugar leaves (the small single-finger leaves emerging from your buds). If nutrient burn reaches the base of the sugar leaves, you won’t be able to trim it off at harvest so your buds will end up with yellow/brown spots where all the leaves were burned.

Nutrient deficiencies can also cause the same problem if left unchecked. This doesn’t necessarily affect the potency but buds don’t look as good as they could have.

So to grow bud you’re proud of, you’ll want to be aware of avoiding nutrient burn from the beginning. Since your plant isn’t really growing many more leaves, you need to really care for the ones it has left.

If they haven’t already, your plants may start to smell!

Some strains like Blue Mystic and Northern Light are known for having relatively low smells, but many strains can start getting pungent quickly!

Learn more about controlling smells in the grow room.

Week 4-6: Buds Start Fattening

Your cannabis budlets are fattening and soon you will have buds with substance! They will still have nearly all white pistils sticking straight up in every direction, but the buds themselves will be getting fatter every day.

By weeks 4-6, the stretch is almost over and you no longer need to pay attention to training your plant. Instead of trying to keep the colas down, from now on you’re doing the opposite – trying to hold any buds up if they start getting too heavy for your plant!

If you’re having trouble fitting your plant in your space within a safe distance from your light, your training options can start looking very grim.

If your plant has grown into the light, you may have to consider last-resort solutions like supercropping (a high-stress training technique of forcing stems to bend at a 90° angle) which you normally should never do this late in the flowering stage.

Since you don’t get many more new leaves, you need to think of your remaining leaves as armor – insurance against any nutrient or leaf problems.

Although you don’t want an excessively leafy plant, and strategic defoliation (for advanced growers) can be helpful to expose bud sites, it’s important to make sure that you let your plant keep enough leaf coverage to power the growth of buds. It may need a little extra help if something happens!

Although defoliation may be used to expose buds sites, make sure your plant still has enough leaves (“armor”) to last until the end of the flowering stage to power the growth of buds, and as insurance against any possible nutrient or leaf problems.

Although most of the pistils will probably still be mostly white by the end of week 6, the buds are getting bigger and denser every day.

Week 6-8: Buds Ripen, Pistils Darken

From now on your plant won’t be making any new leaves or stems. It has completely switched gears away from vegetative growth and all its energy will be focused on growing buds from now until harvest.

It’s normal for some of the bottom leaves to begin to turn yellow as the plant continues to put its energy in the leaves and buds getting the most direct light, though the plant should still be mostly green from top to bottom even in week 6-8.

At this point of the flowering stage, your plant may start getting much more picky and sensitive to nutrient problems, including those caused by incorrect pH at the roots. Now is not the time to slack off on caring for your plants!

If your leaves are already turning yellow in week 6-8 it’s too early! Early leaf yellowing is likely caused by either a nutrient problem or light burn (which are both much more common in marijuanas flowering stage). React quickly to problems so you don’t hurt your yields!

If many of your leaves turn yellow or die early, your cannabis plant can’t make nearly as much energy from light, and buds will be smaller than they could be. For example, if the following grower had kept the leaves green and healthy for longer (by quickly fixing nutrient deficiencies), all these buds would be bigger.

Quickly diagnose sick plants & don’t ignore problems!

Another common problem to watch out for at this stage: if you see a whole new bud or “spire” emerging out of the side of an old bud that’s already developed, it’s usually a sign of heat or light damage.

“Foxtailing” like this is caused by too much heat or light – it’s not normal bud growth! If you see this it means you need to control your temperature and light levels to prevent further damage.

Here’s another foxtail growing from a cannabis bud under a powerful LED grow light. The grower should have turned down the light intensity or moved the LEDs further away. Another option would be to bend the whole branch down and away from the light. I personally cut off big long foxtails as they don’t fatten or make a significant amount of bud, and seem like they may reduce fattening lower down on the bud.

Learn more about marijuana foxtails caused by heat or light stress

From now until harvest it’s extra important to avoid too-high levels of light and especially heat because (in addition to foxtailing) this can discolor/bleach/burn your buds and may even burn off some of the THC (potency) or terpenes (smell).

