It happens.

It's honestly impossible to rule out environment or nutes unless you do several runs with the plant.

Unfortunately this rarely, if ever, happens because people don't want to waste time on something that could potentially hermie on them over and over.

FWIW I don't blame you--but its impossible to break down or rule out underlying biological interactions with your environment (especially with your nutrient regimen) sans multiple runs and scientific control of variables.

By all means, no one should expect you to do that for everyone else's benefit--as it could very well end up being the strain (and there's at least a 50% chance it is).

With stuff like this its often a rock and a hard place. Thanks for the report in any case.

My ewoke Hermes bad. Lad was fine. Alien hallutionation was the first true herm I've ever seen!

I have pictures in my light dept thread.

Aliens take over light dep

It honestly does help, guys, if you let everyone know more specifically what your environment was like--ESPECIALLY your nute regimen.

Hi Squiggly I am trying to understand what you are saying but given I run a pretty generic feed regimen which I use across all my girls surely it can't be that vastly different or are we talking ml's in difference between hermie and non-hermie? I am the first to pick at my own grow (and have been hitting my head against the wall as to what went wrong) as its the only way to get better but I just can't see how there was any feed issues :/ surely I would have noticed something aside from hermie plants in week 1 and a seeded girl in week 4
I've run this feed for heaps of grows and never had issues or seen problems like this before. All of my LADs were beautiful, strong and healthy before they got chopped

Even if it was something up with my feed regimen it couldn't have been much wrong at all... I mean its basically just base nutes, carbs and beneficial bacteria.. all of which has never created herms only help grow strong beautiful plants, (roots excellurator is worth its weight in gold and they charge as much for it).

I have another 10 pack of LAD but obviously now I am super skeptical and probably wont pop them given these results... honestly if a strain is that picky it herms over my grow environment/conditions (which I like to think are pretty dialed down) its probably not worth growing. just cant see what I should change in the feed to get different results... underfeed? try to overfeed? doesn't really make much sense to me

ah OK well my flower feed regimen usually follows this:

PH 5.8
2.5-3ml / ltr A and B house & garden base coco nutes ~ 1.7-1.9 EC
2ml / ltr floralicious
1.5ml / ltr multizyme
.4ml / ltr roots excellurator tho probably only used first week of flower
~1ml / ltr DM silica

rb420det said:

Hi Squiggly I am trying to understand what you are saying but given I run a pretty generic feed regimen which I use across all my girls surely it can't be that vastly different or are we talking ml's in difference between hermie and non-hermie?

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The problem is that it's not possible to know the answer to that from a scientific standpoint. From a cost/benefit standpoint it certainly makes sense for you to cull them most likely--but from the standpoint of making an absolute statement about the genetics, that is hard to do without multiple runs unfortunately.

I am the first to pick at my own grow (and have been hitting my head against the wall as to what went wrong) as its the only way to get better but I just can't see how there was any feed issues :/ surely I would have noticed something aside from hermie plants in week 1 and a seeded girl in week 4
I've run this feed for heaps of grows and never had issues or seen problems like this before. All of my LADs were beautiful, strong and healthy before they got chopped

Even if it was something up with my feed regimen it couldn't have been much wrong at all... I mean its basically just base nutes, carbs and beneficial bacteria.. all of which has never created herms only help grow strong beautiful plants, (roots excellurator is worth its weight in gold and they charge as much for it).

Click to expand...

It could be down to something as simple as one additive that this particular strain did not like. Gene expression (which controls hermaphroditic response) is EXTREMELY complex and nuanced. That's what makes it so hard to say anything about a strain/pheno definitively until it's been run several times.

I have another 10 pack of LAD but obviously now I am super skeptical and probably wont pop them given these results... honestly if a strain is that picky it herms over my grow environment/conditions (which I like to think are pretty dialed down) its probably not worth growing. just cant see what I should change in the feed to get different results... underfeed? try to overfeed? doesn't really make much sense to me

Click to expand...

I'd give em a shot with an entirely different nutrient line. I might even try a different light.

The list of things that could've gone wrong is extremely large. Too much light, too little light, root bound, temp it didn't like, lack of pH drift (over control of pH), hell even your barometric pressure could've caused the issue. As I said gene expression is incredibly sensitive.

It's really hard to put a finger on without some type of control on variables. That's what makes this crap so difficult and why discussion of hermies on internet boards and in colloquial conversation among even the most experienced growers tends to be nothing but a giant circle jerk.

