Light leak during veg caused Hermi?

I have two plants (Blue Widow & Northern Lights) that were in vegetation for 5 weeks under 18/6, but the dark period was not completely dark as the nearby window brought in sunlight. The plants were then put into flower 12/12 in a different room with no light leaks at all. Currently, on the 7th week I noticed female pre-flowers and balls . I know absolute darkness in flower is essential but are light leaks during veg OK?

Light leaks during veg can be okay. While it is best to give them that full darkness if you're gonna go 18/6, it should be basically the same as them being on a 24/0 light schedule if the window was leaking light all throughout the 6 hour "dark" period. Imagine plants being outdoors in mother nature. They get about that during summer, and then at night they still have summer skys which are light all night, the moon which puts out light, ... Your light leak is about the equivelent of that.

Now, light leak during flowering IS NOT ALLOWED. This WILL cause hermies. Hopefully you've checked various times on both sides of your room for any possible leaks, and this will determine what keeps causing problems for you so you can solve this for future grows.

As for the little balls you are starting to see, if you are talking about them being located on the internodes of the stalk/branching, then it sounds like you are witnessing the development of POLLEN SACS. These will develop and eventually open, spreading pollen all over. Check one of your more developed buds. Kinda open it up and try to get in there and really inspect it. If you see seed development or yellow "banana" shaped pistols coming out of your buds, these are all signs/effects of plants going hermie on you.

If your plants are well frosted, then you have some considerations to make. Hermies will start to transfer their energy production from THC to seeds once the stress has triggered this genetic effect. You can either pull now, and harvest a smaller yield with little to no seeds, and slightly less potency than what it will achieve should it go longer. At week 7 you should have good potency, but this varies by strain & enviornmental factors, so that's really your call. If you don't have seeds yet but want more weight/potency, you can try to push them longer. This can be a risk as seeds can develop fast and become more of a hassle than anything.

I would recommend finding the ideal point to pulling them. If there's no seeds, you should be able to smoke no problem. If there's a few seeds, you can get around pulling them out no prob.

If the plants are seeded and do not come out to what you expected or want to be smoking daily, then turn that shit into hash or hash oil and go buy a sac of some dank and enjoy loading some bowls with your new batch of hash and get some insane head/body stones.

Hope this helps!

+rep???

Mazar

I've run into the same problem few times- in my cases have been lucky enough to only have a few random bananas pop out here and there. I cut em off gently and removed em before they popped and just kept a close eye out for the rest of their respective periods. One or 2 plants I did find a couple/few seeds in, however it was literally only a couple/few. I like to think I've been lucky as I have never yet had a hermie that was obviously more male dominant with profuse flowers- mine are always just a few balls here n there- usually difficult to spot unless yer really looking.

I hope this info helps a bit- bottom line don't get hasty with the scissors yet! cheers j

Thanks for the reply. I will try to post pics of the balls and pistils which I think are hermied.

If I let the blue widow and autoflower northern lights flower out and they pollinate themselves and each other, will the resulting seed production be a totally new strain and how effective are those new hermie produced seeds if I germinate them?

hermie seeds are more likly to hermie but other then that the seeds gerneraly do grow plants