If things are going well, your buds should be really hitting their stride at this point. They will grow in size significantly over the next few weeks.

Week 8+: Flowering Ends, Final Flush, Harvest

Home stretch! You’re so close! To make sure things go smoothly until harvest, treat your plant like a movie star and attend to its every need! Very few strains of cannabis are ready to be harvested before week 8, but now we’re at to the point where some short strains are getting close to being harvest-ready!

Many growers do a final flush, which involves giving only plain water to your plants (for a few days up to a few weeks) before harvest.

Once you’ve reached week 8, buds are fattening quickly. Trichomes and pistils are maturing, though new pistils may continue to develop on the buds as they grow.

You are basically just maintaining your plant until harvest. Different strains are ready at different times, but from now on you’re going to pretty much treat them all the same. Keep a close eye on the buds, pistils and trichomes as a whole to help you figure out the best time to harvest to get the effects you are looking for.

Now is Probably the Best Time to Take Bud Pics!

Quick Tip: Want to take better bud pics? Try taking a picture of the bud in the dark with your camera flash on. Learn more tips for taking great bud pictures!

Just around 8-10 weeks is when you get to see the buds in their full glory. It’s also when the smell of cannabis often starts to get overpowering!

Your plants are probably STINKING up everything around them.

At this point it’s completely normal for your plant leaves to start yellowing, sometimes rapidly. As long as the yellowing isn’t affecting your buds and you’re very close to harvest then it’s completely normal. You probably can’t prevent this type of yellowing no matter what you do with nutrients because this is just what a cannabis plant naturally does as it’s wrapping up the flowering stage.

After Week 8 it’s normal to see leaves turning yellow, in fact, there’s not much you can do to prevent it. As long as it’s close to harvest and the yellowing is not affecting your actual buds, it’s ok.

Raising nutrient levels at this stage is not recommended as it won’t stop the yellowing and can possibly prevent your buds from fattening up as much as they could have (cannabis wants relatively low levels of nitrogen in the flowering stage for proper bud growth).

If buds start getting too heavy and fall over, special tools known as plant yo-yos (pictured to the right) can be hung from the ceiling and will hook around your buds to gently hold them up without damaging them.

Many growers choose to give their plants a 2-week flush before harvest to help make sure the plant has used up any additional nutrients that may affect the taste or smell of the buds.

These buds are ready to start flushing – white pistils have nearly all darkened and curled in
(learn exactly when to harvest so your buds produce the right effects)

Sometimes you’ll need to harvest your plant early due to life situations, or because the plant is unhealthy and buds are starting to look burnt or discolored. If your buds look completely done, and you’re seeing leaf symptoms getting worse, it’s often better to harvest a little early to ensure the best possible quality given the situation.

You may want to harvest your marijuana buds early if they’re starting to get damaged by nutrient or other problems. Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses than let your buds continue to get beat up! If you harvest your plants too early you can improve many unwanted effects by curing them. For example, these buds probably should be harvested before the buds get any further damage.

Harvest buds early if they’re getting damaged.

Harvest day is the best day!
(well, until the day you try your buds for the first time)

Learn how to dry & cure your cannabis plants here.

Jump to….

Diagnose Your Sick Cannabis Plant!

Tips to Growing Top-Shelf Buds

How Long Does It Take to Grow Weed?

Quick Start Guide: Grow Cannabis in 10 Steps

Check These 7 Things & Cure 99% of Marijuana Growing Problems

The post Week-by-Week Timeline of the Cannabis Flowering Stage: 12/12 to Harvest (with Pictures) appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Do feminized cannabis seeds lead to hermaphrodite (“hermie”) marijuana plants? While certain seed sources or plant stress can increase the risk, you can take steps to protect yourself. Today, I unpack the facts about feminized cannabis seeds and hermies, so you have the information to decide what’s right for your cannabis grow.

A cannabis plant grown from feminized seeds (like these Purple Punch seeds) always makes buds.

First, what are “feminized” cannabis seeds?

Cannabis plants can be male or female, but only female plants grow buds. Unfortunately, you can’t look at a cannabis seed or seedling and tell whether it’s male or female. Male or female seeds (and seedlings) look the same.

