Silent Sam

it has been said the best way to scrog is to find a reliable female and use it as a mother from which clones are cut. and it has been said that the best way to clone is pre-flowering buuut... how the hell do you know which plants to clone, before it has flowered. i dont really want to clone a male.

how do the pros do it?

ButterflyDreams

From what I know the act of pre-flowering is accomplished by the plant. This is the reason we say to wait until the plant is sexually mature before flowering.

Usually around the seventh or eight node the plant will begin Alternate Phylotaxy, meaning the branch that is newest will be slightly above the last, instead of directly across.

At the same time the plant forms "pre-flowers", which are just a calyx or two where she/he plans to produce the flower. Females will show two white hairs, males will form a club shaped flower button. Using a 10X or slightly stronger magnifier will show sex even earlier as the female hairs and males club will be more evident in their earliest form. (whew, what a mouthful)

By watching for the preflowers, which form during normal vegetative growth, you can determine the sex prior to flowering without subjecting the plant to the shock of early force-flowering.

Force-flowering, which is what i think you were refering to, is the practice of placing a plant into 12/12 just long enough to see hairs and balls. The plant is then placed back into vegetative growth, unless it's male (of course), and finished normally. The shock comes from the fact that this is actually a minimal reveg.

Live, Learn,Grow.
BD

Silent Sam

ok, easier than i thought, i was worried about havung to cut up my plant into clones, and flower one of them to detirmine sex...


does "shock flowering" screw the plant up very bad? seems to me it would be less than beneficial

ButterflyDreams

Forcing the plant to flower, then reverting back to vegetative growth will always cause some shock to the plant. In essence you are causing a mini-re-veg. THe effects can be minimised through proper care and minimal treatment, but they will always be present to some extent.

If sexing prior to maturity is necessary simply cover one branch with dark paper or cloth for a few days. That branch will begin to flower without causing too much effect on the rest of the plant.

Live, Learn, Grow.
BD

__________________
She stood beside him like a rainbow braided.
~ P.B. Shelley

veedub69

or do the method where you cover only one branch with black paper for 12 hours of the day then light and over and over
this shows flowers on the plant without shocking the thing
piece
Vee

smokinrav

Well, I suppose Ill be the one to go against the grain here and say flower your plant and take your clones from a newly sexed female. Dont put the plants back into veg! Thats a waste of time. Using Schultz Rooting powder from Menards (no, no gel or liquid) my flowering clones root in less than two weeks, same as from my clone mother. And with the same success rate. Some may tell you it takes longer, but not in my admittedly limited experience.

bgetting

even better than ever putting your mother into flowering is to take a couple clones, stick them in rockwool, and then put them under 12/12 fluoros. You won't keep them for the ScrOG, but they will show signs of sex in a short time, and then you will know what the mother is. Works great, saves time, and most of all you don't have to put your mother into 12/12, which I think is always a bad idea.

bgetting

oooh. and I forgot to add this about the covering one branch thing. It will cause the mother to think it is flowering, not just that one branch. It sounds like a good plan, but you can get a plant to flower by only subjecting one leaf to the 12/12 light conditions. (some plants anyway, and I am pretty sure MJ is one of them) This is eveidence that the flowering mechanism is transported throughout the plant. It has led to HUGE problems in research for that problem. It also implies that there is some sort of signal transducton in plants, on a large scale. Blah, Blah, they are the two mysteries that I really liked about plants when I started getting into them, that is why I ramble.
So be careful with that one, it can stress that plant just the same as by flowering the whole thing and reverting.

XcG

I'm sorry to interupt but....can Butterflydreams explain to me what she ment by this Pharagraph?...i'm not clearly understanding this phrase ..."Usually around the seventh or eight node the plant will begin Alternate Phylotaxy, meaning the branch that is newest will be slightly above the last, instead of directly across.

I'm not sure as to what you ment "slightly above the last?...please explain???

XcG

bgetting

Phyllotaxy is the branching pattern of a plant. There are a couple kinds. In MJ, there are 2 (normally). One is OPPOSITE. this is where each node has 2 branches, and they are on opposite sides of the stem from each other. The other is ALTERNATE. This is where each node has only one branch. The next node up will also have only one, but it will branch from the opposite side of the stem. When looked at as a whole, each node alternates which side of the stem it branches from.

So what BD was saying, XcG, is that in alternate phyllotaxy, one branch will slightly higher then the last, meaning that each node will have one branch, instead of two per node. Man, I think I may have just confused you more.

Anyway, when MJ flowers (or becomes sexually mature), the phyllotaxy switches from opposite to alternate. You can see it when they are growing. First they always have 2 branches at each node, then higher up they only have one per node.
Hopefully this didn't spark more questions than it answers.