Getting your Cannabis Plants into the flowering stage

Marijuana Plants usually start to blossom with the end of summer.
They recognize seasons by how many hours of light they are getting during the day.
If you're growing Indoors there are, of course,
no seasons - just your Lamps that provide light for your plants.

So if you are growing Indoors you need to simulate the change of seasons by the amount or hours of light that a plant is getting.

To do so, you can use any usual timer switch which
again can be bought in most building supplies store or electronics store.
Plants do need 16 hours of Light when they are in their vegetative state which would
equal summer in the real world and 12 Hours of Light in their flowering state,
which would equal the end of summer or autumn in the real world.

After you adjust your Lighting system to 12 Hours of Light the Plants begin to show,
which gender they are, but it may take up to three weeks for you to be able to recognize
whether your plant is a male, a female or even a hermaphrodite.

Female Plants will Produce tiny white Hairs on Top of their Buds (Flowers) which can be used to identify their gender.
They also start to become really sticky and give out a sweet and fragrant smell. Male Plants in contrast will produce little
sacks that are filled with pollen, these little sacks do look like tiny bananas.

Female Buds covered in sweet Resin | Male bags of Pollen

If you're interested in harvesting good Marijuana you should remove / kill male plants as soon as they show up. If you leave the male plants in your Grow box or in your garden, they will pollinate your female plants.

Pollinated female plants will then start to build seeds, which is nice if you want to have more seeds for your next grow, but also will they produce Cannabis which is a lot less potent and generally considered low quality. So avoid having your Plants pollinated by removing the males early on!

If you want to reduce the risk of getting male plants at all you should always go for feminized seeds, which are a bit pricier than regular seeds but usually return only female plants. In the end you can save a lot of time and money with feminized or female seeds.

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