This is where feminized seeds come in. Feminized seeds all grow up to be female cannabis plants. That means every plant produces buds. With “regular” (non-feminized) seeds, about half the cannabis plants will turn out to be male, which don’t produce buds. Male cannabis plants can also pollinate your female plants, causing seedy buds. Therefore most cannabis growers will remove male plants from the grow room as soon as they’re identified. Learn more about male vs female plants.

You can’t tell from looking, but these cannabis seeds are feminized.

Feminized seeds let you plan your grow more effectively because you don’t have to throw half the plants away.

What Are Hermies?

“Hermie” is short for “hermaphrodite” and means the plant has a mix of male and female traits. Hermie cannabis plants often look like normal female plants for the most part, but also grow some male parts that produce pollen. This causes seedy buds just like pollen from male plants. Hermies are to be avoided!

Read the full tutorial on hermies.

It’s no good if your “female” plants start growing male flowers or parts of male flowers. That can cause seedy buds just like a male plant!

This bud got completely seeded due to a hermie in the grow space. Notice the lumpy round bits. Those are seeds forming.

What’s the matter with a few seeds?

Cannabis growers are trying to grow sinsemilla (seedless buds). A few seeds won’t hurt anything. But if you have very seedy buds, it significantly lowers your yields because plants are putting all their energy into making seeds. The buds also tend to be less potent if they are full of seeds. Seeds are not the end of the world, but it’s good to avoid if possible.

“Sinsemilla” means “no seeds.” Sinsemilla is the highest quality and most potent of all buds

Since most growers are trying to grow sinsemilla, having only 100% female plants in the flowering grow room is crucial to prevent pollination.

Feminized cannabis seeds can be a blessing for small-scale growers.

While male plants produce pollen sacs, feminized seeds ensure all your plants will end up being bud-bearing females (instead of growing half male and half female plants like with regular seeds).

If you don’t have room for extra plants, feminized seeds can make planning your grow a lot easier!

Good feminized seeds should produce only 100% female plants, with no hermies or male plants. So starting with feminized cannabis seeds lets you make the most efficient use of your grow space. You don’t have to worry about identifying male plants and throwing them away before they pollinate your female plants. With good feminized seeds, you know that if you’re growing 10 plants, all 10 of them will make buds, and that makes it easier to plan out your grow ahead of time.

With all these bonuses, why would any small-scale grower use any other type of seeds?

Pros of Feminized Cannabis Seeds

• Guaranteed buds – With feminized seeds, all the resulting cannabis plants produce buds.

• No male plants – You don’t need to worry or watch out for male plants.

• No pollination – You don’t have to worry about your cannabis buds getting pollinated (which causes seedy buds, reduced bud quality, and reduced yields).

• No wasted seeds – You don’t have to throw away half your plants after nurturing them for weeks.

But is there a dark side to feminized cannabis seeds?

One of the biggest worries growers have about feminized seeds is that they will produce hermies instead of 100% female plants as advertised.

This hermie is growing both male and female flowers. Can this be caused by feminized seeds?

Unfortunately, hermies can be a lot easier to miss than a male plant since it may just be a small part of the plant that’s affected. A male plant makes itself known at the beginning of the flowering stage, but a hermie plant may grow only buds except for just one or two tiny pollen sacs. A few yellow hermie bananas hidden in the buds can also produce pollen. Any type of male flower part that grows in your garden can add seeds to your buds, and hermies are some of the worst offenders.

This grower didn’t notice that the buds had been seeded until harvest. As he was trimming, he noticed seeds popping out. Since there were no male plants, chances are this was caused by an unnoticed hermie somewhere in the grow space.

Is it True that Feminized Seeds Can Cause Hermies? Yes, from bad breeders!

Many growers believe that feminized seeds can cause hermies, and there is some truth to that. In order to create a feminized cannabis seed, one of the parent female plants had to be forced in some way to produce pollen.

That pollen is used to pollinate another female plant, and the offspring of those two plants will all be female since both of the parents were female. That’s how you get feminized cannabis seeds. But that also means every time you have a feminized seed, that seed had a plant that produced male flowers in its recent genetic history.

There are different ways to feminize seeds, but only some methods produce seeds that turn hermie on you.

What’s most important is to get seeds from a trustworthy breeder who takes extra steps with their feminization program to ensure plants never produce hermies.

Want to learn why? First, you should know that hermies can happen a couple of different ways. And the different types of hermies affect what genes are being passed on to the seeds.

This swollen calyx has a seed developing inside.

What Causes Hermies?

Hermies can be caused by many things, including…

• bad genetics – the plant comes from a line of plants that naturally create hermies for no reason, even in good growing conditions

• high stress – high temperatures, light leaks, inconsistent light schedules, as well as other types of major stress can cause a healthy plant to hermie, though some plants/strains are more susceptible than others

• letting buds over-mature – this is also known as “rodelization;” basically when the plant’s buds have gone past maturity without being pollinated (if the grower waits way too long to harvest), a female plant may make male pollen within its buds as a last ditch effort to pollinate itself and make seeds for the next generation

• chemical stimulation – by exposing a female plant to certain substances like colloidal silver or gibberellic acid during the early parts of the flowering stage, you can force any female plant to create pollen. This is how seedbanks get female pollen to produce feminized seeds.

Seeds created from “female” pollen will turn out being female (or at least as female as the parents).

The pollen from a hermie plant makes feminized seeds.

The pollen sacs on this masculinized female plant have opened and pollen has spilled onto the leaf below.

Another type of hermie: a yellow “banana” can appear in your buds and make pollen. This male flower part would normally be inside a pollen sac. When it’s in the open like this, it becomes a little pollen generator.

Feminized seeds are susceptible to becoming hermies themselves when exposed to the same conditions as their female “father” who produced the pollen. But since any plant can be chemically induced to produce pollen, it doesn’t mean that the ability to hermie in a natural environment is passed on to the seeds.

So only some feminized seeds come from parents with bad genetics, and that’s what’s the grower cares about most.

Bagseed

The bagseed gamble… When you find seeds in your buds, that usually means that the buds were pollinated by accident. Seeds that were accidentally created are suspect. It could be that a stray male plant caused them, which means there were no hermies and you will get about half male and half female plants. But accidental seeds could also be the result of herming by an indiscriminate grower, and that means you have feminized seeds, sort of. Some of them may produce pollen on you just like their parents. Growing with bagseed is a big gamble… you never know what you’re going to get.

Are your cannabis bagseeds viable? Viable, good seeds usually appear either dark and striped or solid gray/beige.

If a seed is pure white it usually means it’s underdeveloped and won’t sprout. But it can sometimes be hard to tell. In the end, if a seed sprouts and grows it’s a viable seed! I’ve had very pale, flimsy seeds sprout into gorgeous fast-growing plants, so if you’re not sure the best thing to do is try to germinate it!

Seed Banks & Breeders

Commercial breeders and seed banks use chemical stimulation to create feminized seeds. What that means is they put specific compounds on developing female plants to force them to produce pollen. You can actually do this yourself at home.

This technique works on nearly any female plant, including plants that would never hermie naturally. So it can be used to take two plants with great genetics to produce female seeds. But the same process will also work incredibly well on plants that do hermie easily all on their own. That means it’s up to the breeder to test and make sure that they have a solid plant with unbeatable genetics before using the feminization technique.

The pollen that results from chemical stimulation is used to pollinate another female plant and make feminized seeds. If the parent plants would never hermie without chemical stimulation, then you have created feminized seeds that won’t ever make pollen in your grow room.

But if one of the parent plants was chosen because it does hermie easily, you’ll end up with seeds that likely will herm. The breeder might not have done any testing on the parents or the resulting offspring to even know.

Without testing, a breeder can’t tell whether they’ve created quality feminized seeds

Choosing the Right Cannabis Breeder

Unfortunately, some cannabis seed breeders are more trustworthy than others. The great ones have created stabilized strains that have been bred over several generations to produce a consistent product without any problems with plant sex.

