Revegging after early flowering to deal with regular seeds

[johnehazeharvester]

Has anyone revegged after < a week? I want to pop some regular seeds. Will grow in 1 gallon pots initially. After about a month of vegatative growth, my plan was to flip the lights to 12/12 for a few days until I am confident of sex and then reveg the ladies and then transplant to a larger pot. Does this sound like a good idea? I think my cloning skills are somewhat lackluster and another option is to grab clones and flip those, but I think that would take me at least 3 weeks.

 

[Mike Wright]

Has anyone revegged after < a week? I want to pop some regular seeds. Will grow in 1 gallon pots initially. After about a month of vegatative growth, my plan was to flip the lights to 12/12 for a few days until I am confident of sex and then reveg the ladies and then transplant to a larger pot. Does this sound like a good idea? I think my cloning skills are somewhat lackluster and another option is to grab clones and flip those, but I think that would take me at least 3 weeks.

I haven't revegged for this purpose, but I find if I drop the lights to 14 hours for a week or two the males will show themselves before the females even go into flower, so I weed those out, then up-pot the rest. It has been pretty reliable.

 

[Sueet]

Cloning is easy, just get yourself some rooting powder or gel, and keep cuttings domed or covered to protect from excess water loss until they get roots made so they can drink again. (I use solo cups with a sandwich baggie over the top as the 'dome' .... it is not air tight, doesn't need to be)

All of that said tho, you're right, it definitely takes more time that way - but at the end of the time you have another plant well, unless it's a boy

 

[johnehazeharvester]

I haven't revegged for this purpose, but I find if I drop the lights to 14 hours for a week or two the males will show themselves before the females even go into flower, so I weed those out, then up-pot the rest. It has been pretty reliable.

Hi @johnehazeharvester

Your opening post proves the rule: with regular seeds you're better off popping more than less. If I want one female, I'll pop three regular seeds, just to be statistically even more likely to get a female. Still no guarantees, but getting three males would be a very rare case.

I grow regular seeds for breeding. I love getting my own homegrown seeds, they're so fresh they just jump out of the rooters. But there's no difference, cultivation-wise, from feminized (though I'm sure there's someone who'll disagree ). Regular or "standard" seeds are cheaper but more work. Of course if you want pollen, they're the only way to go.

I soak the seeds 12 hours in a diluted hydrogen peroxide solution, pop them into moist rooters and keep the ambient temperature at a constant 79 F which is the perfect temperature for germinating.

I usually pop a minimum of 5 regular seeds per strain, even if I only want one plant ultimately. You never know what you're going to get, so might as well compensate ahead of time for what you maybe don't want. After about 6 or 8 weeks when they're mature I force flower in a small flowering greenhouse I darken by placing a tarp over it each evening for 12+ hours. After ten days to two weeks, the babes reveal their gender. If say two of the 5 are male, I take a decision on whether to cull or grow them out and harvest pollen, or just chop the males and grow out one or more females.

I wouldn't put two plants in the same 5 gallon pot because if it turns out you want to keep both plants one of them will not thrive as well. I've seen that happen, one will not do well and the other will. If you try to separate them, there could be root damage. To avoid that, the destination should be 1 pot for each plant if you want healthy vigorous growth. It's better to start them off in enough soil to get through the sexing stage, say a 1 L or 1 quart or even 1 gallon. I like smaller because that little greenhouse needs to hold about twenty plants at a time so they can't all have even a whole gallon at this stage. After the plants are mature enough to flower, I'll force flower and if it is a female I want to grow out, I'll up pot to a larger say 5 or 7 gallon pot.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Emeraldo

I haven't revegged for this purpose, but I find if I drop the lights to 14 hours for a week or two the males will show themselves before the females even go into flower, so I weed those out, then up-pot the rest. It has been pretty reliable.

Thanks I'll try that

 

[Keffka]

Has anyone revegged after < a week? I want to pop some regular seeds. Will grow in 1 gallon pots initially. After about a month of vegatative growth, my plan was to flip the lights to 12/12 for a few days until I am confident of sex and then reveg the ladies and then transplant to a larger pot. Does this sound like a good idea? I think my cloning skills are somewhat lackluster and another option is to grab clones and flip those, but I think that would take me at least 3 weeks.

I haven't revegged for this purpose, but I find if I drop the lights to 14 hours for a week or two the males will show themselves before the females even go into flower, so I weed those out, then up-pot the rest. It has been pretty reliable.

@Gee64 @StoneOtter @Azimuth and myself have gone with 12/12 from seed for about 10-14 days after sprout. This has reliably shown us the sex of our plants by Day 30 give or take a couple days without the stress of revegging.

It’s a cool little tip I found on The Revs (True Living Organics) seed bank website

 

[johnehazeharvester]

@Gee64 @StoneOtter and myself have gone with 12/12 from seed for about 10-14 days after sprout. This has reliably shown us the sex of our plants by Day 30 give or take a couple days without the stress of revegging.

