Causes of Hermies/Intersex Plants?

[PatrickStar]

Hi fam I just had to pull a bunch of a cut that has gone herm on me in mid-late flower. The plants were 6+ wks after first, and were going all Herm Edwards on me. The other plants (2 other cuts-1 is sister to this one, & 5 seedplant females from different parents/grandparents) are fine, and I know that I don't have a light leak or other light related issues.

My question is, what other than genetics & light stress will force plants to hermie? I'm trying to figgure out if I just had a sensitive cut, & heat/humidity/nutes combined to maker her go off, OR if I jaust had a plant that was genetically prone to nanners, so that's what she did.

My room was getting warm, with the highest temps occasionally hitting 90 under the bulbs, but that would be for no more than an hour or so till I opened windows n doors, lol. I was also having rising humidity, as I didn't have an exhaust to run during the night-phase. I grew these in amended (guano, crabshell, compost) soil & fed pee, kelp, NH fish hydrolysate with ~2-3 light doses of protekt silicone. ~3+ weeks, I topdressed with some Earth Juice "Hydro-Spice Bloom". It is chicken feather meal, some bone meal, and other dry, insoluble organics. None of my plants look burned to me.

So I'm trying to figgure out if I did this to my plants, or if the plants did it to me. I know that i't my fault either way, because I should have tested the clone before flooding my grow with them.

[b0b_b1tch1n]

Originally Posted by PatrickStar

Hi fam I just had to pull a bunch of a cut that has gone herm on me in mid-late flower. The plants were 6+ wks after first, and were going all Herm Edwards on me. The other plants (2 other cuts-1 is sister to this one, & 5 seedplant females from different parents/grandparents) are fine, and I know that I don't have a light leak or other light related issues.

My question is, what other than genetics & light stress will force plants to hermie? I'm trying to figgure out if I just had a sensitive cut, & heat/humidity/nutes combined to maker her go off, OR if I jaust had a plant that was genetically prone to nanners, so that's what she did.

My room was getting warm, with the highest temps occasionally hitting 90 under the bulbs, but that would be for no more than an hour or so till I opened windows n doors, lol. I was also having rising humidity, as I didn't have an exhaust to run during the night-phase. I grew these in amended (guano, crabshell, compost) soil & fed pee, kelp, NH fish hydrolysate with ~2-3 light doses of protekt silicone. ~3+ weeks, I topdressed with some Earth Juice "Hydro-Spice Bloom". It is chicken feather meal, some bone meal, and other dry, insoluble organics. None of my plants look burned to me.

So I'm trying to figgure out if I did this to my plants, or if the plants did it to me. I know that i't my fault either way, because I should have tested the clone before flooding my grow with them.

was you pee diluted ? , the temps werent that extream unless the plant/strain is very sensitive

peace

[Greyybeard]

Hi Patrickstar.

One of the things that I've seen cause hermi issues with me, is not actually light leaks. But irregular light schedule. I face this issue every summer because I don't use lights during that time. I place the plants outside before work 5:30 am and I place them back into the room at 5:30 pm so I have to come straight home from work. And if there is things like traffic ect... I start to sweat bullets. Because I know how the strains I work with will react if I'm late getting them into the room.
With that all said you mentioned the high temps and opening windows and doors, so was there ever a time you were maybe late to close them up? Just a thought. Only because I've seen this happen to me before. Hope this helps abit.
Gb

[PatrickStar]

Thanks for the responses guys. I just got back from having to tell a buddy of mine that I gave a bunch of these cuts too that they are worthless

Ok, I can get a lil wordy, but I want to describe the situation as best possible.

Thru Nov, I had 3 plants on a veg schedule (16-20 hrs lights on). 2 were seedplants that had shown sex, and one was a re-veg seedplant. Dec 1 I moved them from life under a 400cmh to a nice south facing window, keeping them on a veg schedule by supplementing with the overhead lightbulb in the room that they were in. Dec 2 I took cuts of all of them. ~Dec 7 I hung the CMH, and flipped them to a 12/12 light schedule along with some seedplants that I had vegging for ~ a month.

The room is a 10 x 12 x 8 w/no hvac of it's own. I have a 400, 400, & 1k hung covering a 10 x 3+ (Prolly 4' footprint under the 1k). No glass or heat spreaders. For circulation I have a 20" boxfan blowing up and slightly on an angle. For ventilation, I was just opening the door, and letting the rest of the house act as a 'lung'.

I was pretty good with opening and closing the door just after/before lights off. I am up before 8am every day, and home by 8pm every night, so I don't think that I was off more than 10min any one day, and most days I was on point. The longest that they would have been left sealed up would have been ~2hrs after lights on, and that would have been at MOST 3 days out of the whole 6+week cycle. With the door open, temps never got above 80 ambient, so I'm assuming that they were under 90 on the canopy. I constantly do the 'back of hand' heat test, as I move plants around to maintain canopy height.

The 2 things that I question are the overnight humidity, and the possible Phosphorus levels. What does a P overdose look like? I had low levels of bat guano mixed in the soil, and topdressed with that EJ 1-10-2 @ the 'weak' levels recco'd on the bag
(like 1-2 teaspoons/gal soil).

