increasing female:male ratio?

ok well im about to start planting my seeds, and i was wondering if there was anything i could do after they start growing to increase my female/male ratio? and also another thing was, one of my friends who is starting his first few plants rite now too, told me that if you get males, that you can cut off their "balls," as soon as they sprout, and they will turn into females, which i think is bull, but i just wanted to make sure.

Ya cutting the balls thing is def bull... also there really is not way to get better female to male ratio besides buying feminized seeds

aww, man that sucks... wow i dont even know how bummed i would be if my plants turned out to be all males

There is a way to increase your chance of female offspring. Make your growing environment as perfect as possible! TEMP, Lighting and water are your friends. Keep the humidity as high as possible during seedling and early veg, use fresh ph'd water to germinate seeds and provide a stress free enviroment . And make transplants as easy on plants as possible. Every set ive ever germed has been at least a 60% + female. I Germ in wet paper towels in a plastic bag, and then transfer to an Aerogarden for late seedling and early veg.

oh, well im growing outdoors... so temperature and humidity isnt an option for me...

kushkilla said:

There is a way to increase your chance of female offspring. Make your growing environment as perfect as possible! TEMP, Lighting and water are your friends. Keep the humidity as high as possible during seedling and early veg, use fresh ph'd water to germinate seeds and provide a stress free enviroment . And make transplants as easy on plants as possible. Every set ive ever germed has been at least a 60% + female. I Germ in wet paper towels in a plastic bag, and then transfer to an Aerogarden for late seedling and early veg.

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no..genetics are in the seed and predetermined unless genetically altered.. idk if that cam off a bitchy but i didn't mean to

ive always heard that it isnt predetermined... unless femenized, with which they are slightly predetermined to be females. i may be wrong tho.

notserious said:

ive always heard that it isnt predetermined... unless femenized, with which they are slightly predetermined to be females. i may be wrong tho.

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its all genes,it plays for everything.feminized seeds arent always a gaurentee anyways.

ok so the bottom line is, i cant do anything about my female to male ratio?

it is a theory that putting a banana under your plants in the third week from sprout will help it turn female because of the gasses that r released from bananas when they start to get old

its not jus genetics, stress causes hermies and ballsacs (male)
kushkilla is right
provide the best environment you can and get more females

ok... ok i told my friend that what he said wasnt true, and that you cant make plants females by cutting their "balls" off... and he told me that he has seen it done before and that his dad used to do it. how am i supposed to argue with that?

lol that dudes jus a liar, its biologically impossible, the only thing u could do is cut the sacs off so they dont produce any pollen to knock up your quality females, ud gotta be cutting all day and get every single one

if that aint the answer, fuck idk what is

Now, I've never heard of being able to increase your female to male ratio, but I can tell you there is some truth to what kuskilla is saying. Stress to your plant can cause it to go hermie. Sex is not genetically determined until the third week of growth. Most strains have the ability to go hermie if grown under poor conditions.

Oh, and even feminized seeds don't really guarentee females. Feminized seeds can go hermie, or even male.

kushkilla said:

There is a way to increase your chance of female offspring. Make your growing environment as perfect as possible! TEMP, Lighting and water are your friends. Keep the humidity as high as possible during seedling and early veg, use fresh ph'd water to germinate seeds and provide a stress free enviroment . And make transplants as easy on plants as possible. Every set ive ever germed has been at least a 60% + female. I Germ in wet paper towels in a plastic bag, and then transfer to an Aerogarden for late seedling and early veg.

Click to expand...

notserious said:

ok... ok i told my friend that what he said wasnt true, and that you cant make plants females by cutting their "balls" off... and he told me that he has seen it done before and that his dad used to do it. how am i supposed to argue with that?

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Maybe he was talking about a hermie, a plant with both sex organs. It's quite common when a plant is stressed out for it to grow some balls along with the pistils. Sometimes just correcting whatever it was that was stressing the plant can stop the balls (pollen sacks) from sprouting.

Wikidbchofthewst said:

Now, I've never heard of being able to increase your female to male ratio, but I can tell you there is some truth to what kuskilla is saying. Stress to your plant can cause it to go hermie. Sex is not genetically determined until the third week of growth. Most strains have the ability to go hermie if grown under poor conditions.

Oh, and even feminized seeds don't really guarentee females. Feminized seeds can go hermie, or even male.

Click to expand...

I just finished taking a general biology course at college. Took my final this week. Anyway we studied inheritance and all different kinds of methods of reproduction. I tend to want to agree with your statement, but everything I have learned says that haploids cells form gametes and only two possible combinations can occur. XX, or XY, female and male sex genes. Doesn't marijuana have to go by same rules? Or are hormonal factors able to override a natural predisposition to being either male or female?

Wait, I don't understand what you don't agree with...you don't agree that most strains can go hermie under stressful growing conditions?

Let me give you an example out of the Cannabis Growing Bible. In this part it's talking about a specific type of stress, and why it causes hermies:

"Stress-related sex problems might produce hermaphrodite plants. The stress o what's sometimes called early flowering triggers the plant into a situation where it thinks itschances of reproduction are slim to none. That situation induces a condition or act of self-pollination, in which the plant produces both male and female flowers on the same plant. The male flower then pollinate the female flowers, which eventually produce seeds.

The reason fr this is that the plant notices the photoperiod is irregular and should no longer be in the vegative growth stage but in flowring This shocks the plant into a last ditch effort to receive pollen because it feels that it's missed its chance to recieve ollen already." p. 105

Plus, some seeds might come from a hermie plant, and produce normal offspring, but the offspring still carries the hermie genetics, meaning it could show hermie traits just further down the line.

ok these are all straight out of my grow bible.

enviromental factors start influencing sex the moment the seedling has three pairs of leaves.
increase in nitrogen makes more females,
increase in potassium makes more males,
low temps increase females,
high humidity increases females,
more blue light makes more females
more red light makes more males
less than 18 hours of light makes more females
more thans 18 hours of light makes more males


main point being that stress will effect the male female ratio... more stress more males...


hope this helps