When do i sex the plants?

Alright so I just started growing about 2 weeks ago. I started with a long pot and I recently moved the plants into individual solo cups with holes in the bottom. I have about 18 plants or so. They are under florescent lights, t8's i think, and they are now growing their second set of leaves as you can see in the pictures I attached.

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They are in their vegi state. I just put the lights to 18/6.

My question is how long do i wait until i know when to sex them. I know there is no definite answer but i was wondering an approximation.

:weedpoke:

I'm certainly no expert but from what I gather, you probably need to give those another week or two before you could. There are various methods people have suggested on these forums so have a dig around and read up on it. I hope you've got mostly girls! Good luck! :smokin:

Sorry to call you out on an error here thermite but I feel I should correct you for twitterthis' sake, and perhaps yours as well. Hes got a lot longer than a week to go before he can determine the sex of those bad boys....errr.. girls hopefully I mean. Typically the way to actually be able to accurately identify the sex of the plants is after about a week of 12/12 flowering, sometimes a little longer, sometimes less... sometimes even before flowering light cycles begin if you allow the plants to grow large enough that they achieve full vegetative maturity. If you plan to grow them large enough for that they'll develop what are called 'preflowers', which are exactly what the plant produces during flower mode, they're just typically small single calyxs or pollen sacks.

I think people stress the early sexing thing a little bit too much, the only real benefit to identifying the sex of your plants at a really early stage is that if you do find a male, you can remove him then and open up more space in your grow room for more new attempts at growing females. I think new growers are often scared that they're not going to notice the males immediately and all of their females will be fertilized by the male, and that is incorrect. Once a plant shows that it is a male, it still takes some time, around a week or two even, to develop the pollen sacks to the point where they could potentially release pollen. The only way they'd release pollen that early on would be if you were to aggravate the sacks, essentially helping them to open up and release pollen. Just be patient and focus on growing them up nice and healthy, and when you're about to switch the light cycle to 12/12, post some more pictures and someone would be glad to help you out. Good luck mah man and make sure that you take your time and document everything you can about the strains you're growing for future reference. Growing cannabis is a great way to teach yourself discipline, and how to handle things with care and patience.... the combo of achieving those things is far greater than any effect you could get from smoking some cannabis anyways haha.

Here is a link to a thread I posted not too long ago with some pictures of female preflowers. I apologize that the pictures aren't all that great due to the lack of color contrast, however I did circle the preflowers in the images so you know what you're looking for. You'll notice the little hairs, those are the first two pistils to pop out, and in real life those would be white in comparison to the green plant, but it all kinda blended together in the picture.. you'll get the idea though..

http://boards.cannabis.com/basic-gro...pics-help.html

Also here is a link to a few pictures of that same plant after 12 days of flowering under a 400W HPS. I switched the light cycle to 12/12 just after I took the pictures of the preflowers by the way as well.... The photos of 12 days flowering are on page 3 post #67, but feel free to check around at how it looked prior to that. the bottom link I gave you is sort of my grow log thread about my revegging mother.

http://boards.cannabis.com/basic-gro...f-enjoy-3.html

Hopefully something I said or something in the pictures can help you out a little bit, I have a male I could take some pics of as well so you can see what to look for early if you'd like... just reply here and let me know.

Shit, I could go on for days about some topics... this early sexing male/female thing has been a very very popular topic around here lately though. I just wanted to explain to you another strategy that I have heard of people doing, but never done myself. Once it gets to a certain level of maturity, put it into 12/12 lighting for a week or something until it shows its sex. Then if its a male... kill it.. if its a female, you can put her back under the veg lights and light cycle to revert her back to veg so you can make her larger, and still know the sex early enough so you're not wasting a ton of time.

I think I'm done now.. I'll finally shut up and let someone else take it from here... I've got plenty of transplanting to do... =(

All very informative stuff. Thanks for taking the time to share all of that. :cool: