Cannabis plants can either turn out to be male or female during their growth cycle. In this article, we will discuss early ways to identify potential male plants and what you may do with them.
An obvious way to identify male cannabis plants are the pollen sacks that develop, whereas female plants will develop flowers. The male plant grows anthers, known to “growmies” as bananas or “nanners”, while the female plant grows stigmas, the long white tentacles that form a flower.
The pollen found in the male sacks are used to pollinate female flowers and produce seed. This is not the outcome most growers want these days. A seasoned grow prefers to produce buds that are seedless or “sensimilla”, a Spanish word for seedless cannabis.
Furthermore, when a male pollinates a female plant a lot of the plant’s energy during the flowering stage is used in the making of seeds rather than the flower. More importantly, you don’t want to spend time removing seeds from your flower before skinning up a joint.
Most cannabis seeds that are sold as regular seeds and not feminized or automatic seeds, can either be male or female. It’s impossible to tell if your plant will be male until they start sexing, which happens naturally during the late summer months. This is because cannabis goes from a vegetative to a flowering state during the shorter days and longer nights.
Buying the right seeds is the best way to avoid dealing with male cannabis plants. So it’s best to choose feminized cannabis seeds which are (almost always) guaranteed to always be a female plant.
Some growers believe that male plants from the same seeds are a bit taller, or stretch more, having longer inter-nodes between branches. The best way to look for males is when the plants start going into pre-flower and catching them before the pollen sacks become active.
Male plants serve no real purpose when growing for medical or recreation. They don’t have flowers to smoke and the pollen will just cause your cannabis plants to get pollinated with seed. Unless you want to make seeds for your next growing season, the best thing is to carefully remove all identified male plants and put them in your compost.
If you are brave enough, you might want to add the leaves of the plant to a nutritious smoothie, there is a lot of nutritional value in the leaves that our bodies could use.
Another clever idea is to feed it to your pets or domesticated animals, pigs, donkeys, and chickens love cannabis leaves, and it’s a very healthy addition to their diet. If all else fails, your compost heap or worm bin is the best place for any male cannabis plant, your worms will love you!
So to wrap up, unless you are a cannabis breeder or would like to grow seeds, it’s best to practise removing all males from your indoor or outdoor grows. If you don’t even want to deal with the potential of male plants, buy feminized cannabis seeds or cannabis clones for your garden.