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Here Is How To Produce Mostly Females From Standard Seeds

as written by "Strawdog",

copied and submitted by mutt.

As a marijuana grower I always believed that weed seed was genetically predisposed to its sexual orientation as soon as fertilization of the ovule took place inthe female. Basically this means that if you take a single female marijuana plant and produced cannabis seeds from her that the ratios are already set in the offspring. If a gender detection test could be established the males could be separated from the females there are then. If this were true then the breeder s packsof ten seeds per pack could easily turn out to be all males or all females because of this genetic predisposition. However this is not the case!

One of the areas of my interest was in the feminized marijuana seed programs that so successfully charged through-the-roof prices on weed seeds that are reported to grow all females. However, as many marijuana growers like myself have experienced - this is not always the case either!

Feminized cannabis seeds work on the bases that there is a genetic predisposition for the plant to produce females because of special treatment that it gets inthe selfing stages of a unique XX female. I won t go into this in detail here beca

use there is enough information on the process across the entire internet. Anyhow, in an optimal growing environment it is very easy to produce ALL females fromthese treated femalemarijuana plants. OPTIMAL is the key word here because inless than optimal marijuana growing conditions strange things start to happen tothese feminized weed seeds.

In a single pack of feminized seeds a grower can produce:Females.Hermaphrodites.Males.

Yeah, that s right. Males! So where are these males coming from and how are they making there way into the feminized cannabis seed process. The answer is a very s

imple one. Sex is not completely determined in the cannabis plant until a few weeks before flowering.We will talk about this in a moment but now back to the feminized weed seeds.

In optimal cannabis growing conditions feminized marijuana seeds will kick out 100% females. This says a lot for marijuana growing conditions and the actual role they play on cannabis gender development. How many times have cannabis growersseen these effects ofmultiple genders from Feminized weed seeds? The answer lies clearly in how well they grow.

Weed growers who are growing in non-stressful conditions will never see the maleeffect from feminized cannabis seeds and so hence it does not exist for them. However over periods time and different weed growing techniques the marijuana gro

wer will eventually see these results when growing in less than optional environments. MALES!

For this reason marijuana growers who choose feminized cannabis seeds should beforewarned to get their growing environments down to a T. If you prevent stressthen you prevent males and hermaphrodites appearing in a feminized marijuana seed population. It is as SIMPLY AS THAT.

Now onto the real topic of interest. Boosting those female to male ratios.

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As many marijuana growers know cannabis seed banks are not responsible for maleto female ratios. If you get a pack of all males, as many of us have done, thena quick call to your marijuana seed bank can maybe help procure some good substitute freebies with your second order. However some will not go along with this.It depends on your relationship with the marijuana seed bank. Give them a call anyhow, that is my advice, but be discreet and don t blame the cannabis seed bank or marijuana breeder.

A couple of years agoDutch Passion released an essay on how to increase mostlyfemales from a pack of weed seeds. This is an excellent piece of work and has helped me to gain more of an interest in this area. In the past few years I have come to develop my own systems to get those ratios on the up and up. Right now Iam very happy to report a real increase in my females from standard weed seeds.Sometimes as high as 90% to 95% on a consistent basis. So how is it done?

I prefer standard cannabis seeds for numerous reasons. The first reason being that feminized weed seeds come from hermie plants. Whichever way you look at it, the specially treated plants are hermed and this trait is often expressed in theoffspring where conditions are less than optimal. Even with standard weed seedsthe hermaphrodite condition is still achievable where stress occurs.

I seem to have noticed that the two most stressful conditions which can cause the hermaphrodite trait occur before marijuana flowering in the vegetative phase of growing is around the 3rd to 4th week of growth before pre-flowering.When the

cannabis plant undergoes either heat stress or a problem with the 24/0 or 18/6photoperiod (whatever vegetative photoperiod choose doesn t matter, as long as disruptions occur). Even during the initial stages of calyx development males and females are obvious side by side at the node region. This is hermaphroditism dueto vegetative growth problems.

