A question from a fellow grower:
can you tell me what I did wrong, I was doing everything right and I was at the point that I would harvest.
I had a week away the girls were perfect, and then I started to trim and hang to dry when I noticed all my girls turn to boys,
the buds were nice but balls were everywhere, and seeds. I started with all girls, cloned from the mothers and now this.
please what went wrong, should I throw it all out or just dry it anyway.
Just dry it anyway, it might not be as good as if it had no seeds at all, but it will still be good.
There are numerous reasons the plants could have developed some hermaphrodite/male flowers at the end, some strains do that if you wait too long to harvest them, it is a natural self defense mechanism if you think about it. All life has developed and evolved to produce more life, and a female plant that has not been pollinated to produce seeds for the next generation will go to extra measures to ensure the next generation will survive, right?
That being said, next time maybe harvest as soon as all the trichomes are milky white, maybe before the plant has a chance to develop full functioning male parts. Also avoid overly acidic changes in your soil or hydro medium, try extra to keep it closer to 7 ph, and not below 5.5, as extra acidic growing mediums have been reported to increase the number of males from regular seeds and an increase in hermaphroditism as well. Photo period(light cycle) stress can also cause hermaphrodites. Make sure you are not changing up the light at all, same time of day off and on every day and no light leaking in when it is supposed to be the dark period and do not revert from the 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness for flowering to anything less than 12 hours of darkness, keeping an eye on these things will reduce the chance of it happening again in the future.