Monday, August 16, 2010

Growing Hydroponic Marijuana: How to Determine Male Plants from Female Plants


If you plan on growing hydroponic marijuana, it would also help if you knew what type of marijuana plant you’re growing. Sensimilla marijuana is a term for female plants that have not produced seeds. Not producing seeds allows the plant to use more energy producing THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and other chemicals that users require. As an ancient tradition for cannabis growers, the sensimilla is the result of removing male plants from the grow environment before they have a chance to fertilize the female marijuana plants. More growers prefer to grow sensimilla indoors in the form of hydroponics because growing it outdoors can be difficult. This is because in an outdoor setting, a single male marijuana plant can fertilize female marijuana plants within an area of a few hundred feet.

To learn more about hydroponics, please check out the best hydroponics videos on the web!

So before you start growing your hydroponic marijuana plants, there are a few things that you need to know. If you have started from clones, it is most likely that the clones you obtained were female marijuana plants. But if you have grown from seed, you will have to separate the male marijuana plants from the female marijuana plants before the male plants flower and produce pollen, unless you are planning to produce seeds as well. However, there is approximately a 50% chance a seed will be either a male or a female.

Assuming that all the marijuana seeds are of the same strain, the male marijuana plants will always mature sooner compared with the female marijuana plants. This is because the male plant will have small oval pollen sacks that the female will lack. Once you see these sacks, remove the male plants from your hydroponic garden. In contrast, white hairs or pistils will begin to develop at bud sites of female plants. Male plants from some marijuana strains may be potent, while other strains are worthless. But if you wish to ensure that you can greatly benefit from your hydroponic marijuana, you can remove the male marijuana plants from your garden.

1 comment:

basementhydro said...

You can also get feminized seeds that use a special process to ensure that nearly all the seeds will grow into female plants. It's not 100%, but pretty close.

But if you really want to be sure all your plants are girls the best way is to just do a lot of cloning.