In the marijuana flowering period, hermaphrodites generally occur quicker because of an irregular photoperiod than anything else and heat stress certainly helpsbananas to pop up in with the marijuana bud. Now, even Sinsemilla cannabis crops will herm towards the end depending on the weed strain. I don t class this as atypical case of hermaphrodites. It is just something that some weed strains naturally do towards the end of the Sinsemilla procedure.

Anyhow for starters we better reproduce what Dutch Passion have to say about their feminized weed seeds first.

"Feminised Cannabis Seeds"Courtesy of Dutch Passion

In November 1998 we introduced our "Female Cannabis Seed". We did this after ourown experiments showed that from female cannabis seed, we acquired almost 100%female off-spring.

In the meantime we are six months further on.We have received a lot of feed-back from our customers. The reactions are mostly positive! Clients have successfully produced almost 100% female off-spring. However there have been reactions fro

m customers who found a few hermaphrodites or males plants.

Apparently environmental influences affect the sex of the female cannabis seedsas well. Because of the fact that Female marijuana seeds do not grow into femalemarijuana plants under all circumstances. Thus we changed the name from "FemaleCannabis Seeds" into "Feminised Cannabis Seeds".

From literature and from our own findings it appears that the growth of a male or a female cannabis plant from marijunaa seed, except for the predisposition inthe gender chromosomes, also depends on various environmental factors. Not only

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the origination of entirely male or female marijuana plants is partly affected by these environmental factors, the number of male and female cannabis flowers ona hermaphrodite plant is affected as well.

The environmental factors that influence the sex of the cannabis plant (or the flower in the case of hermaphrodites), are among other things:

The quantity of nitrogen and potassium of the seedbed. Humidity and moistness ofthe seedbed.Level of temperatures.Colour of the light used.Length of daylight.

Stress, any form of stress, makes that more male individuals will originate fromseed. Even the taking of cuttings from female cannabis plants may produce maleor hermaphrodite cuttings.

To optimise the result, changes in one or more of the above-mentioned environmental factors for a certain period during marijuana growth, may be applied. Duringthis time these environmental factors will deviate from the standard growing system for maximum harvest and quality, as described in nursery literature. The desired change(s) in the environmental factor(s) are started from the moment thatthe marijuana seedling has three pairs of real leaves (not counting the seed-lobes). This is the moment that male and/or female predisposition in florescence is

being formed. After approximately two weeks the standard growing system can bereconverted to.

Of the 5 above-mentioned environmental factors the first three are themost practical:

1. Level of nitrogen and potassium of the seedbed: A heightening of the standard level of nitrogenmakes for more female cannabis plants originating from theweed seeds. A lowering of the nitrogen level shows more male cannabis plants. Aheightening of the level of potassium tends to show more male marijuana plants,while a lowering of the potassium level showsmore female marijuana plants. A combination of a higher nitrogen level for the period of a week or two and a lowering of the potassium level is recommended.

2. Humidity and moistness of the seedbed: a higher humidity makes for an increase in the number of female cannabis plants from weed seed, a lowering for an increase in male cannabis plants. The same is valid for the moistness of the seedbed.3. Level of temperatures: lower temperatures make for a larger number of fema

le marijuana plants, higher temperatures for more male marijuana plants.4. Colour of light: more blue light makes for female cannabis plants from see

d, more red light makes for more male cannabis plants.5. Hours of daylight: few hours of daylight (e.g. 14 hours) makes for more fe

male individuals, a long day (e.g. 18 hours) makes for more male cannabis plants.

Now let me just make a few adjustments here to this. You can do whatever you wan

t to your cannabis plants in seedling stage and early vegetative stage of growthand it will not effect your final male to female ratios. The time when things should be near perfect is in or around the 3rd to 4th week of vegetative growth.

This is the CRITICAL TIME for getting those female ratios up and up. I realizedthis clearly when noticing how some cannabis plants hermed because of problems that occurred around this period of the cannabis plants development. If the problems occurred before this time - no herms. So for this reason I surmised that this is when the crucial gender selection is made by the marijuana plant.

