Hello everybody, I´m from Brazil and I´ve been following this website for quite some time now learning everything there is to know about growing. This is the best site in this subject and in my opinion here are the best people on the cannabis community. I´ve been doing a lot of research one the subject and I have a good idea of what I want to do, but I need your help on some things.

So here it is: I can´t grow my own right now. But I´ll be graduating from college in a short time and I´ll be moving to my own place so I´m planning a closet grow and I´d like to see if anyone could help me with some questions.

The setup I´m thinking is a 1sq meter (11sq feet) closet with a 400 hps light.
I want to have a small veg room (just for mothers and clones), but at first I´ll have only the 1sq meter closet.
I want to flower 4 plants in this closet, so I was thinking in germing about 9 seeds at first, and then sexing the plants to end up with 4 females. My doubts are:

- I planned on planting this 9 seeds in 3-4L pots and then putting them on 12/12 for about 6/7 days to sex them, kill all the males and then repotting 4 (hopefully I´ll get 4) chosen females into 10/12L pots and switching them back to 18/6 for a while for root development and finally putting them on 12/12 again to flower. Can this be done??? Or will I stress them too much????

- If it can be done. How tall should they be when I put them to flower considering it will be 4 plants in 1sq meter???? What´s the plant size (full grown) that this area can handle (considering it would be 4 plants)? Do you think 4 plants would be a good number?? Or should I consider more smaller plants? (I want to work with clones, but later, at first I would like to do it this way)

I know there are feminized seeds but they say they can herm easily under stress and considering it would be my first grow I don´t want to take that chance.

ANY suggestion is appreciated.
thanks guys, and sorry for my english..!!!

You could do as you suggest but it will stress them a hell of a lot . The change from grow to flower, to grow and then back to flower will not do them any favours and will take for ever.What variety are you planning to grow? That should determine how many to grow. I've used female seeds on several occasions and never had any problems with hermies.
Hope this of some use.

I think that he's thinking of using what's reffered to here as the 'genefinder' method of sexing - basically just take your plants from 18/6, 20/4 or whatever, put them on 12/12 for 3 days, and then revert to 18/6 or 20/4 - preflowers should show within a week or so.

Quite a few ppl seem to have used it, including some guy from a seedbank who came forth with the idea at first, I think. It's not supposed to stress the plants much, at all, at least from what I can gather.

Look here:

Genefinder method

It is possible to do that but certain strains might hermi under the stress. Just veg them until they show their pre-flowers. Plants vegging with a shorter light time will show their preflowers earlier. I would veg under 18/6 for two to three weeks, then 16/8 for a week and finally 14/10 for until their preflowers show. From my understanding the closer to 12/12 they are the faster they will show their sex. Once they show their sex you can pull the males and flower the females.

I think the biggest problem you may have is the logistics.

Although on paper the Genefinder method works easily - it can be hard if you're growing the plants for your first time. Especially if you're setting up the room and tweaking as you go (which you will do).

What i like to do is grow the seeds, take cuttings and put them in 12/12 as they root. They won't live, but they will express a few flowers before they kark-it.

If you've properly labelled them (bloody pot heads....) then you'll know which donor plant the female cuttings came off and you can discard the rest.

Just try not to make things too complicated if this is your first time, it has a way of biting you in the ass. Or, rewarding you for simplicity.

Keye.

yes that´s exactly what I was thinking...



Yes you´re right... it does sound pretty simple... what are the problems you think I might encounter trying to do this on my first grow??



That´s the first thing I considered doing, but as I said before, at first I´ll have only one growroom so I was looking for a way to be able to sex them earlyer without having to use 2 separated grow spaces...



I´m planning in using skunk #1 in my first attempt.. seems to be a very good variety and they´re cheaper so if I f#ck everything up it won´t be such a lost hehehheh

correct me if I´m wrong...

I first posted this on General Growing Questions on the Problem Solver... And they´ve moved it here to Growroom Design / Design and Location, wouldn´t the general growing questions forum be better for this???

I think they moved it based on the thread title...

No - I think that's a fair description of your query. I think that the 'Problem Solver' is more for ppl having specific problems about one thing or another.

Your query seems to fit it more with 'Design' - doesn't really matter, as ppl will see it, and answer accordingly, regardless of the section it's in.