Plants stressed in early stages more likely to be male?

[powerrobbie]

Hello everyone, I am a very avid reader of the board but this is my first post. This is one of my first grows and it is the first one in which i gained experience growing plants first inside and then moving them outside. To start them inside i grabbed two rubbermaid containers and put 4 13W CFL's in each. I crammed as many plants into each box as i could (i used small Styrofoam cups filled with potting soil) and had computer fans as an intake and blowing air onto them. Anyway the plants started off nicely but as they grew larger the temperature and humidity levels went way up. The plants began to look very heat stressed and in one box the lights i had wired actually fell on the plants and burned several of them. The plants also grew root bound in the cups they were in. Finally,(approx. one month after the seeds were germinated) the weather got warm enough and I transplanted them outside into nice big holes filled with potting soil and and gave them their first feeding of advanced nutrients heavy harvest spring. The plants did not look good when i put them outside, many had yellow, dying leaves and the stems on them seemed weak. After 2 weeks outside the plants are looking much better! The leaves are a very nice shade of green and they look strong and healthy. But I am concerned as I talked to a friend who is also a grower and he told me since the plants were so stressed in the early stages of life the majority are going to be male. I am concerned as I have put 50 plants outside and digging all those holes would be a huge waste if most were male. Do you guys agree or disagree with my friend? Thanks!

 

[weedfiend]

i dont know but ive been told that too much stress can tend to lean them to hermie or male but allso ive been told that the best time to stress them if ur going too is while they are young as they can bounce back(that i know first hand)

 

[Xtensity]

I've never seen a plant switch genders because of stress. Plants can hermy because of stress, but I've never seen a plant with female genetics already in the seed grow to be a male.

Plants can hermy, but it goes against the science to say they completely switch genders.

 

[weedfiend]

feminized seeds are produced by forcing a female to grow balls then using that pollen to fertilize another female or itself resulting in feminized seeds as all genetic material is female. if ur saying that this is wrong take it up with every feminized seed breeder in the world.

 

[LUDACRIS]

I've never seen a plant switch genders because of stress. Plants can hermy because of stress, but I've never seen a plant with female genetics already in the seed grow to be a male.

Plants can hermy, but it goes against the science to say they completely switch genders.

Yes plants can be subject to sexual reversal due to genetics.

 

[Xtensity]

Yes plants can be subject to sexual reversal due to genetics.

Do you have evidence? If a plant flowers and is a male, how are you going to make a judgement that it reversed sex in opposition to its genetics if you didn't actually look at the genetics of the seed/plant; or did you look at the genetics?

I'm not saying you're wrong, but that goes against the genetic knowledge I have and don't see much evidence for the claim.

 

[weedfiend]

The Truth About Feminized Seeds


By "G" - Thursday, August 21 2008 Tags:

• CC Magazine Feature Articles
• CC67

We explain how "feminized" seeds are made, why the plants are more likely to turn males, and how to use normal seeds to get a large all-female crop.
The idea of “feminized” seeds is heralded as a new wave of breeding enabling you to grow only females, but in reality it is a less reliable and less effective method than simply cloning your favorite plant. Feminizing seeds is nothing new; in fact, it’s done from a process that used to be called “hermaphroditic breeding” or “Breeding with Herman”.

Even a leaf can root!
During the 1970s and ‘80s it was often the case that the seeds you grew came from a bag of good bud. The bud usually had a name, but it was often made up by the local dealer trying to make his stash sound more exotic. In truth, you knew nothing about the parentage of the seeds that your bag contained. Sure, the female was great smoke – but you knew nothing of her size, shape, yield or genetics. The male involved was a total mystery; there was no way you could guess what the genetics of the pollen donor was. These seeds generally resulted in a range of plant genetics, which made one believe that there were a variety of males around when the female was budding.
As is often the case when genetics are mixed, you get failures and successes. More than one great breed was founded on a bag of random seeds. You would plant a hundred or so of the seeds you had, wait to see what Mother Nature – and your local dealer – had handed you, keep your fingers crossed hoping for a super-breed, and watched as some of the seeds came up. A few of the seedlings were sickly and didn’t live long, while others were strong, vigorous, and grew like weeds (pun intended), so you culled the sickly, nourished the healthy, and picked your favorites.