FWIW I've seen a ton of dudes run LAD successfully on these boards.

I'm not trying to discount your claim at all, let me be clear on that. I think we all appreciate you sharing--just trying to be realistic about this type of thing because I'm tired of people missing out on the nuance of what can cause a hermie.

The answer is anything can. Without scientific precision its not possible to prove this type of thing--however, on a personal experience level as you suggest it's often not worth it to roll the dice.

As I said, a catch 22.

rb420det said:

ah OK well my flower feed regimen usually follows this:

PH 5.8
2.5-3ml / ltr A and B house & garden base coco nutes ~ 1.7-1.9 EC
2ml / ltr floralicious
1.5ml / ltr multizyme
.4ml / ltr roots excellurator tho probably only used first week of flower
~1ml / ltr DM silica

Click to expand...

wowowowowowowowowowwowowowowowowwowowow. try about half that next time. my plants are 3x the size of the girls you posted on tsd and i dont go over 1.0EC very often with Canna nutes.

Aliens strains come from a grower and breeder who is at the top of his game. look at his pictures, the man kills it grow after grow. the parents of his beans are accustomed to a perfect environment, a powerful but gentle organic feed schedule, and are able to stretch their legs in spacious beds. they dont like being rootbound and definitely do not enjoy being overfed with chemical ferts.

Thanks for explaining I understand now. Its a shame but I guess that could be quite likely considering I got all LAD herms pretty much. Maybe I will run it another time when I can setup a separate tent and try a super basic setup and feed regimen see what happens. For now and any time soon though it has no place in my garden unfortunately :( very disappointed

1 EC? that doesnt sound right to me... would be about ~500ppm depending on your meter / conversion?

thanks for chipping in but I have run this feed for years, with same results time and time again. not once had issues with it... though I guess I'm open to ideas at this stage regarding LAD.... recommended PPM anyone?

btw the pics you saw of plants (plural) on TSD is the sin city mix pack, not LAD. My LAD were about 4-5x the size of those when they were chopped, and also I scale my feed up to that point so start of flower its lower.

to each their own, but you are the one with rampant herms, and im the one that dropped just under 1gpw of extremely dank herm-free LAD from a pheno hunt rocking no more than 1EC with nutes and media very similar to your own...

KennyPowers said:

wowowowowowowowowowwowowowowowowwowowow. try about half that next time. my plants are 3x the size of the girls you posted on tsd and i dont go over 1.0EC very often with Canna nutes.

Aliens strains come from a grower and breeder who is at the top of his game. look at his pictures, the man kills it grow after grow. the parents of his beans are accustomed to a perfect environment, a powerful but gentle organic feed schedule, and are able to stretch their legs in spacious beds. they dont like being rootbound and definitely do not enjoy being overfed with chemical ferts.

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Great Post Kenny!:)

Not trying to make this a pissing contest mate, like I said I am open to suggestions... The only time I have grown @ 1EC I had underfeed issues but that was in a pure hydro system. Also LAD is the first strain I have had rampant herm issues with... have put many many grows through the same setup and yielded / produced perfectly.

1EC works out to about .5-.7ml of nutes per litre I have no idea how you yielded just under 1gpw unless you are stacking on bulk add's and CO2... would love to see your journal if you have one?

im not either, just tryin to let ya know im not pissing up a tree here. less is more, trust me. try it. you and your plants will be happier. look up DWDs posts about stopping chronic overfeeding. and my journal is right in my sig bro...the one with the LAD and everything..

but according to you..

2.5-3ml /ltr A and B house & garden base coco nutes ~ 1.7-1.9 EC

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so im not sure how you would need to go down to .5ml/L to get to 1.0EC...that seems like kinda an extreme comment doesnt it.

2.5-3ml/L is about 10-12ml/gal. i feed 6-8ml/gal with canna.

oh maybe I should have put that at the bottom, I actually meant total EC = ~1.7-1.9 not just base nutes.... so thats including DM silica, floralicious and multizyme which ups it a bit but within acceptable range imo. Sounds like the feed you mentioned wouldn't be that much lower than mine, it's closer to 9-11ml / gal - also like I mentioned the feed was lower during veg and early flower so I probably would have been around that mark anyway, upping to 2.5-3 around week 2 flower

He posted an honest take. Not everyone had great results with these genetics and not every seed was "FIRE".