It’s a cool little tip I found on The Revs (True Living Organics) seed bank website

Thanks I saw this on one of your grow diaries. I will try it. Someone else mentioned to put lights on 14 hours and males will show sex first . I'll try your method w seedlings. If I can't tell by 30-35 days. I'll try 14 hours if of light and see. I am in process of getting seeds out of a clone That I made. It looks like I will have 100's of regular seeds. I will pop them in September. Just preplanning.

 

[Gee64]

@Gee64 @StoneOtter and myself have gone with 12/12 from seed for about 10-14 days after sprout. This has reliably shown us the sex of our plants by Day 30 give or take a couple days without the stress of revegging.

It’s a cool little tip I found on The Revs (True Living Organics) seed bank website

Yeah it worked really well. I had one stubborn one go to day 33 but all the rest were 28 and less. I can't remember how early my 1st one to show was but I do recall it was fairly early. 25 days maybe? Anyways it works great. We all got about the same results.

 

[Azimuth]

Yeah it worked really well. I had one stubborn one go to day 33 but all the rest were 28 and less. I can't remember how early my 1st one to show was but I do recall it was fairly early. 25 days maybe? Anyways it works great. We all got about the same results.

I was another tester of this idea and had the same success.

 

[Regrowth]

Sounds like a cool trick. Any downside? Do they get lanky?
Guess you could just compensate with extra light to get closer to the recommended dli?

 

[Azimuth]

We haven't seen much downside. The seedlings aren't sexually mature yet so there is no re-veg period like you'd have with an older plant.

One effect might be a faster transition period once you  do flip to flower but we haven't had enough examples yet to say for sure.

 

[SmokingWings]

How about taking a cutting from each plant and putting it in a glass or jar of water. One cutting per plant and have a system of tracking what came from which plant. (I use a number system.)

Stick those into the tent or where ever the light can be controlled. I would go with 11 hours on and 13 hours off to give the plant that little extra dark to encourage a tad more flowering hormone.

If the mother plant is sexually mature (and not just starting to show that maturity) and has been for at least a week or two the cuttings should start showing male or female within 5-7 days. If the cutting is male toss it and find the donor plant which will have the same number and toss that.

If the cutting is female consider putting it back in vegetating light to bring it out of flowering and start getting it to root. More decisions as to whether to leave it in the water or put it into soil or whatever the latest craze for rooting cuttings involves. If it roots, it roots. other wise toss it. Or toss all the cuttings as soon as they tell what you want to know and do a more controlled cutting and cloning project.

In the meantime the mothers are continuing to grow bigger and stronger with no interruption. There is no lost time of having to re vegetate them either. The amount of fertilizers and water used on any males while waiting for the cuttings to show sex is so minor that I would not even consider it.

 

[Azimuth]

Do you think the cutting would actually show sex when it also trying to root?

 

[johnehazeharvester]

How about taking a cutting from each plant and putting it in a glass or jar of water. One cutting per plant and have a system of tracking what came from which plant. (I use a number system.)

Stick those into the tent or where ever the light can be controlled. I would go with 11 hours on and 13 hours off to give the plant that little extra dark to encourage a tad more flowering hormone.

If the mother plant is sexually mature (and not just starting to show that maturity) and has been for at least a week or two the cuttings should start showing male or female within 5-7 days. If the cutting is male toss it and find the donor plant which will have the same number and toss that.

If the cutting is female consider putting it back in vegetating light to bring it out of flowering and start getting it to root. More decisions as to whether to leave it in the water or put it into soil or whatever the latest craze for rooting cuttings involves. If it roots, it roots. other wise toss it. Or toss all the cuttings as soon as they tell what you want to know and do a more controlled cutting and cloning project.

In the meantime the mothers are continuing to grow bigger and stronger with no interruption. There is no lost time of having to re vegetate them either. The amount of fertilizers and water used on any males while waiting for the cuttings to show sex is so minor that I would not even consider it.

I could try this because there is no downside

 

[Regrowth]

I don't really grow regulars often but I've seen the way @SmokingWings suggested recommended a lot. I may have even told some others to do the same. But if males can really be spotted and weeded out around day 30 then maybe you could combine both methods and just weed out the males that way. For example just take some clones after day 14 and put them under 12-14 hours light... probably not going to manage much earlier anyway due to lack of nodes to grab from. But then the clones that are female wouldn't have a reveg period and the mothers wouldn't need to have reached maturity either and could get their full day of light. Seems like something worth experiementing with next time I grow some regs.