Advertisement​

Through this lengthy and detailed process you would end up with a number of healthy young marijuana plants, which would be transplanted into large containers and, after ten to fourteen days, introduced to a budding cycle of 12 hours light and 12 hours dark. This causes the plants to elongate and show their sex, so it was easy to quickly find and kill the males and wait patiently (or impatiently!) for the remaining females to develop buds and ripen. Doing this inside grow rooms and greenhouses was easy and effective, but the seed planting and selection

Fucking incredible, three weeks into floweringprocedure had to be repeated every year, and crops varied from big and dense to small and weak. We also found that after all that trouble of removing males, we sometimes ended up with females that switched sexes when they were stressed, resulting in accidental cross breeding – female plants were pollinated by females that developed male sex organs (hermaphrodites). We decided to grow out those seeds and, to our joy, we discovered that the ratio of females to males was skewed to a greater number of females. This was our discovery of hermaphroditic breeding.
Around the same time we were re-introduced to the method of cloning – I say re-introduced because while it wasn’t a process we had been using, it was a simple gardening technique my grandmother had shown me years before as “making cuttings”. She would cut off a branch of a plant with a sharp knife and stick it into a hormone rooting solution, homemade from pieces of willow tree branches soaked in water. Growers these days buy rooting hormone, but the process is identical.
I had a crop of 20 young plants of various strain backgrounds. We took two clones from each of the plants, and then used the budding light cycle to force the sex to show. Once we identified the male plants (half of them) we killed them and their clones, which still left us with ten large budding females and their 20 clones.
Now we had ten different hybrid genetics in total with two clones from each to work with and choose from. Even though we were making great strides, we wanted a room full of the same breed with the same size and characteristics. Basically, we wanted many copies of one great female plant so made the decision to play “Breeding Hermans”. We took two clones from one female plant, stressed one of the clones until it developed male sex organs, and then bred it with the other female clone. To our delight it worked – we ended up with seeds that grew into females 85-90 percent of the time and were consistent with the original female plant’s characteristics. We could now plant around 30 to 40 seeds and end up with 30 female plants the same size with the same genetics. We were ecstatic.

Placing clones in the soil
However, silver linings often have a cloud attached and it was true in this case. The female plants that developed from hermaphroditic seeds had the drawback of being far more likely than ordinary plants to develop male branches – turn “Herman” – when stressed. More than once, a power, pump or light failure caused enough stress to the plants that they easily went hermaphroditic. Outdoors we had even more trouble; in bad-weather years we could end up with a plant from a feminized seed developing male flowers and blowing pollen all over the other plants, ruining our dreams of a sinsemilla crop. We decided that feminized plants might have a place in our business’ industry, but it wouldn’t be in our gardens.
It was our dream to grow rooms full of females of consistent genetics, and we made our dream come true by going back to cloning. It was so simple that we couldn’t believe that we hadn’t thought of it before. We planted ten normal seeds and nourished them with love and care, but this time we took 25 clones from each plant instead of just two. Then we put the mothers into bud cycle and sexed them; within ten days we identified and killed off the male plants and their clones, and found that we had six large females in bud and around 150 female clones. We continued to bud the mothers as we began to grow our female clones, and finally decided there were two plants that stood out from the crowd – they were bigger, denser, and smelled the best, so we kept their clones and culled the others. We harvested all of the mothers then placed the 50 chosen young marijuana plants into two rooms and switched them to the budding cycle. We had developed a process that made our dream a reality: grow-rooms full of consistent female plants.