Less scrupulous breeders might breed two random female plants together and sell the resulting seeds as a new strain without any testing. In this second case, you don’t know what to expect, and neither does the breeder.

If the breeder hasn’t tested their strains extensively in many situations, they won’t know whether their seeds tend to hermie or not. If they have carelessly bred plants that have a tendency to herm, then it’s really likely that at least some of the resulting seeds will have the same problem.

Breeder choice is important!

I have to admit I may be biased towards feminized seeds. I’ve grown almost exclusively with feminized seeds over the last decade. It has made my life so much easier! I only purchase seeds from breeders that I trust and all the resulting seeds have been bud-bearing females. I haven’t had any real problems with hermies.

On the flip side, I’ve heard of growers buying feminized seeds from untrustworthy breeders and having a big portion of their seeds turn male or become hermies even in perfect growing conditions. So there is truth to the fact that you can run into hermie problems with feminized seeds.

Yet there are good and bad breeders out there, and with good breeders, you have a very low chance of running into cannabis sex problems.

So if you do choose to purchase feminized seeds (or any seeds really), please make sure you get them from a trusted breeder!

Conclusion: Feminized seeds from a trustworthy breeder have a low chance of producing hermies, but the odds are much worse with feminized seeds from an untrustworthy source

The truth is it takes a hermie of some sort to create feminized seeds. That means that you always run the risk of running into hermies when growing feminized seeds… yet that is true for non-feminized cannabis seeds, too! Lots of regular seeds produce hermies.

What’s most important, whether you get feminized seeds or not, is to get your seeds from a breeder who has a reputation for producing quality genetics. That is the best thing you can do for any strain to ensure a smooth grow. With a great breeder, you have a very low risk of running into any sex or gender problems.

I personally prefer feminized seeds, and that’s the only type of seed I grow. It makes it easier for me in my limited grow space. I haven’t run into any significant problems with hermies, so I’m satisfied with growing only bud-bearing plants.

Yet a lot of growers grow with regular seeds because they’re easier to breed and produce at home. Many growers have created a system for weeding out male plants that is more convenient for them than using feminized seeds.

In the end, when it comes to feminized cannabis seeds you need to decide whether the small chance for hermies is worth the convenience of all-female plants. It’s up to you to figure out what’s best for your needs!

Jump to….

Where can I get cannabis seeds?

How do I germinate my seeds?

What training methods will increase yields?

Which Breeders Can I Trust?

The post Do Feminized Cannabis Seeds Make ‘Hermie’ Plants? [Sometimes] appeared first on Grow Weed Easy.

Table of Contents

Intro: Use Pre-Flowers or Testing to Find the Sex of Young Plants & Seedlings

• Leaf Sample Testing (Bonus) – Identify sex in just 1-3 weeks from germination
• Male Pre-Flower Pics – Appears 3-4 weeks from germination
• Female Pre-Flower Pics – Appears 4-8 weeks from germination

Variability of Plant Sex (How to Increase Ratio of Female Plants)

Example of Male & Female Cannabis Pre-Flowers

The Cannabis Grower’s Shortcut to Pre-Flowers: For regular seeds about half of seeds grow into male cannabis plants, so you must check for pre-flowers. But if you start with feminized seeds, every plant makes buds. No checking pre-flowers required.

A female plant soon produces stigmas. These wispy white hairs are a sure sign of female pre-flowers.

How to Determine the Sex 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 learned (incorrectly) that there is no way to determine a cannabis plant’s sex 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 4-8 weeks from germination for female plants.

Cannabis Pre-Flowers Are Small Versions of Adult Flowers. These reveal a plant’s sex.

Knowing the plant’s sex 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 because 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”).

​Why Do Only Female Cannabis Plants Make Buds?

Cannabis pre-flowers appear at the base of leaves when male plants are about 3-4 weeks old, and female plants are 4-8 weeks old.

Male Pre-Flower

More Male Pre-Flower Pics

Female Pre-Flowers
(these turn into buds)

This female pre-flower hasn’t released a wispy white hair quite yet (no stigma/pistil can be seen). Just wait a few days and it will appear.

