By Chuck Ludley, Green Rush Daily^[1]

If you’re new to growing weed, you might not know that there are female and male cannabis plants. In fact, the only way to grow plants that will produce usable bud is to figure out if you’ve got female plants or male plants. This guide will give you all the info you need to master this cannabis growing fundamental.

Why You Need To Know

There’s one super important reason why you need to know if your cannabis plants are male or female. Male plants mostly produce pollen instead of the luscious buds people use for smoking. Female plants are the ones that produce the big, fat, sticky icky buds you’re looking for.

When you’re growing weed^[2], you need to be sure that you’re growing only feminized plants. If you’ve got male plants mixed in with your other plants, not only will those ones not produce any bud, but they could also ruin your females plants as well.

That’s because if there are mature female and male plants growing next to each other, the male plant will pollinate the female plant. And when that happens, she starts producing tons of seeds.

So if you want to maximize your usable bud, and coax your plants into producing fat, seed-free flowers, then you’ve got to carefully identify what sex your plants are. Once that’s done, you need to remove all male plants before they start pollinating the female ones.

How To Tell What Sex Your Cannabis Plants Are

As soon as your plants are six weeks old, it’s time to start figuring out what sex they are. To do this, look at all the joints where branches and stems connect. This is where the tell-tale signs will first show up.

If a plant is male, little balls will start showing up at the joints between branches. As they grow larger they’ll start to look like little clusters of grapes. These are actually pollen sacs. If the plant reaches the flowering stage^[3], these sacs will open up and the pollen will spread all over the place. If the pollen lands on a female plant, it will fertilize the flowers and they’ll start to produce a sh*t ton of seeds.

On the other hand, if your plant is female, it will not produce those little balls. Instead, look for a wispy, white, hair-looking thing to show up at the joints of branches. These are the plant’s pistils, and they’ll eventually pave the way for your plant to start producing the buds you’re looking for.

Every once in a while, you’ll find a plant that grows both male pollen sacs and feminized pistils. If this is the case, remove the plant from your other female plants because its pollen sacs will eventually open up. These plants will often pollinate themselves, but they’ll also pollinate any other female plants in the vicinity.

Isolate Female Plants

Once you know the sex of all your plants, you’ve got to isolate the female ones. Assuming you’re only trying to get useable bud, these are the only plants you should be growing.

Simply remove all the male plants and any plants that produce both pistils and pollen sacs. At this point, your grow operation should be full of only healthy, strong female plants.

Now it’s just a matter of keeping them well fed and helping them grow^[4] into the flowering phase. Once they reach that stage, they’ll start producing beautiful, crystal-covered flowers. Use our guide for harvesting^[5] to know when you to start removing the mature buds.

Buy Feminized Seeds

One final note. If you want to avoid all of this, you can always buy feminized seeds from a reliable seed seller. These seeds should produce only female plants.

But even if you go this route, you should still double check your plants when they’re six weeks old. Mother Nature is unpredictable, and it’s not uncommon for a male plant to sneak in there.

References

1. ^{^} Green Rush Daily (www.greenrushdaily.com)
2. ^{^} growing weed (www.greenrushdaily.com)
3. ^{^} the flowering stage (www.greenrushdaily.com)
4. ^{^} helping them grow (www.greenrushdaily.com)
5. ^{^} guide for harvesting (www.greenrushdaily.com)
6. ^{^} Anthony Martinelli (thejointblog.com)