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Now I believe that the genders are set in theweed seed however the environmenthas a massive impact on how this is expressed in the final phenotypic expressionof the cannabis plants gender. There are probably many genes that govern this,however lets get into how to up these female ratios.

The Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics agrees the sexual differentiation of cannabis is strongly influenced by environmental factors such as temperature and photoperiod. Anomalies also occur in floral development like the presence ofreproductive structures of the opposite sex, or the development of bisexual inflorescences (monoecious phenotype).

At the 3rd to 4th week of vegetative growth make sure that your marijuana plantsare free from stress. No pests attacks, no fungi attacks, no mold, no irregularphotoperiod, not underwatered, not overwatered, not pruned or topped, a cannabis friendly soil mix, not recently transplanted, no small pots. If have these basic growing conditions under control then we can move onto the real forces of female production from standard weed seeds.

N:P:K and nutrients. What this simply boils down to is that you have the right nutrients present in the right ratios. A nutrient formulation that has roughly equal parts N, P and K is great but if the P levels go up or the N levels go downyou are starting to look at a flowering type food for cannabis. If you do this then your odds of producing mostly females is greatly decreased. Make sure that you get those N, P andK levels to almost run from higher to lower amounts from N

to P and K.I have noticed that equal portions of N to P an K can help with the female ratios but the higher N is certainly more helpful. So around the 3rd of 4th week of growth make sure that the ratios are good and that P or K has not gone above theN and P or else more males will occur. Obviously this means to avoid overfeedingyour cannabis plants around this time too.

Never let your medium dry out completely around the 3rd to 4th week of vegetative marijuana growth. If you make sure to water occasionally, but not to overwateryour cannabis plants, you will get those female ratios on the up and up. Overwatering or drying out of the medium will only produce more males. For consistentresults in getting more females keeps those mediums moist.

Humidity. Now this is the tricky one. High humidity levels only promote fungi and mold development and lowering humidity levels is the way to cure most of thisrot but by keeping those humidity levels up in or around the 70 rH factor will help to produce more females. If you have a low humidity grow room then you should get to hold of a humidifier. Now high humidity levels like 70rH cause the medium to dry out a lot quicker so you got to keep this under control too. Keep those mediums moist and those rH levesl at 70. This will help to improve those female to male ratios. Again, getting them on the up and up.

If you run the 24/0 photoperiod then do not allow those temps to go anywhere above 85F unless you have an equatorial strain. 75F is the best but going a littlelower is not a problem for helping those female ratios. If you can get in at aro

und 65F then those females are going to be popping up all over the place. The problem with this is that some growers like to use the 18/6 photoperiod and when the lights are off the temps drop from around 65F to 50F and even less. Try not to be below 55F because this has the adverse effect on the plants producing moremales than females. Again between 65F and 75F is where you want to be during the3rd to 4th week of vegetative growth, the preference being 70F.

Invest in a MH Light for vegetative growth. Dump the HPS bulb for flowering later. I have noticed that HPS lighting during vegetative growth simply sends thosemales to female ratios all over the place. With MH lamps the females are everywh

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ere. Invest in some MHHID lights. It makes all the difference in getting thosefemales to show more often. This is worth repeating! MH Bulbs produce more females under optimal conditions especially if they are present during the 3rd and 4th week of vegetative growth. Surprising enough you can start seedlings under HPSand it will not have an effect on those female ratios. Again the 3rd to 4th week of vegetative growth is what is important here.

No stress during the 3rd to 4th week of vegetative growth. That is all there isto it. If you got your garden growing in optimal conditions without marijuana plant stress then the impressive 90% to 95% females start to emerge from standardcannabis seed packs. I find that topping is best done at the second to third week of vegetative growth but that this is a little stressful and can lead to thosefemale ratios dropping again. Avoid topping or pruning if you are looking to upthe female count.

That is all I have to say for the moment. These little snippets of information in conjunction with what DP uncovered have helped my female ratios considerably.Hopefully you can see the same results too.Marijuana SeedsTop of page