More Female Pre-Flower Pics

When starting with “feminized” seeds (which you can usually only get from a breeder), all your seeds should end up being female, so determining male from female isn’t very important. Learn more about buying seeds (including feminized seeds) from breeders online.

But for growers starting with “regular” seeds (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 sex it is.

Unfortunately, you can’t tell a cannabis plant’s sex for sure by looking at the seeds 🙁

Learn more about why it’s hard to determine sex from looking at seeds

Quick Note About Terms – Female Bud Anatomy

I quickly wanted to share this botanical terminology, since these terms cause a lot of confusion when talking about cannabis pre-flowers. It’s not uncommon to hear different words refer to the same parts of the plant.

(What is the purpose of “stipules”?)

Stigma – The white hairs are technically called stigmas.

Grower Lingo: Why are stigmas usually called “pistils” by cannabis growers?

• In plant botany, a pistil refers to the stigma/hair and the parts it’s attached to.
• Pistil = the entire reproductive unit with ovary + style + stigma.
• I just call them “hairs” to avoid confusion.

Bract – “Buds” are made of many pod-like bracts, stacked on top of each other. Bracts are modified leaf structures that get covered in resin and trichomes. They enclose the female reproductive structure.

Grower Lingo: Why are bracts usually called “calyxes” by cannabis growers?

• In a female cannabis flower, the true calyx is tiny and concealed at the base of the bract.
• Calyx = small leaf-like sepals that surrounds the ovary.
• Whether called bracts or calyxes, what’s most important is these are what buds are made of!

Learn more about cannabis flower anatomy.

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 for plants as young as 1-3 weeks

Chemical leaf testing is getting less expensive every day and can be used on cannabis seedlings with just a few sets of leaves to test for sex 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!

In general, the tests are available for seedlings as young as 1-3 weeks. Sex testing uses a real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) test, and potency tests use Gas Chromatography with a Flame Ionization Detector (GC/FID) or High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography with a Diode Array Detector (HPLC) for testing.

Although testing can be done as early as week 1 from germination, waiting until week 3 to conduct testing on seedlings can increase accuracy, and some companies won’t conduct testing until week 3.

There are many reasons growers would like to know plant sex as early as possible, as well as be able to estimate the overall THC/CBD ratios of future buds!

Did You Know? There are Chemical Leaf Tests that Can Definitively Determine Both Plant Sex & Future Cannabinoid Ratios of Very Young Marijuana Seedlings! 

But for those of us using our eyes, pre-flowers are the way to go!

How to Figure out Sex of a Cannabis Plant by Examining Pre-flowers

Vegetating plants usually reveal their sex when they’re just 3-8 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 sex 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 sex with “pre-flowers” that usually appear 3-8 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 4-8. The time is based on the strain, but basically all vegetative plants of any strain will have revealed their sex by about the 8th 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 playing cards. Male cannabis plants often (but not always) reveal their sex 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 pre-flower. Notice how tiny it is compared to the giant-sized thumb! Often it’s unclear what the sex 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?

Male pre-flowers are basically immature pollen sacs. When the plant starts flowering, they will grow and turn into bunches that almost look like grapes.

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 hairs, you can be confident it’s a male plant

Although this plant ended up being male, the stipules are long, pointy and crossed as you’d normally see with a female plant. That’s why you need to confirm sex 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 hairs, 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 male cannabis plant has gotten further along in the flowering stage

This is what a male plant looks like at maturity when it’s starting to spill its pollen

Another example of pollen spilling onto a nearby leaf

For those who’ve never seen a male cannabis plant in its full glory 🙂

Ok, now that you know what male pre-flowers look like, what do female pre-flowers look like?

Female Pre-Flowers

Female pre-flowers tend to be longer and narrower than male pre-flowers, sometimes with a fat bottom. They also usually (but not always) have 1-2 white hairs (stigmas / pistils) sticking out from the top. Sometimes it takes a few extra days for the hairs to appear.

pic by GypsySpirit WhiteEagle

Wispy white hairs (at the joints) are a sure sign that you’re looking at female pre-flowers

This pre-flower doesn’t have a pistil sticking out at first, but the shape helps tell you it’s a female plant. If you’re not sure about sex after spotting a pre-flower, it’s a good idea to wait and see for a little while, just to see if a white hair appears (which means it’s definitely a girl)

Another example of female cannabis pre-flowers that haven’t revealed their stigma yet

Here’s a picture that shows a stigma right as it’s emerging from the calyx!

