induced flowering to show sex

I have an issue, I am running out of room. i have a small 2x2x6 closet space i have 11 plants, (3 are girls, clones only a week old) the other 8 im not sure if they are male or female. I do not have my veg cabinet setup yet. they are on their 3rd week of veg and about 6 inches tall (had some issues with heat and nutes but getting that worked out) I need to find out wich ones are male so i can abort them.

I have heard people talk about putting them into 12/12 to get them to show their sex then put them back into a veg state.

1. is that bad, will it cause stress since they are not sexually mature?
2. how long will it take to show their sex?

I cant wait till they are ready for flower since i dont have a lot of room i will only be able to flower 4 at a time in 5 gallon pots and i need to know which are female so i can transplant them to the 5 gallon pots and let them get adjusted before flower.

bump. anyone?

Plants that have never flowered before often put more into bud growth than plants that have. Think of flowering as your plant having sex. When she does it once, she loses some of her former interest. The longer she waits before that once, the more explosive it will be- to a point. It won't finish earlier, though, as the analogy would suggest. This should only be a small difference, however, so you won't be missing too much flowering a second time. It just should be avoided when possible to get the best buds you can.

1. They aren't sexually mature until they flower. I'd say a plant is in its mature state when the first full leaves appear, which should be when the fourth node is growing.

2. About two weeks. Some show sooner but you should plan on about that long for all of them to show.

so in my situation where i have to find the males, i dont have room to put all of them in 5 gallon pots, it sounds like it shouldnt hurt them too much to put the 12/12 on just long enough to see the sex then flip them back? and that should take around 2 weeks before i even see any signs of male or female?

For anyone else reading, the best way to check sex is by taking clones of all plants and flowering them, leaving the mothers in veg. Since you don't have the room, you only need them to have enough soil for about two weeks of growth and then you can transplant to bigger pots after culling the males. Five gallon buckets provide for at least 80 days of flowering. For two weeks just to show sex, any unrooted soil underneath the plants would be plenty. Even if the roots have just reached the bottom, it would probably take a couple weeks of swirling around the bottom before the plant became root bound.

i like the clone way much better, thank you.

on the clones, i dont know if i understood this, but say i took 2-4 inch clones, could i put them directly into 12/12? or would i have to wait for them to take root then 12/12?

A plant is mature when it starts alternating nodes and preflowers actually. are the 8 in question clones or from seed? it really makes no sense to do this since once it reaches maturity in veg mode it will show preflowers and alternating nodes like i said before. So your just going to waste a bunch of time and stress them for no actual gain.

darkdestruction420 said:

A plant is mature when it starts alternating nodes and preflowers actually. are the 8 in question clones or from seed? it really makes no sense to do this since once it reaches maturity in veg mode it will show preflowers and alternating nodes like i said before. So your just going to waste a bunch of time and stress them for no actual gain.

Click to expand...

4 sure just veg out
Preflowers, as opposed to full blown flowers, generally appear after the fourth week of vegetative growth from seed. Check carefully above the fourth node.the female preflower is pear shaped and produces a pair of pistils. Frequently, the female preflowers do not show pistils until well after the preflowers have emerged. Thus, don't yank a plant because it has no pistils. Pistillate preflowers are located at the node between the stipule and emerging branch.

Also, some female preflowers never produce pistils. A female preflower without pistils is difficult to distinguish from a male preflower. Thus, hermaphodite issues should not be resolved by the appearance of preflowers, without pistils, on a plant otherwise believed to be a female. The male preflower may be described as a "ball on a stick." However, its most recognizable feature is its absence of pistils. Sometimes, a male plant will develop mature staminate flowers after prolonged periods of vegetative growth. These appear in clusters around the nodes.

thanks for the input guys. im taking in all the info i can get. and learning quickly