newbie need help please - is this a male?

[robsamui]

Hi - my first successful grow. I'm using feminized seeds but this one has gone all perverted, I think. This should be a female Cotton Candy on the 10th day of 12-12 growth. But check out the clearest pic at the top, just under my finger is what I think is a make preflower.

Can anyone confirm, please?

Thanks,

Rob

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Unfortunately that looks like a he-she to me--a hermaphrodite plant. There are signs of both female parts and male parts. The little football shaped things are male parts. The 2 white hairs are female parts. This happens a lot when people use bagseed to grow bud. The male flowers will pollinate the female flowers and you end up with a bunch of seeded bud.

 

[Rosebud]

It looks like it has pollinated it self, (selfing), thus the red hair. Sorry guy, bad news.

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Where did you get the seed(s)? That is absolutely a hermie. And at this stage with so many nanners showing, it should be gotten rid of.

 

[robsamui]

Hi fellas.

I posted a long reply here, with 4 or 5 photos.
It was marked for the moderator's approval.

That was three days ago and it's not appeared yet!

But now they are going thu OK. Odd!

 

[robsamui]

ps - I deleted the initial photos, as I realised they're on my photobucket album and anyone can scroll thru!
Now reposted from a different account.

 

[robsamui]

Try again with the long post!

I bought the seeds from Herbies in the UK. But I don't think the seeds are the problem!

Thing is, I'm living in the tropics, with ambient temps going between 86 degrees and 93 degrees - and that's with no lights on in my growtent. (When the temp gets to around 93 the main tent lights go off and all the fans come on!)

The other drawback is that the hours of daylight shift from 13 light snd 11 dark - to 11 light and 13 dark. So I ended up going for a small growtent.

This is my first successful grow - I now know enough not to try and grow my seeds outside, for both the reasons above. There is constant air circulation with a bank of 4-inch computer fans inside and a 6-inch fan blowing in at the top through a vent. And constant CO2 being generated to combat the high temps.

Also I have done something I haven't come across on the forums - placed my grow tent on its side. I'm running 8 plants in a tight LST group, and apart from some slight PH problems, and spider mites, all has gone very well. All except for the three herms I have now discovered and pulled out.

I tried four different strains - all feminized seeds. The Sensible Pure Kush is doing the best. The two cotton candys have both gone herm, as has one of the two Kera White Thunders. This I am sure is due to heat stress. Fortunately there is no signs of any red hairs on the other colas so I'm hoping I caught the herm plants in time, even though at least one of them self-pollinated.

Here's a couple pics of my grow - I'll send some more in a while as the buds are coming along nicely, although compact, and are now about 2 weeks underway. (The photos here are up to 8 weeks - that's the one with the feet!)

 

[Rosebud]

That is high temperatures. What lights are you using? Not only do high temps cause femed plants to hermi, heat can make a photoperiod plant hermi too.

They look pretty good. I am glad you have two fans going, but we need to get the heat down in there. Although after looking again, i don't see heat stress on the leaves. They look pretty good. And your not too dumb. Everyone is new once.

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

I simply do not believe that the heat caused this. While those temps are high, I really don't think that that is the cause of your hermi. It hermied right off the bat which makes me think that it is in the genetics. However, the light going on and off at random times may have been a contributing cause. Plants like some kind of steady light source with regular hours--you really can't just turn the light out whenever it gets hot--that totally confuses the plant.

I really think that your near 12/12 light would be a good thing rather than a bad thing. It is far harder to control temps when you live somewhere that regularly gets into triple digits and the sun shines for 16 hours a day.

I stress the @#$% out of my plants sometimes and it is a very rare occurrence that I get a hermy. And never from stable genetics.

I think we need to try and understand why you cannot get the temps down? You absolutely need to be able to keep things a bit cooler or you are not going to be able to get through flowering.

 

[robsamui]

Chuckle - well I was dumb enough to think that because I put wheels on the table under the growtent, I could turn it round to the window to get the sunlight in the afternoon.

So I bought myself a lux meter and started with 4x 45-watt CFLs plus two cheap Chinese red/blue (proper ones) 55-watt LED grow lamps. The light spread was uneven so I added 2x 85-watt CFLs in the top middle and also 2x 18-watt strip fluorescents at the front and the back. The lowest light area is 5K lumens, with 8K right in the middle of the base of the tent.

The heat is minimal - only enough to raise the temp 4 or 5 degrees. But when it's already at 90 degrees, that matters. The first 3 weeks I was using no CO2 and growth had come to a halt and leaves were curling and stressed. I put in 3 plastic milkbottles with yeast and sugar and almost overnight all the plants took off again.

When temperatures get to 92 - 93 degrees (around 34C) I kill the hottest lamps - usually the 2 big central 85-watt CFLs. There's still plenty of light (another 8 lights running) so it's not a drastic drop. If the ambient temperature throughout the house is 95 degrees anyway, without an air-conditioned room for the plants there's nothing to be done. I'll have to wait to see what happens!

I'm checking them daily for more signs of herms (looking for the red hairs too) but so far so good. Fingers crossed!

 

[robsamui]

Here's a question for you - I've noticed that there are several buds now with brown hairs. One plant, for example, has 7 colas forming, and all of the buds have dense white hairs apart from three. I reckon that these three buds were fertilised by the rogue hermies.

I assume that it's safe to leave these fertilised buds alone? Is there a reason to chop them?

Thanks in advance,
R

 

[The Hemp Goddess]

Just so you are aware, lumen for lumen, CFLS put out more heat than HIDs. You might want to see if you can get an air cooled HPS if you are serious about growing. We used to smoke seedy bud all the time in the "old days". It won't hurt--it just will be mostly seeds and the quality of the bud will not be what it could have been if it were sensi, but it is better than nothing. If the first pictures you posted were taken recently, you still have a long ways to go--probably 6-8 weeks or more. Don't take them before the trichs say they are ready.

 

[robsamui]

Well my tent has a 24-inch ceiling, so a couple of HIDs going across the 5-foot length, 18-inches above the plants, isn't really viable! The heat given off by the CFLs is hardly anything 18 inches away. But thanks for the info - I'll keep that in mind.

This is a pic of one plant at 10 weeks after 3 days of total darkness prior going to 12-12, plus the same plant after another 9 days. Hopefully not too many fertilised buds!

 

[Hushpuppy]

You can look into getting the 100-150w HPS (to use during the flowering) and use several of them within the cool tubes, and connected to a ventilation system. Then you can allow them to be quite close and get a lot more lumens. This will give you more dense buds with better resin gland production. Just a suggestion