What causes a garden to produce 75% males??

[cwesto]

I gro in soil, under a 400w MH conv. HPS ballast. I used the MHconv. for veg, and now have switched to the HPS for bloom.

Anyways it is now day 6 of bloom and i am left with only 2 girls, out of my original 8...... and i think one of my girls has a couple of male flowers on it.. woopty doo Basil..

What in the hell caused this piss poor ration?? I am almost certain it has to me my fault, but i dont kno what i did....

This MUST not happen again.

[SunnySativa]

Well most of it just has to do with genetics i believe, but some things that cause plants to hermie is letting light get through to the plants during their dark hours ive heard and maybe a few minor things here and there, but for the most part in my experiences its just the luck of the drawl. The 5 plants i planted, i only got 2 fems, sucks but hey better then none

[Mr. Clandestine]

What in the hell caused this piss poor ration??

Probably piss-poor luck more than anything you have done wrong. I know that higher temperatures, overbearing nutrient regimens, etc., and so forth are rumored to cause a higher male-to-female ratio...but I don't know where to separate the rumors from the facts.

I keep my growroom temps roughly in the mid-70's (by estimation), try to be conservative with nutrients, and am careful not to overwater...and many times I still come out with about a 60/40 percent of females-to-males. Sometimes I seem to have a stroke of luck, and it's more of a 90/10 ratio. Sometimes it's a 50/50, or less. I'm sure there are ways that you can theoretically influence the numbers of females produced, but I'm not sure how much of that has been validated...and how much of it is just hot air.

[cwesto]

ok cool, thats a good start. Anybody else have any ideas, facts, input, advice???

Lets get some brainstorm/critical thinking going here

[SMOKIN A WHILE]

It's all really just luck. I planted 10 skunk #1 seeds. 7 germinated. All 7 are female after
switching to 12/12 took 3 weeks to tell. I hope I have enough room to take advantage.
So I didn't do anything special I'm chalking it up to luck. I should have bought some lottery tickets.

[norkali]

Ahhhh! I'm SO GLAD you started this thread! Personally, I've had damn good luck, on my 1st grow I had 4/6 females, 1 went hermi though. 2nd grow, 4/4 females....and dare I say it, no hermi's yet. :wtf:

So, other than hermi's, (Herm = light leak, usually) I really think it's just luck.

I've been wanting to explore this too:

Can you (environmentally) influence a seed(ling) in any way to change these ratios? Can you somehow change a 'female' seed into a 'male' plant?

I don't think so. That sounds, honestly, dumb.

Other opinions?

[Big len]

I started with 10 ended up with 6, like everyone says its a crap shoot.

[xcrispi]

Piss poor luck
Piss poor genetics
Stress induced anything - Overwatering , Lightcycle interuptions , Light leaks , Heat stress , anything stress related is voo doo .

A combonation of any or all these things play a part in these mishaps .

I did 3 packs of 10 seeds from Hygro Seed co. bk in the days of Overgrow . Masterkush , Powerplant , Bubblegum . only got 10 female of 30 - I was bent . :mad:

Shit Happens
Crispi :jointsmile:

[the image reaper]

Piss poor luck
Piss poor genetics
Stress induced anything - Overwatering , Lightcycle interuptions , Light leaks , Heat stress , anything stress related is voo doo .

A combonation of any or all these things play a part in these mishaps .

I did 3 packs of 10 seeds from Hygro Seed co. bk in the days of Overgrow . Masterkush , Powerplant , Bubblegum . only got 10 female of 30 - I was bent . :mad:

Shit Happens
Crispi :jointsmile:

all of the above, plus Karma ... "it's not nice to fool Mother Nature" ... the bitch WILL screw with ya, just to remind you who's Boss ... :jointsmile:

[8182KSKUSH]

Hey I was wondering about this. I once got some medicine and it had 1 little tiny bud that had literally (I counted) 15 very viable seeds. It was the craziest thing I never did see. There was not a one seed in any of the rest of it. Not a one! So did this plant happen to polinate itself? If so are the odds very likely that they are all feminized? How likely could this be?

[maik]

Piss poor luck
Piss poor genetics
Stress induced anything - Overwatering , Lightcycle interuptions , Light leaks , Heat stress , anything stress related is voo doo .

I pretty much agree with what he said.

I don't have any "hard evidence" to back it up, but any genetics that are likely to produce herm plants are probably likely to produce more males. Cannabis sex genes aren't all "50/50" like some will tell you. There are definitely male genes, and varying degrees of expressed male sexuality. I'm sure just a little of the above stresses, and some others, contribute to bad sex ratios, as well as numbers of plants in the grow space... from the chemical "communication" between all the plants.

I've found that using strains that have been crossed and bred fewer than 5 crosses -not including inbreeding or back crosses- tend to produce fewer herms, or just more females.

Also, I use little grow chambers, less than a cubic meter for starts and seedlings. It keet relatively warm, humid and 24 hour lighting. I also used a standard plant food (10-15-10). On recent batches of seeds (two strains) from one breeder, I've been getting better than 85% females for the past year from seeds that did germ. I assume that the seeds that didn't sprout were males.

I really wanted some of those males, too. They just didn't show when they were hoped for.

But I don't think it's so much "luck".

[the image reaper]

I agree with both of ya :D ... I'm also of the opinion that a long string of inbreeding causes glitches down the road ... I never had problems with bagseeds, ever, and have finally seen all of the problems I have heard about, after buying high-dollar seeds ... in my own case, I had more problems as the prices went up :wtf: