While I was checking on my plants giving them their water, I saw the pistils of one of my four plants becoming more apparent like they do when they are flowered. But at the time I was still growing the plants in their vegetative state. This is not something I have encountered before, and I had discussed this with @futuremind and @derangedvisions to see what could be possibly going on with the plants.
There are these kind of cannabis plants known as “autos”, which are designed to flower automatically without the need to induce it. Normally when it comes to flowering, its something I decide when its time. But with auto seeds I must go with the plants choice and when its ready it just happens. This was unexpected, as I did not know these were auto seeds.
 Strain: | Zebra Stripe |
|---|---|
 Dominance: | 80/20 Indica Dominant Hybrid |
 Nutrients used: | Foxfarm Grow big and Foxfarm Big Bloom / CO2 enriched grow environment |
 Phenotype traits: | Compact nodes and short but wide growth, stubby leaves. During flower should be able to turn purple or black due to genetics from the blackwater strain |
 Lineage: | Blackwater x Blueberry Muffin x Alien OG |
 Current growing stage: | Early flower |
 Current plant age: | 41 days old |
 Sex: | Auto females and possible hermaphrodites |
 Location: | Central Virginia USA. |
We can see the white hairs forming on the leaf clusters, this tipped me off something was changing in the plants. Only one was doing it at the time, but a few days later all of them started.
These are the budding of the colas, and once this happens there is no turning back to growing them in their vegetative state.
To me this is unfortunate, as I was hoping to grow them taller and top them once again for a third time. The plants are only around 12 inches right now and I was wanting to grow them up to around 15-17 inches. As that is the max height my grow tent supports, I guess I will just have some smaller plants this grow.
Starting the flowering process:
Changing the light bulb from a metal halide to a high pressure sodium will make the light spectrum shift. Giving a yellow color to the room. Its quite unpleasing to the eyes and makes everything very blue when you look away.. lol
I trained the tallest of the plants, to help them stay the same height as the shorter ones. I want a uniform canopy, and hopefully will get that by keeping them all the same size throughout their grow cycle.
These soft wires work great for training them. I just have to make sure I am gentle not to break the stems while working the wire around them.
While I handle the plants, I am getting that bubblegum smell coming off them. Seems like the smell is getting stronger every day, interesting how they got that phenotype into the plant.
The netting has been put up and now its time for the period called "the stretch". This is caused by the light spectrum shifting going from the MH to HPS bulbs. It encourages longer node growth and gives the plants the needed light spectrum for flowering. Since these are autos, I do not need to change the light timing to 12 hour on and 12 hours off. I keep the lights on the 18/6 cycle as they are already flowering and do not need to be induced into such a state.
Another unexpected change:
It would seem one of my plants is a male, or possibly a hermaphrodite. In the above picture we can see at the center there are some "bell" like flowerings forming. This is usually the sign of a male.
We can see another in the above picture.
Though its also forming pistils, so its possible its both a male and female.. known as a hermaphrodite in the cannabis world.
A few more pictures of the top of one of the nodes shows how it seems like it forming flowers. So I will not kill this plant yet, as if its a hermaphrodite I will just let it flower. It may pollinate the other females, but the hermaphrodite will still form buds.
How it became a hermaphrodite is harder to say, its possible the light disruption. We had a few power outages during heavy rain, and if the plants are unhappy that can happen.
I clipped off the flowers forming on the one plant, and I hope the others do not form them as well. But I will keep checking them and see how they turn out. If that one plant turns out to be a male I will remove it and just have three females. Its too early to say, need to wait for more bud formation to make that decision.
And now they are flowering we wait two months for them to fully grow and I should have buds.. Maybe buds full of seeds, maybe not.. We shall see.
Previous posts on this grow:
@solominer/day-36-mid-way-through-vegging