Cannabis Male Pre-Flowering & SEX

Male pre-flowers are visible in the vegetative state when they are about six to eight weeks old. These cannabis male pre-flowers will be visible just behind the stipule at the fourth to fifth branch internodes, especially if they are in a vegetative period of growth for a long period.

Always be sure to wait to induce flowering for your plants until you have seen the pre-flowers appear on each of your plants. Though it is not always best to determine a plant’s sex from its first pre-flowers since at times it may be rather difficult to accurately determine.

Many plants that are under 18/6 hours for a day/night photoperiod show their pre-flowers before plants that have been under a 24/0 day/night photoperiod.

Flowering Male Cannabis Plants

When male plants are in bloom with a 12/12 hour day/night photoperiod they will begin to develop their cannabis male parts. Male marijuana plants reach maturity faster than females, usually within one to two weeks before a female does and cannabis male plants have the tendency to produce fewer flowers than females.

When their calyxes show, the cannabis male plants will develop their pollen very quickly and must be removed as soon as possible. After the male flowers are fully developed, they begin to shed yellowish, dust-like pollen from their bell-shaped pollen sacks.

Cannabis male pollen sacks are usually around one-quarter of an inch (6 mm) in length, with a green to yellowish color. These male pollen sacks most often develop near the top of the plant and then gradually develop throughout the rest of the plant.

If you do not pull out the cannabis male plants as soon as possible then within 2 – 6 weeks they will pollinate your crop. If male plants can pollinate a female crop before the female flowers are mature enough the seed yield will be of a small quantity.

If males can fertilize a female this will cause the female flowers to stop producing high levels of THC and begin to start producing a seed. Identifying a male plant can be tricky at first, but once you have seen a few then you will be able to easily discern which plants they are.

Several defining characteristics are that cannabis males are taller than female plants. Their stems are stouter than that of a female so they have more sporadic branching and fewer leaves.

It has been found that several factors can be attributed to producing more males within a garden. One of these factors is if the photoperiod is changed or bounces around this will produce more males.

Another factor is if the room temperature is not consistent and goes from cold to hot, it will produce more males. Stressful environments don’t always create males, many times so environmental and genetic characteristics will cause the plant to turn into a hermaphrodite.

Promote Male/Female Plants When Seedlings

Many factors contribute to or influence the sex of a seed. If you want to create more males or females, all you have to do is change a few key things to have an increased yield of either.

As soon as the seedling has its first three pairs of true leaves then you can begin to make the changes to influence what you want to occur. Some of the environmental factors that contribute to the sex of a cannabis plant are:

• Higher Nitrogen Levels – more female plants

• Lower Nitrogen Levels – more male plants

• Increased Potassium Levels – more male plants

• Lower Potassium Levels – more female plants

• Low Temperatures – more females

• Higher Temperatures – more males

• High Humidity – more females

• Low Humidity – more males

• Low Growing Medium Moisture – more males

• More Blue Light – more females

• More Red Light – more males

• Fewer Hours Of Daylight (14 hours) – more females

• Longer Hours Of Daylight (18+ hours) – more males

• Environmental Stress Tends To Yield More Males

Remember that over- and under-watering are common mistakes that are made by growers when germinating seeds and growing seedlings. Always keep the soil uniformly moist, but not soggy and drenched with water as well as the smaller the container is with soil, you will water, but every day.

The larger the container is with soil then the more water it will retain and less often you will need to water about one to three days.

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