Questions about pre-flowers/sexing plants...

So I'm starting from seed for my first time.


I was under the impression that pre-flowers/the sex will usually start to show around 5 to 6 weeks into veg....

....but some fella was telling me that this isn't always the case and sometimes the sex of the plant will not be known until it comes to flowering in August. That's the first time I've heard of that, is this true?

I've also heard that males tend to show their sex a bit later than females, but then other people have told me that males tend to show it sooner than females...So what's the case for YOU?

If I have five plants of all the same strain, and 3 of them are showing female pre-flowers but the other two have no pre-flowers yet or can't yet be determined, then could I assume those others are male?...Or visa/versa depending on what sex appears first?




My seeds were sowed today, I'm germinating them outdoors right from the start. I'm hoping I will be able to ID the sex of plants by the end of June at the latest, is this possible? I'm in northern cali/central val, and the strain is "Lemon Wookie Glue" if that matters at all.


I'm in the position of having my 6 plant limit....I sowed 5 seeds, I'm hoping I get at least two females from those and they will go into 30 gal fabric pots. My other 4 pots are only 20gal and will be used for clones of other strains.

Are there any signs/traits/characteristics that might point towards a plant being male or female before the pre-flowers appear?

Like if it comes to the middle or end of June and there are no distinct pre-flowers yet, and if you had to choose two plants out of five to take a gamble on in hopes that they will be females, are there any particular characteristics/traits that you'll look for?

I'm wondering this because I'd like to have them into their final 30 gal pots by the end of June at the very latest, but I'd be bummed if they turn out to be males.




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You can do send away gender testing at somewhere like https://www.farmerfreeman.com which isn't too expensive if you're really desperate to find out as fast as possible.

Always been able to sex by 6 weeks. Get a mini magnifying scope and start ch caking from 4 weeks

often I can sex at between the 6th and 8th node(I find going off a developmental cue, like number of nodes, more reliable than counting in weeks. takes out the temperature-variable). but that only aplies to certain strains, ime all the early outdoor strains have this behaviour, but outside of those it's not reliable.

as for males/females, it's always males first. if I have a batch of plants and almost everything's sexed but there are a few plants still not showing sex yet, I'm comfortable planting them out unsexed since I'm 95-99% sure they'll turn out to be females. often the majority of the males will already be sexed and killed before the first female even shows her sex.

there are other signs of males, but they're only somewhat reliable if you know the strain/line you're working with well enough. mostly males will grow more lanky, unbranched or less branched, longer internodes. but most of that difference only appears after they've shown flowers already, and the difference between strains in those same traits(or even between plants, if it's not a verry stabilised line) is so big you first need to have a baseline for that strain to make any guesses. personally I find those traits to unreliable and I pretty much only go off flowers, even in lines I do know.

There are two ways to be certain what sex your plant is. One is sending them out for testing which I understand to cost about $100. The other way is cheap. Switch them for at least 6 nights of 12/12. Males have always developed first for me. When you see balls you know what you got. I switch when they have grown enough to be at a veg state. I understand you can switch them back into veg but I never have.

IMHO just flip 'em. Within a week you'll know who the boys are. That is if you veged for 6. I veg for 8. 3 days into the flip, the boys flashed their balls.

djonkoman said:

as for males/females, it's always males first. if I have a batch of plants and almost everything's sexed but there are a few plants still not showing sex yet, I'm comfortable planting them out unsexed since I'm 95-99% sure they'll turn out to be females. often the majority of the males will already be sexed and killed before the first female even shows her sex.

there are other signs of males, but they're only somewhat reliable if you know the strain/line you're working with well enough. mostly males will grow more lanky, unbranched or less branched, longer internodes. but most of that difference only appears after they've shown flowers already, and the difference between strains in those same traits(or even between plants, if it's not a verry stabilised line) is so big you first need to have a baseline for that strain to make any guesses. personally I find those traits to unreliable and I pretty much only go off flowers, even in lines I do know.

Click to expand...

I never replied back to this thread, thanks for your reply



So I'm at around 6 to 7 weeks now....Out of the 5 seeds I sowed/plants growing, only one of them has shown pre-flowers and it is a female. This plant also so happened to be the most vigorous grower, right from the start it bolted up more so than the others and grew the quickest & tallest and most robust, and initially it had a nice chocolatey/diesel/coffee essence about it. I have it now transplanted into a 30 gal fab pot.

I spotted the first female pre-flowers on that one plant about 5 days ago....The other 4 plants still aren't showing any distinct pre-flowers yet. Most of the others also display slightly different traits/structure/appearance.

So I'm wondering what's going on?...if some plants of the same strain just take a bit longer than others at times?...Is it possible that there's just some variation within this strain/between seeds and some plants will take a bit longer to show pre-flowers than others?

I'm kinda thinking about transplanting the rest of them today even though I don't know their sex for sure, just so their roots have more space...and if they turn out to be males I'll cull em' and then replace that pot with a clone.



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