If the pre-flower is very pointy and thin like this one on the right, it is often a female pre-flower

Some of the time the stipules (green hair-like growths near where pre-flowers show up) will cross each other on female plants. This certainly doesn’t always happen, as you can see from the pics of female pre-flowers on this page, but while girls can go either way, male plants rarely have stipules that cross each other. So although crossed stipules cannot be used definitively as a way to identify female plants, it can be a small clue to help guide you when you’re not sure. For example, the following female pre-flower doesn’t have a stigma/pistil, but the long thin shape combined with the crossed stipules help indicate that this plant is a girl. Whenever in doubt, wait a week and look again!

This female plant has a long, thin calyx and crossed stipules, which are typical female plant features

In this pic, you can see white pistils emerging from the calyxes. Female pistils are white and wispy, never green.

Here’s another female pre-flower that doesn’t have a white hair yet, but you can tell it’s female because it’s long and narrow, instead of spade-shaped

One last female pre-flower without a stigma yet. The long narrow shape is the only thing that gives the sex away until stigmas begin to emerge

Super close-up picture of a female cannabis pre-flower

Female cannabis calyxes with stigmas/pistils, under an LED grow light

Did you know that pre-flowers/calyxes/flowers are actually what holds seeds if your plant gets pollinated? Once pollen touches the white pistils, the pollen gets delivered to the inside and a seed starts forming!

Variability of Cannabis Plant Sex – How to Increase Ratio of Female Plants with Regular Seeds

In fact, to this day scientists are still not sure exactly what causes certain plants to be one sex or another after sprouting. We’ve identified several factors that predict the overall likelihood of male/female plants (for example feminized seeds always produce female plants no matter what), but sex seems to be somewhat fluid in cannabis plants when they’re first germinated.

Certain conditions such as excessive heat, stress, unusual light periods and nutrient problems can cause a greater percentage of plants to produce male flowers.

You may be able to increase the percentage of female plants with regular seeds during the first few weeks of life

On the flip side, the following factors may possibly increase the ratio of female plants with regular seeds (learn more):

• Healthy Mom – Only grow seeds from a vigorous, healthy mother plant who never showed any signs of herming or male pollen sacs (seeds are more likely to grow pollen sacs if the mom plant had a tough start in life, or hermed during the flowering stage)
• Cool Temperatures – Give seedlings slightly cool temperatures (65-75°F day and night) and avoid excessive heat
• High Humidity (50-70% RH)
• Short but not too short days. Keep consistent day and night periods with no light interruptions at night, and days should be 14-18 hours long (between 14/10 and 18/6) for the first few weeks
• Blue light. Always start seeds under a vegetative grow light (something with plenty of blue like a Metal Halide or a 6500k CFL/T5/fluorescent)
• Avoid Deficiencies – Make sure to provide plenty of Nitrogen and don’t let seedlings become nutrient-starved or run into other types of deficiencies
• Prevent Stress, especially heat or light stress during the first few weeks
• Happy Roots – Avoid over (and especially) under watering

Once a cannabis plant is about 3 weeks old, its sex is pretty much completely set and can be determined either by visual inspection or by chemical leaf test.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that different environmental conditions during the first part of life can alter the sex, you can’t look at seeds and definitively know one way or the other whether the plant will end up being female because even the plant doesn’t necessarily “know”.

For example, say you take a clone of a seedling before it’s 3 weeks old. It’s possible that one clone will be male, and the other clone will be female. However, if you take a clone after week 3, the sexes of clones will always match each other. This is further evidence to indicate that the environment can affect sex expression in some cases.

Jump to…

What’s the Difference Between Male & Female Cannabis Plants?

Male Plants, Bananas & Hermies

Where can I buy feminized seeds?

What do I need to get started growing indoors?

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