 

[johnehazeharvester]

I don't really grow regulars often but I've seen the way @SmokingWings suggested recommended a lot. I may have even told some others to do the same. But if males can really be spotted and weeded out around day 30 then maybe you could combine both methods and just weed out the males that way. For example just take some clones after day 14 and put them under 12-14 hours light... probably not going to manage much earlier anyway due to lack of nodes to grab from. But then the clones that are female wouldn't have a reveg period and the mothers wouldn't need to have reached maturity either and could get their full day of light. Seems like something worth experiementing with next time I grow some regs.

Thanks will do. I now have >1000 regular seeds from my last run. I am looking forward to trying easy ways to weed out the males in the future.

 

[SmokingWings]

the mothers wouldn't need to have reached maturity either and could get their full day of light.

If the mother plant is not yet sexually mature then the grower will have to wait until the cutting also reaches maturity before it starts flowering. Some plants start to show pre-flowers earlier than others and if that is the case then the grower could know that the "mother" is a female a bit earlier.

But then the clones that are female wouldn't have a reveg period

Since the basic idea is to find out which plants are female as soon as possible then I figure the way to do it is avoid the worry about getting the cutting to root. Waiting on a plant, whether a mother plant or a cutting to re-vegetate takes time and that starts to defeat the purpose of doing this as fast as possible.

By taking cuttings and basically forcing those to flower it allows the grower to spend time growing the mothers as fast as possible.

probably not going to manage much earlier anyway due to lack of nodes to grab from.

If we are not going to worry about getting the cuttings to start to root then it is not necessary to take larger or longer pieces off of the "mother" like we would if we wanted to end up with a clone. Just need a piece with a couple of nodes and enough leaves to capture light for photosynthesis and a healthy growing tip for the flowering hormone to do its thing.

If all is going right then it is even possible to pull this sort of project using large leaves with the petiole attached. The junction of the petiole & the fingers can start to grow a flower while sitting in a glass of water. I have done it once or twice and ended up with a small female bud. I believe that others have done it and had male flowers start. But trying to get a leaf to start a flower takes longer so the best way still seems to be a piece of stem with a couple of nodes and growing tip.

Do you think the cutting would actually show sex when it also trying to root?

Yes. Put the cuttings somewhere that the "lights out" period can be at 13 + hours to maximize the production of flowering hormones. 13 to 14 or more hours of "lights on" will induce the cutting to try to root first.

 

[johnehazeharvester]

If the mother plant is not yet sexually mature then the grower will have to wait until the cutting also reaches maturity before it starts flowering. Some plants start to show pre-flowers earlier than others and if that is the case then the grower could know that the "mother" is a female a bit earlier.


Since the basic idea is to find out which plants are female as soon as possible then I figure the way to do it is avoid the worry about getting the cutting to root. Waiting on a plant, whether a mother plant or a cutting to re-vegetate takes time and that starts to defeat the purpose of doing this as fast as possible.

By taking cuttings and basically forcing those to flower it allows the grower to spend time growing the mothers as fast as possible.


If we are not going to worry about getting the cuttings to start to root then it is not necessary to take larger or longer pieces off of the "mother" like we would if we wanted to end up with a clone. Just need a piece with a couple of nodes and enough leaves to capture light for photosynthesis and a healthy growing tip for the flowering hormone to do its thing.

If all is going right then it is even possible to pull this sort of project using large leaves with the petiole attached. The junction of the petiole & the fingers can start to grow a flower while sitting in a glass of water. I have done it once or twice and ended up with a small female bud. I believe that others have done it and had male flowers start. But trying to get a leaf to start a flower takes longer so the best way still seems to be a piece of stem with a couple of nodes and growing tip.


Yes. Put the cuttings somewhere that the "lights out" period can be at 13 + hours to maximize the production of flowering hormones. 13 to 14 or more hours of "lights on" will induce the cutting to try to root first.

Thanks. Didn't realize I could find this out before it roots. That was my major issue. I did not want to wait two to three weeks before roots, but if I don't need roots this will be a great way to find out for me. I will probably add some aloe powder and kelp to my glass of water to help rooting in case I want to for some reason.

 

[Regrowth]

They mentioned that you can spot males by day 30 -
That's an entire month before a female plant generally reaches maturity and can be identified.
So if you take clones early enough, there's no worry about them revegging -
You could weed out the males, and put the clones back under normal veg lighting within about two weeks -
Which is still before the average female plant would reach maturity.

 

[Azimuth]

Thanks will do. I now have >1000 regular seeds from my last run. I am looking forward to trying easy ways to weed out the males in the future.

As 'Bro Science' as it sounds, I've actually had pretty good luck Sexing seeds (that post and the video in the next one give you the basics). Pretty small sample size but I've had way more females selecting them according to the picture than I should have had at 50/50 chance.

 

[SmokingWings]

As 'Bro Science' as it sounds, I've actually had pretty good luck Sexing seeds (that post and the video in the next one give you the basics).

I have seen that diagram before but never tried it.

There is a short article about how the environment, mostly temperatures, in the grow area can affect 1 and 2 week old seedlings and cause them to mature as females.