Have you ever excitedly opened your new pack of baby marijuana seeds and thought to yourself, “Oh gee! I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl!” Even if you’re well-versed in the feminization process and understand that every seed we sell here at Pacific Seed Bank is going to develop into a female plant, you might still find yourself wondering, from time to time: how does one sex marijuana seeds? Or marijuana plants, for that matter.

Being a “bank,” we at PSB naturally distribute the painstakingly prepared products of a lot of different breeders, and as such we get a lot of questions about seed quality, reliability, and freshness. It’s cool — we understand that with numerous vendors comes the potential for QA to fall to the wayside. But we put the quality of our products at the top of our list. Included on that list is not only reliability — the knowledge that our seeds are completely feminized — but also our dedication to education about marijuana! So that’s why, even though you don’t need to sex marijuana seeds or plants you get from PSB, we’re going to talk a bit about how to do that!

Can You Sex Marijuana Seeds?

If you’ve browsed our education section or that of any other breeder or seed retailer, you’ve likely seen a warning: try to germinate your seeds regardless of what they look like. Sure, wrinkled or cracked seeds have the potential to be duds, but with the money you just spent, you’re going to want to give them a shot, anyway. So, you know there are potentially ways to determine (or technically guess) whether or not a seed will germinate, but are there ways to tell whether a seed is male or female, assuming you didn’t buy feminized?

First of all, just in case you’re new to feminized seeds, let me clarify: we don’t “sex” our marijuana seeds and set aside the female ones – that would be mind-numbing. Rather, feminized marijuana seeds come from female marijuana plants that had no males involved in seed production. No male plant means no y chromosomes, which means no male seeds. You can learn more about it on our feminized seeds product page (just scroll down)!

So, that was a lot of lead-up to telling you there isn’t any confirmed way to tell from a handful of seeds which ones will produce male and which will produce female plants. In order to offset your disappointment, I scoured the internet looking for old wives’ tales about how to identify the gender of seed (you know, like how some people believe if you’re carrying low it’s a boy). Apparently, there’s a chart out there that supposedly outlines the physical differences between male-producing and female-producing seeds; if you find it, please share! After that uneventful section, let’s move on to better and brighter things.

How to Sex Marijuana Plants

Rejoice! While regular marijuana seeds are a toss-up, it is definitely possible to tell male plants from female plants, and not just when they start to flower (which is a relief, because you have to pull those male plants early on if you don’t want them to pollinate your females and ruin your bud). You can actually buy kits that let you know your seedlings’ genders really shortly after germination, but if you’re not that much of a die-hard, you can wait til they grow a bit.

Around week six is when any old Mary Jane or Martin Jack can start to discern the gender of their marijuana plants. In this pre-flowering phase, little bumps start growing between the stalk and the stems. These bumps will either become pollen sacs (on the dudes) or stigmas (on the dudettes). Some time before they are actually mature enough to carry out their purpose, you can tell what’s what. “Pre-flowers” develop around four weeks after germination. (Pre-flowers. Doesn’t that sound nice? Like maybe they get delivered to your house before your big date? Bonus points if they literally deliver marijuana flowers.)

Using just a basic magnifying glass, you will probably be able to tell what’s going on at those nodes. The “bracts” of the female plant will be developing little hairs, while the males produce, well, balls. Seriously. Just when you were worried you wouldn’t be able to remember. See hairs? Let those sexy ladies flourish. See balls? (It’s already getting old.) If you’re looking for a vibrant, potent pot.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. But even though it’s totally possible to get a great, healthy yield from regular marijuana seeds, why would you go to the trouble and stress of planting both males and females when you could just buy feminized ones? Cue sales pitch. At Pacific Seed Bank, we only sell lab-tested, fully functional feminized seeds that give you a great yield. So check out our selection of primo breeders and get your grow on!