Issue #704 - Sunday, October 19, 2025 Hey grower! In today's issue... - Is your cannabis plant male or female? - It's important to know ASAP since only one of those makes bud. And after todays article, the only way you could know sooner is if you had a personal laboratory!
- We all love
getting male plants, right? - Nope, not at all. Male plants are annoying at best, but luckily, there's an easy and very conventional way to avoid them...
- "Sweet Dreams" Grow Journal Update - The plants showed their personalities this week. One in particular (looking at you Purple Ghost Candy) caused a bunch of trouble. It's been 25 days since we started 12/12, and the grow should be renamed "Bud City"!
- Grower Spotlight:
Extremely Dank Basement I know this sounds like the beginning of a Halloween horror story, but in this case, it's the exact opposite. It's a dank basement you'd like to get stuck in!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside
Co-Founders, GrowWeedEasy.com
"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson The Ultimate Guide to Sexing Cannabis Plants Before the Flowering Stage by Nebula Haze Are you ready to experience the ultimate high from your homegrown Male cannabis plants don’t make buds, only female cannabis plants make buds. Yet naturally, with regular cannabis seeds, about 50% of cannabis plants end up being male. Cannabis Sex Matters: Female Buds vs Male Pollen Sacs (click for closeup). Male plants don’t make buds! Only female cannabis plants make buds. Male plants produce pollen sacs that are low in THC, not good to smoke, and cause nearby female buds to grow seeds. Unfortunately, male pollen sacs are not useful to most home cannabis growers unless you’re a breeder. Identify and remove male cannabis plants ASAP. When pollen sacs open up, they look like white, yellow, green, or
purple flowers (pretty!), but they spread pollen everywhere, which pollinates your female plants. They can also accidentally pollinate any nearby female plants in the area. This is not good for bud quality for you and any of your neighbors who grows. Additionally, male pollen sacs are harsh to smoke and don’t
contain high levels of THC or other cannabinoids. Male pollen also causes female plants to produce small yields of lower-potency, seedy buds. Most home growers should try to get male plants out of the grow room as soon as possible.
How to tell if a cannabis plant is male or female before flowering?
Visually, you usually can’t tell the difference between male and female plants until they start flowering (making either male flowers/pollen sacs or female flowers/buds), especially when it comes to younger plants.
There are 3 main
ways to tell a marijuana plant’s sex while it is still in the vegetative stage. As a result, most cannabis growers identify and toss male plants as soon as possible. That means for a home cannabis grower starting with regular seeds (for example, seeds you find in your weed), about half of
your plants won’t make buds and will need to be tossed. Those are terrible odds, and as a grower, you deserve better. Luckily, there are 3 different ways to determine cannabis plant sex before the flowering stage, but only one way to ensure that all your plants are female. It’s important to get rid of any male plants as soon as possible, because not only do they take up room that could be filled with bud-making plants, the pollen released by male cannabis
plants will pollinate all your female plants and cause seedy buds. 3 ways to tell if a plant is male or female before initiating the marijuana flowering stage - Start with feminized seeds (or female clones) – Best for most home cannabis growers. Starting with feminized seeds or female clones from a trustworthy source guarantees that 99.9% of cannabis plants end up being bud-making female plants.
- Genetic testing – Send a piece of a leaf from your young plant to a lab to test for the sex. This can be expensive and is often not 100%
accurate.
- Examine the “pre-flowers” – Look at the cannabis pre-flowers (little versions of male or female flowers that sometimes appear in the vegetative stage at the joints where the fan leaf meets the stem). This technique works better for some cannabis strains than others, as some plants start growing pre-flowers within 3
weeks of germination, while others may not grow any pre-flowers until 6+ weeks after germination. Pictures below.