Rooted clone being transplanted
It doesn’t take a horticulturist to see that using cloning to procure a room full of female cannabis plants is far more economical than growing “feminized seeds” that easily go hermaphroditic. It is simple to grow numerous female plants with only a few seeds of known genetics. For example, if you get ten seeds from a world-class marijuana breeder/bank, such as Burmese from Vancouver Island Seed Company (VISC), those seeds should become ten

seedlings. At three to four weeks, take ten cuttings from each of the plants, then flip the plants to the bud cycle. Kill males as they show their sex and get rid of their clones, and you should be left with about five large budding females (more or less) and 50 guaranteed female clones of the same pure genetics, without any hermaphroditic tendencies.
So, for the price of ten seeds you end up with dozens of pure female plants, instead of purchasing “feminized” seeds only to get an unstable and unpredictable hermaphroditic breed. You can use regular seeds to grow an all-female crop, and that’s

 

[Xtensity]

wow... I wish a scientist would clear this whole fem seed thing up.

The science is there. Google it. Cannabis forums aren't the only places that have information on feminized seeds.

 

[madback]

thats the thing with this whole fem business.
yea, sounds great to buy packs of females to eliminate some variables. But I'm not going to get into how molecules of this (or that) change particular structures of the plant to spit out nanners so you can have fem seed.

It comes down to personal preference. Just like some people swear by using a certain type of nutrient makes their yields increase by how ever much percent, and some next guy will say the same stuff made his plants lack in the weight department.

The science is there. Google it. Cannabis forums aren't the only places that have information on feminized seeds.

lol... you totally didn't get what I was trying to say. There are threads galore on this site explaining about how the whole fem process works, and the science behind it.

 

[madback]

in this thread here there are a few heated debates about fem seed

 

[weedfiend]

so anyway can stress lean a plant towards being a hermie or male?

 

[microgram]

I second that weedfiend.

Regardless what anyone says, it's NOT ALWAYS ABOUT GENETICS. It's a great start, but it's not 'everything'.

Grow 200 seeds from a NORMAL seed run (same genetics, duh), or buy them from a trusted and reliable breeder. Do 20, 10 seed runs; 5 with 14 hours, 5 with 18 hours, 5 with 20 hours and 5 with 24 hours. No matter how 'stable' the genetics are, you'll still get a higher male ratio with the later half consisting of longer light cycles, these are typically un-natural in the 'real world'.

It's not fluke, try it again, over and over, and you'll get pretty STABLE RESULTS.
Same goes for stressing the plants, too cold, too hot, etc etc.

 

[RoomRaider]

Pertaining to the original question, plants with unstable genetics can hermie due to various stress such as light, heat, physical and chemical.

Plants with rock solid genetics have a harder time going hermi. Light and temp stress won't affect them.

All plants can hermi due to chemical stress and possibly even heavy physical and light stress. I have personal raised plants in 90*F + temps and got over 50% females, but when I mess with the light some strains hermi and some do not. I have even heard of some phenotypes within the strains having more stability than others.

The same reasoning can be said for why we make sure our growrooms are completely light proof and dark during the night hours, because any extra light can make them turn hermi. Not all strains will, but it does happen.

As to feminizing seeds, no matter the strain colloidal silver WILL turn them hermi, and using that pollen on other females will result in feminized seed, HOWEVER due to the genetics, some of those seeds might not be stable and hermi. Stable strains will be completely female with no worry of hermi under optimal conditions. Again, that statement isn't set in stone, but there are many rock solid stable fem strains, but I am sure you can find the odd hermi if you run enough seeds.

I do not know where Ludacris' information came from, but it is clearly BS as he will not post his sources making middle school excuses. "Oh you don't respect me, I won't tell you nananaboo boo"

I know fem seeds are legit because I have made some myself, along with hundreds, if not thousands of other members. The proof is all over these forums....

