Methods to encourage seeds to turn female?

Steph187 said:

Ive heard that putting a banana by ur sprouts will encorage them to be female.

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No no no, its 2 chicken feet and goats testicles. Then some special chant like " Oh goddess of fertility, hear my prarys yada yada yada etc " =P

There was an article in hight time last month how to INCREASE % of females. basically they said to baby the seeds from day 1 to 1st month... do nothing shocking check it out... im not sure who wrote the article might have been cervantes or something awesome like that. but i learned alot... pm if u need me to look up the mag issue #.

Ganga farmer Joe said:

The Bannana thing sounds like voodoo, unless you are trying to increase the potassium level, in which case it is circumstatial on the seeds genetics to decide what to do with the excess K. I believe it is out of the growers hands as to whether they turn male or female pre germination. It's ultimately up to the genetics inherited by the parent plant or plants.

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Bannana would add K. After about 2 or 3 months of battling fruit flies. Your plants would have some nice P. By then though, moog point. Throw your peels, all of them, on your compost pile. And like I said. Good, solid gardening practices.
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thewinghunter said:

There was an article in hight time last month how to INCREASE % of females. basically they said to baby the seeds from day 1 to 1st month... do nothing shocking check it out... im not sure who wrote the article might have been cervantes or something awesome like that. but i learned alot... pm if u need me to look up the mag issue #.

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That the key too the entire grow. Do nothing stressful, shocking, major changes ect... And even more crucial at the start. A strong and vigorous seedling grows a strong plant. A strong plant grows up to grow strong buds. We are all products of our enviroment.

I believe that sex is determined in the seed and that a sprout will be either male or female with approximately a 50:50 ratio (regular, non-femininized seeds of course).

I believe that a low stress environment will reduce the development of hermaphrodite plants, but I don't believe it will increase the percent of females.

Here is my thought process...

Hermaphrodism is either a genetic anomaly (unlikely) or a reaction to stress (more common). The plant wants to carry on genetics before it dies and produces "seeds" which were self-fertilized. That is pretty obvious.

But I also hear that providing a good environment will increase the probability of a female. I don't believe this is actually possible. It serves no evolutionary benefit for cannabis plants to all turn female when they are doing well because then they will have no males to be fertilized by. Seems illogical for plants to evolve in such a way as to kill themselves off when conditions are best suited for success (they wont pass on genes, and will have technically failed as an individual).

I do believe you can reduce stress and get approximately 50:50 males:females with regular seeds without any hermie plants, but I do not believe it is possible to get 75% or higher females from regular seeds just from providing a good environment. More likely it was chance, an exaggeration, or feminized seeds.

Just my 2 cents.

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Fuck that! That's a seed maker from a seed companies sorry ass excuse for not creating proper feminized seeds. I too believe it is all predetermined. I wouldn't be opposed if somebody wanted to put multiples of the same feminized seeds in two different environments, one harsh, the other optimum. That'd be a fun one.

Impossible, the seed will be what it was genetically programmed to be. You can no more change a male to a female than you can change a carrot into an apple.

Did the banana experiment, did not work, but new harvester is right it is the ethylene gas given off by the banana rotting that makes it work (if you google ethylene gas you will get the scoop, it is real and widely used on other plants) actually apples give off more gas than bananas.

there is also another chemical that has been used but is hard to get and exspensive can't remember the name at the moment?

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None of the posters on this thread have claimed to have used any of these methods successfully. Most likely that would lead me to believe that the sex of a seed is already set. If a plant is stressed or is grown in inhospitable conditions some if not all female plants have dna directions to form male flowers as well to ensure seeds.
All of the following is according to the article. Up to 90-95% of seeds can become female. The sex of the seeds is undetermined until the 3rd or 4th week of veg growth. So this is all for the weeks 3-4 but if this is a big change then that would probably be stressful too.
The following help promote females:
-Low stress including: no pests attacks, no fungi attacks, no mold, no irregular photoperiod, not under-watered, not over-watered, not pruned or topped, a cannabis friendly soil mix, not recently transplanted, no small pots
-high nitrogen levels
-low potassium levels
-high air humidity
-moist soil never allowed to dry but not over-watered
-low temp. 65-75
-use MH lights
-short day (14 hour)

Steph187 said:

Ive heard that putting a banana by ur sprouts will encorage them to be female.

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I've actually heard this works for sprouting seeds, because of something in bananas that has been used to sprout really old seeds. But you can't change what the seed already is, on the other hand there may be things you do that make a female grow male flowers, hermaphrodite.