Yo b0b The pee feeds are generally done the day after a b vitamin & ginseng, so I get a nice hot piss . I will generally save between a pint and a quart (first few hours of the day), then break that into 4 gallons feed with some kelp or protekt for K. This round, I only fed the pee feeds 2-3x's, and it was all pre & early flower. If anything, this round I fed slightly more 2-4-1 fish. Combined with the topdress, I'm wondering if there wasn't a P overdose? But again, none of the other 2 cuts or the 5 female seedplants acted up at all.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by PatrickStar

So I'm trying to figgure out if I did this to my plants, or if the plants did it to me.

My guess; I would say a bit of both. The cut genetically has the tendency to herm but only when stressed. Lots of different things can stress a plant like this to produce male flowers - light schedules/light leaks, high nutes/hot spots in the medium, PH out of range, root bound, accumulation of salts in the medium, temperatures, HID lighting, gibberellins in the nutes or soil mix components, etc.

One thing I have pondered is that moving an indoor plant outdoors seems to obviously stress the plants out initially (I have assumed this is more UV shock related) yet the same plants grown outdoor seem to be more resistant to exhibiting intersex traits. I've tried using the exact same soil mix with clones [having intersex tendencies] indoor and outdoor and have found the same thing. It all points to HID lighting but I don't understand why. What is it specifically? Possibly a narrow part of the light spectrum being too intense or the light spectrum overall not being balanced?

[Bambi]

hi patrick'' - just wondering what type of door your using,?

ie:- a bedroom door, if yes is it covered over the whole door on the inside, to prevent light leaks by the hinges or sides,''

I was reading Marks input on the lighting aspect of it all and what might be missing,?

It got me thinking about the only light spectrum we dont use with regards to indoor gro lights, that being the GREEN light, the sun has blue red and the green spectrums of light rays as we no yes., the green light they say isnt used much by the plant life, - Yet used a little and for what purpose i ponder over, and over?

Leaving a green light on 24/7 in a flowering room is meant to be harmless to our plants, and why i dont cover green light on air/cons or other switchs, i wish surge power cords/leads where all colored green, no more tape covering!!!

[PatrickStar]

Yo Mark, Bam

The door is a regular bedroom door, but I have strips of black sheeting tacked around where the door meets the frame to prevent any light leaks. I also have 2 strips of black plastic with mylar on the inside hanging, 1 of which is between the garden and the door. I have hung out in there a few times, looking for leaks, letting my eyes adjust, and there are none. I even peeked in ~ sunrise, and the window is 100% sealed off with black plastic.

It's probably genetic I knew the g'ma had a tendency to throw nanners under stress, but I hadn't seen it in the 50+ daughters of hers that I've run. This is my first go-round with any of her grand daughters (made from a selected daughter that was rock solid over 2+yrs) from clone, and I suppose that I got one where the genetics lined up all wrong.

[Mark]

Hey PatrickStar,

It seems like you're doing everything right but maybe they're particularly sensitive to something in your soil mix. The point bob_b1tch1n made about the use of urine strikes me as a possibility and might be worth investigating if you want to try to manage the problem. Otherwise you can try to breed it out depending how many ancestors are involved, how far removed they are, and if you can find suitable substitutes.

If you've done 1:1 matings and know all of the plants in the "immediate" pedigree (which it sounds like you do), you can track down and eliminate the culprit(s) causing the unwanted trait to be expressed (provided you still have the right seeds/siblings to draw from for substitutions). You won't end up with exactly the same result but with some work you'll be able to get at least very close (hopefully better!), minus the hermy trait.

The plant would want to be very special to warrant the work involved but it's a feasible think to achieve.

Some food for thought:

Originally Posted by Nevil

My belief that intersex characteristics are carried on the X, stems from the results of many 1:1 matings done with single females mated to many male siblings. It was pretty much an on or off thing depending on the male.
N.

Originally Posted by Nevil

The males were siblings to each other, not necessarily to the female in question. In the cases that lead me to this conclusion, the offending ancestor turned out to be the paternal grandmother. Half of her sons threw hermies regardless of what they were put to.
N.

[N*S*E*W*]

Patrick ...I had a similar issue when I had noticed a mite problem rearing its head in the flower area and I hit the ladies hard with (GH) Aza-max and re-dosed too soon...(3-4 days) and it seems the x-tra added stress affected only the weakest.... most hermie prone strains....just throwing that out there

My .02

N*

[cannatari]

I've got a theory going that overfeeding can trigger what I think most of us agree on is a defense mechanism.

I've come to discover that my 2 Mango Haze phenos do not absorb nutrients after a certain point in mid-flowering. This lends me to suspect that reproductive functions are supported by energy stored in the fan leaves. This makes allot of sense to me that the plant would evolve to rely as little as possible on it's environment to successfully reproduce.

I grow in a water-culture environment is how I know they stop feeding. It's happens about Day 30 for my 8-9 week pheno and it's just starting to bud about then. Interesting to note that they are actually expelling nutrients through the 2nd 1/2 of their cycle or they will if you let them I should say. I'm not saying it's the best way to treat them, it's just a school of thought. Some plants are enhanced from the additives but I like the clean burn that comes from a good flush.

So, if the plant manufactures it's own bloom-booster and we try to force the one we bought at the store on it... Who knows? It could be that the plant loves the bottled stuff and herms out in hopes to produce progeny who are able to take advantage of the improvement to the environment. I consider adaptation to be a defense mechanism. More likely though is that the polarity of the molecules in the bottled nutes are interfering with the transportation of the plant's stored nutrients to the flowers. The flower becomes a nanner because the the required conditions for it to bear seed is not being met.

Just throwing out a possibility.

Peace.