1.) Start with feminized cannabis seeds (or female clones)This is the best option for most home cannabis growers. Starting with feminized seeds or female clones guarantees that nearly 100% of cannabis plants are bud-making female plants. The good news is that feminized cannabis seeds are widely available almost anywhere in the world. Learn more about feminized cannabis seeds. Learn where to safely buy cannabis seeds online. 2.) Genetic testingYou can send a piece of a leaf from a 3-week old cannabis seedling and get them to do a genetic test to determine if it’s male or female. The downside of this technique is cannabis genetics are a bit odd. Plants don’t always have neatly separated male and female chromosomes, which means lab testing can occasionally produce false positives and negatives. In other words, some plants
marked as “female” may be male, and some plants marked as “male” may actually be female. Some plants may end up being hermaphrodites. However, lab testing is used by some commercial growers as it does greatly increase the chance that all plants end up being female. You usually can’t look at a cannabis plant this young and tell if it’s male or female, but a genetic test from the lab can sometimes give you a clue… The Most Convenient Way to Know for Sure... If you pay for 100 "regular" cannabis seeds and you're not specifically looking for male plants, you really paid for 50 cannabis seeds and 50 booby traps. It's not just that male plants
don't grow bud (the nerve!), but they pollinate nearby female plants (including your neighbors' plants) which makes them make less bud. Luckily, this is only a problem if you get "regular" seeds, unlike this feminized Candy Games #38
which only makes female plants. If you really want to be thrifty, you can clone any female plant and make a "Bonsai Mother" plant from it. Then you'll have nearly limitless clones for free! Just a
thought... Week 9: "Sweet Dreams" Photoperiod Journal Check out the full grow journal! This week was about regaining control of the grow tent after a crazy flowering
stretch (the huge growth spurt plants get after initiating 12/12). Around 20 days from 12/12, the Purple Ghost Candy plant had grown almost a foot taller than the GG4 x Zkittles in front of it. The Purple Ghost Candy was towering over the GG4 x Zkittles. In fact, let's take a quick look at the whole flowering stretch, from the first day of 12/12 to 20 days later. The Purple Ghost Candy is in the back left corner. Check out the flowering day 20 entry to see how we dealt with the Purple Ghost Candy. By the end of the week,
everything is under control and plants have stopped stretching taller. It's bud city in there! This week... - Wild plants - The plants tried to take over the tent! Hit reply and share your wild plant pictures or story!
- Massive supercropping - We did some massive supercropping, especially on the Purple Ghost Candy plant.
- Pruning - Removed a bunch of leaves and small stems, especially lower ones.
- PPFD
Measurement Comparisons - For those interested in PPFD measurements between different apps and devices. Let us know if there's anything else you want us to measure!
- Plant & strain personalities - Deep discussion into the "personalities" or particular strains and plants.
Check out the full week 10 grow journal entry to see everything that happened! Happy growing, Nebula Haze
GrowWeedEasy.com P.S. Have you ever had a particular plant you just loved (or hated)? Hit reply and tell us about it!
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📸 Weekly Plant Spotlight:
A Cinematic Scene
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"[No description included.]" ~Steven That basement is going to be
the place to be in a couple of weeks! How can I get an invite 🤣 ~Sirius
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Recommended Cannabis Seed Sources
These sources have gotten great reviews from our readers:
- Seed Supreme – Florida, United States
- ILGM (I Love Growing Marijuana) – California, United States
- North Atlantic Seed Co. – Maine, United States
- Seedsman – Ships from US & Europe
- MSNL – Netherlands bank with shipping centers in the US, Canada, and
UK.
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🌳 Check Out Our Grow Community!
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Check out our friendly growing community to ask questions, discuss your grow, share pictures, or otherwise talk about growing cannabis with other real growers! Ask Questions & Talk with Other Growers! Please note: We let each person in manually, so please be patient after you request to join. We'll let you in as soon as possible!
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Who Runs GrowWeedEasy.com?
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Nebula Haze: When I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to make it easy for new growers to get started while helping advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We update/add articles every week. Anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! Current Favorite Strain:
Mandarin Cookies (learn more in my article about relaxing limonene) Learn which seed sources are recommended by Nebula Haze Sirius Fourside: Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture, bubbleponics). Copyright (c) 2025 GrowWeedEasy.com NOTE: If links aren't working or if pictures are not showing up properly, please view the full newsletter here: http://archive.aweber.com/gwe-updates Disclaimer: Grow Weed Easy only recommends products that we've either personally checked out ourselves, or that come from people we know and trust. For doing so, we may receive a commission. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized Financial, Legal, or Medical Advice. The contributors to this magazine grow legally under their local laws but are not lawyers or medical professionals. Any decision to grow
marijuana should only be made after consulting with an experienced lawyer or other legal adviser. Any medical decisions should only be made after speaking with a doctor. Be safe! How Did I Sign Up For This Newsletter? Our records indicate that requested to be added to the GrowWeedEasy.com weekly newsletter at . Date: October 19, 2025
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