 

[Scottyboycx]

The Truth About Feminized Seeds


By "G" - Thursday, August 21 2008 Tags:

• CC Magazine Feature Articles
• CC67

We explain how "feminized" seeds are made, why the plants are more likely to turn males, and how to use normal seeds to get a large all-female crop.
The idea of “feminized” seeds is heralded as a new wave of breeding enabling you to grow only females, but in reality it is a less reliable and less effective method than simply cloning your favorite plant. Feminizing seeds is nothing new; in fact, it’s done from a process that used to be called “hermaphroditic breeding” or “Breeding with Herman”.

Even a leaf can root!
During the 1970s and ‘80s it was often the case that the seeds you grew came from a bag of good bud. The bud usually had a name, but it was often made up by the local dealer trying to make his stash sound more exotic. In truth, you knew nothing about the parentage of the seeds that your bag contained. Sure, the female was great smoke – but you knew nothing of her size, shape, yield or genetics. The male involved was a total mystery; there was no way you could guess what the genetics of the pollen donor was. These seeds generally resulted in a range of plant genetics, which made one believe that there were a variety of males around when the female was budding.
As is often the case when genetics are mixed, you get failures and successes. More than one great breed was founded on a bag of random seeds. You would plant a hundred or so of the seeds you had, wait to see what Mother Nature – and your local dealer – had handed you, keep your fingers crossed hoping for a super-breed, and watched as some of the seeds came up. A few of the seedlings were sickly and didn’t live long, while others were strong, vigorous, and grew like weeds (pun intended), so you culled the sickly, nourished the healthy, and picked your favorites.

Advertisement​

Through this lengthy and detailed process you would end up with a number of healthy young marijuana plants, which would be transplanted into large containers and, after ten to fourteen days, introduced to a budding cycle of 12 hours light and 12 hours dark. This causes the plants to elongate and show their sex, so it was easy to quickly find and kill the males and wait patiently (or impatiently!) for the remaining females to develop buds and ripen. Doing this inside grow rooms and greenhouses was easy and effective, but the seed planting and selection

Fucking incredible, three weeks into floweringprocedure had to be repeated every year, and crops varied from big and dense to small and weak. We also found that after all that trouble of removing males, we sometimes ended up with females that switched sexes when they were stressed, resulting in accidental cross breeding – female plants were pollinated by females that developed male sex organs (hermaphrodites). We decided to grow out those seeds and, to our joy, we discovered that the ratio of females to males was skewed to a greater number of females. This was our discovery of hermaphroditic breeding.
Around the same time we were re-introduced to the method of cloning – I say re-introduced because while it wasn’t a process we had been using, it was a simple gardening technique my grandmother had shown me years before as “making cuttings”. She would cut off a branch of a plant with a sharp knife and stick it into a hormone rooting solution, homemade from pieces of willow tree branches soaked in water. Growers these days buy rooting hormone, but the process is identical.
I had a crop of 20 young plants of various strain backgrounds. We took two clones from each of the plants, and then used the budding light cycle to force the sex to show. Once we identified the male plants (half of them) we killed them and their clones, which still left us with ten large budding females and their 20 clones.
Now we had ten different hybrid genetics in total with two clones from each to work with and choose from. Even though we were making great strides, we wanted a room full of the same breed with the same size and characteristics. Basically, we wanted many copies of one great female plant so made the decision to play “Breeding Hermans”. We took two clones from one female plant, stressed one of the clones until it developed male sex organs, and then bred it with the other female clone. To our delight it worked – we ended up with seeds that grew into females 85-90 percent of the time and were consistent with the original female plant’s characteristics. We could now plant around 30 to 40 seeds and end up with 30 female plants the same size with the same genetics. We were ecstatic.

Placing clones in the soil
However, silver linings often have a cloud attached and it was true in this case. The female plants that developed from hermaphroditic seeds had the drawback of being far more likely than ordinary plants to develop male branches – turn “Herman” – when stressed. More than once, a power, pump or light failure caused enough stress to the plants that they easily went hermaphroditic. Outdoors we had even more trouble; in bad-weather years we could end up with a plant from a feminized seed developing male flowers and blowing pollen all over the other plants, ruining our dreams of a sinsemilla crop. We decided that feminized plants might have a place in our business’ industry, but it wouldn’t be in our gardens.
It was our dream to grow rooms full of females of consistent genetics, and we made our dream come true by going back to cloning. It was so simple that we couldn’t believe that we hadn’t thought of it before. We planted ten normal seeds and nourished them with love and care, but this time we took 25 clones from each plant instead of just two. Then we put the mothers into bud cycle and sexed them; within ten days we identified and killed off the male plants and their clones, and found that we had six large females in bud and around 150 female clones. We continued to bud the mothers as we began to grow our female clones, and finally decided there were two plants that stood out from the crowd – they were bigger, denser, and smelled the best, so we kept their clones and culled the others. We harvested all of the mothers then placed the 50 chosen young marijuana plants into two rooms and switched them to the budding cycle. We had developed a process that made our dream a reality: grow-rooms full of consistent female plants.

Rooted clone being transplanted
It doesn’t take a horticulturist to see that using cloning to procure a room full of female cannabis plants is far more economical than growing “feminized seeds” that easily go hermaphroditic. It is simple to grow numerous female plants with only a few seeds of known genetics. For example, if you get ten seeds from a world-class marijuana breeder/bank, such as Burmese from Vancouver Island Seed Company (VISC), those seeds should become ten

seedlings. At three to four weeks, take ten cuttings from each of the plants, then flip the plants to the bud cycle. Kill males as they show their sex and get rid of their clones, and you should be left with about five large budding females (more or less) and 50 guaranteed female clones of the same pure genetics, without any hermaphroditic tendencies.
So, for the price of ten seeds you end up with dozens of pure female plants, instead of purchasing “feminized” seeds only to get an unstable and unpredictable hermaphroditic breed. You can use regular seeds to grow an all-female crop, and that’s

When using hermies to breed with it will throw out hermies wether regular seed or not. Whwen using chemicals on a tested plant that shows no hermy trait how can the offspring suddenly gain the hermy trait from thin air? seems pretty simple to me if your femmed seeds hermy its due to the breeder u got your seeds off didnt test their parent plants fully for the hermy trait i'm not very bright but a bit of reading on the subject and its pretty clear to me

 

[ibjamming]

When using hermies to breed with it will throw out hermies wether regular seed or not. When using chemicals on a tested plant that shows no hermy trait how can the offspring suddenly gain the hermy trait from thin air? seems pretty simple to me if your femmed seeds hermy its due to the breeder u got your seeds off didnt test their parent plants fully for the hermy trait i'm not very bright but a bit of reading on the subject and its pretty clear to me

Agree completely...

Hey Weedfiend,

I'm not here to dis anyone, just to help... But why would you take seriously an article with such glaring ineptitude? Look at those seedlings...they're a joke. I suspect the rest of the article is too. No SERIOUS grower would have seedlings looking like that. No SERIOUS informative article should either.

Just my opinion from 50 years on this planet...

 

[ibjamming]

this thread has gone way off topic! I AM NOT ASKING ABOUT FEMINIZED SEEDS TURNING HERMIE. The seeds i have were not feminized i am simply asking if because they were stressed as seedlings will more turn out to be male???

No.

In fact, in my limited experience...I've gotten more girls from some REALLY abused seedlings.

 

[10k]

Ok 55 (YES FIFTY FIVE) bovine scatology bickering posts cleaned out of this thread so this topic might be discussed here.
I have a feeling that I should have just binned the whole damn thing and banned someone
but I'll just take a back seat for now.

 

[powerrobbie]

I am very happy to hear everyones advice! I will let you guys know how many girls i get in the coming weeks, theres 54 plants total so i'm hoping for AT LEAST 30 girls.