Will it hurt my mother plants if I change them from 18/6 to 12/12 to find out the sex and then back to 18/6 after I clear out the males?
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Will it hurt my mother plants if I change them from 18/6 to 12/12 to find out the sex and then back to 18/6 after I clear out the males?
It will usually make them hermie.
Just take clones of each plant, let them root, and then flower the clones. You will have your sex questions answered in about three weeks total. Switching to flower for two weeks to find the sex and then back to veg will cause your plants to "reveg" where the growth will pretty much stop for 4-6 weeks. But if you cut some clones, root them (usually about a week-10 days) and then flower them for 2 weeks once they are rooted, you will know the sex in only 3 weeks. Plus as KilllerWeed said you are risking turning your females into herms when you stress them like that. The light cycle of the flowering plant is delicate and shouldn't be messed with. Also in my experience, all the plants I grew from seed all showed preflowers in about 4-5 weeks, so the sex was already apparent without any change in the light schedule.
Damn. I only swithch them to 12/12 for 2 days - they are now back on the 18/6. I'll clone them like u said. Do you think they're allright? It was only for 2 days.
It definitely stresses the plant out if it goes from veg -> flower -> veg. Depending it can go hermie or just be very unhappy. Still, you can re-veg a clone taken from a flowering plant and they often turn into bushy branchy monsters, if you can baby them through the transition. They'll often throw out mutant bud/leaf growths and non-serrated leaves until they stabilize. I found it really fascinating but not something I'd do as standard procedure.
Quick edit: the plants I'm talking about with weird leaves were clones taken from flowering plants usually well into flower. Your clones might be a bit stressed going back to 12/12, maybe take a few extra in case?
GL :)
You can swtch to 12/12 to sex your plants. It usually takes about 10 days or so, depending on the age from seed of your plants. If you wait for the plant to reach 60 days from seed it will usually preflower under 18/6. A general rule of thumb is that if you put them in flowering for 10 days you will have to put them back into veg for the same number of days before cutting for clones or reflowering, to prevent hermies.
A general rule of thumb?? Never go back and forth with your light cycles or interrupt dark periods, this puts the plants under tremendous stress and growth will stop or slow, also possibly causing the plant to be herm. Please let me know where I can find this 'general rule of thumb' about veg to flower.
herman the hermie