Male or Female: Sexing the Cannabis Plant

Many successful techniques can be used to propagate the Cannabis plant, each having it’s own benefits depending on the gardeners preference.  Regular seeds, feminized seeds, clone multiplication and tissue culture multiplication are all used to start a crop with each having its place depending on available resources and gardener knowledge/skill.

July 9, 2015

Many successful techniques can be used to propagate the Cannabis plant, each having it’s own benefits depending on the gardeners preference.  Regular seeds, feminized seeds, clone multiplication and tissue culture multiplication are all used to start a crop with each having its place depending on available resources and gardener knowledge/skill.

When starting from seed, it is important to know how to sex the plant as it is possible to get either a male or female seed. Typically, only female plants are used for cannabis production. If male seeds are grown to maturity with female seeds, the entire room could be ruined due to pollination from the male seeds. As such, always sex plants that started from seeds before they enter the Flower Room. Sexing a plant early on will save valuable time and resources.

Let’s briefly go through a simple and  inexpensive sexing technique commonly used to ensure a seedless flower, or sinsemilla crop.

To Sex a Plant from seed:

  1. Create the parent plant by starting the seed and growing it until plant is mature.  This typically takes 4-6 weeks for most genetic types.  During this time, you should have the plant under enough light to generate several clones.
  2. Take two clones (cuttings from the parent plant)
  3. Put the cuttings in a good medium such as a rooting cube or a mellow soil mix.
    • Note: If sexing multiple parent plants, be sure to mark which cutting came from which plant or you may end up needing to start over.
  4. Place the cuttings directly under 12/12 light (12 hours on, 12 hours off).  This is called “Forced Flowering”.
    • Male cannabis staminate

      At this stage, the only goal is to get the cutting to start its flower cycle and show its staminate (male)  or pistillate (female) flowers .  Male flowers look like little bunches of sacks (these sacks hold pollen), while the female flowers will start by generating what looks like fine white hairs.

    • Depending on the genetic type and vigor of the clone, the cutting will show if it is male or female within 1-3 weeks.
  5. If it is male toss the cutting and the parent plant.
    • If you desire a sinsemilla crop, only female plants should be kept in the grow past this stage.  Male plants will only cause potential for damage to a valuable crop unless you have a genetic breeding program within your garden facility.
  6. If it is a female, keep the parent plant (now mother plant) and multiply it using clone or tissue culture techniques to create a larger crop.

This is a quick and simple method for guaranteeing that you will only have female plants in your flower room. Growing an entire crop to maturity only to find that a large number of the plants are male and have to be thrown out to prevent pollination can be a huge waste of time and resources. Additionally, allowing plants to enter the Flower Room without properly verifying that they are all female runs the risk of a rogue male plant going unnoticed. Always verify the sex of all cannabis plants to prevent crop loss due to pollination.

Contact Us

Ready to get started or learn more about how we can help your facility succeed? Fill out the form and a company representative will be in touch.

Area of Support*

Share:

Featured Articles

Interview with Brandy Keen: Emerging from the Indoor Growing Dark Ages

In this episode of the Cannabis Equipment News Podcast, Brandy Keen, co-founder and senior technical advisor of Surna Cultivation Technologies, discusses her nearly 17 years of industry experience helping some 800 cultivators.

Dodging Downtime [Case Study]

TruGro turned to Surna to provide a grow room HVAC solution that was efficient and would keep them running reliably for years to come.

4 Ways to Maximize Grow Room Square Footage

Staying competitive means maximizing your available grow room space. Cannabis cultivators and indoor food producers who can increase yields without sacrificing product quality or adding square footage are on the path to increased ROI. Here are 4 ways you can maximize your commercial grow space.

10 Questions to Consider When Vetting Design Firms

To make your assessment of proposals easier, download our “10 questions you should ask your potential facility design firm.”

Do I Need a Dehumidifier for Cannabis?

Depending on your situation, you will most likely need to use dehumidifiers to remove excess moisture from your grow room environment. But, there are many factors to consider such as HVAC approach, sizing, and quality. Let's examine these factors.

How Much Does it Cost to Start an Indoor Cannabis Grow?

How much will it cost to start an indoor cannabis operation? There are many variables to consider that can drastically affect price including equipment, size, location, and more. We'll dive into what these variables are and present an example of what a start-up cost for a cannabis facility could look like. We'll also look at some of the tools you can use to help you shape your budget.
Sign up to receive blogs and other news

Footer

© 2023 Surna. All rights reserved.
Surna
Scroll to Top
commercial indoor farm considerations and setup examples

Download the Free Guide

Building a commercial grow operation or expanding your farm? Download the free guide to commercial scale indoor farm considerations – with real life setup examples!

What Is the Size of Your Grow?*
Which best describes why our white paper interests you?*
What products or services are you looking for?*