Why is it that time and time again the great plants are credit to the breeder but the poor results are blamed on the grower not following a specific nute regime or possessing some other inconsistency/inadequacy??

thanks for sharing, rb.

sky high said:

He posted an honest take. Not everyone had great results with these genetics and not every seed was "FIRE".

Why is it that time and time again the great plants are credit to the breeder but the poor results are blamed on the grower not following a specific nute regime or possessing some other inconsistency/inadequacy??

thanks for sharing, rb.

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I definitely want to be clear that this wasn't the point of my post--I thought I was pretty straightforward about that.

I thanked, and continue to thank, him for sharing as well.

It was my intention to point out the difficulty with stuff like this in terms of ruling out beyond any shadow of a doubt that the environment played a part.

When it comes to hermies it is almost ubiquitously the case that environment plays a role. This is the nature of gene expression and hermaphroditism. Mutagenic hermaphrodites are among the rarest of all genotypic expressions in the tree of life--which flies in the face of what most cannabis growers believe when it comes to this issue.

Let's say there is a "female" phenotype that throws anthers in 95% of people's environment.

I can all but guarantee you that there are a set of circumstances under which the plant can be coaxed into avoiding the herm. Botanists do exactly this type of thing routinely in both directions.

This experience is what it is, no one is denying that. However saying "I had this experience" is very very different from saying "It could not have been my environment" from the standpoint of reality.

Biology is pretty complex, and gene expression within that field of study is one of the MOST complex areas--so you can see where this situation can get sticky, and fast.

The point of my post was to say--hey this is helpful and I'm glad you shared, but let's call a duck a duck and not a gorilla (because a duck is not a gorilla).

There are things we can say for sure and things we can't say for sure.

For instance:

1. If you jump in a pool, you will get wet.

2. If you stand directly under a falling object--the object will hit you.

These are both things we are sure of.

In this particular instance we cannot be sure that even these specific phenotypes will throw anthers. We have some indication that they are prone to hermie under this specific set of conditions and that is GOOD information that I'm sure many will be quite happy to have it.


The comparison of EC (though this is out of my comfort zone, since I grow in organic soil) is EXACTLY the kind of thing you expect to see in a scientific botanical study of something like this.
My only intention was to point that out. In the world of botany, determining something like this for sure requires multiple runs--and more often than not (read: virtually every time) you'll find that there are exceptions (such as running a lower EC).

I don't blame the grower, the plants obviously don't work for him in his system. If he's unwilling to try things a different way then those phenos probably will hermie every single time.

I just get tired of hearing this same old song and dance with hermies every single time. It turns into, as I said, a big circle jerk--and the whole thing pays no attention to decades of science which tells us how we can (and more importantly in this case cannot) be sure about such things. Its not a reprimand on the OP, it's information for him. It happens to be correct information.

That's something I feel people should have--so that we DON'T end up in unjustifiable pissing matches.


If we were totally in the dark on the science governing hermaphroditism you wouldn't see me saying a word--but the fact is that we are not, and so we do not have to operate in the dark or on assumption. We know that gene expression generally controls this at a very basic level when mutated gametes are not to blame (which are EXCEEEEEEEEDINGLY RARE as I said previously--far too rare to account for all the reported cases of hermaphroditism).

What this means, in laymen terms--is that 99.99999% of the time it in fact is the grower. It's just that with our "standard growing practices" (that the plant didn't take part in planning and doesn't give a flying fuck about) sometimes don't line up with what a particular plant needs to stay female.

A great example of this in humans: There is a disease which basically presents as a high tolerance for testosterone (and I believe there is an equal/opposite condition for estrogen tolerance). The person ends up looking female outwardly but has the genetic makeup of a man. In cases where this is caught in utero the fetus may be treated with excess testosterone and the fetus develops normally (and the person requires hormone therapy for life to avoid consequences similar to female sex change hormone therapy).

This is NOT always a genetic disorder, and it is never a zygotic or gametic disorder. It can be chemically mediated, and can be (surprise surprise) mediated by gene expression--and that sounds a lot like a plant that we all know and love from an applicatory standpoint.

For a plant this might mean the phenotype is undesirable from a commercial standpoint, but it certainly doesn't mean that it is the plant's fault. If we go back to the human case--of course getting hormone therapy isn't ideal, and there are similar comparisons in all likelihood for cannabis hermaphrodites that make them equally undesirable (especially commercially).

However, it does not always boil down to genetics--even in these instances.

If plants could talk we'd be on better footing here, hell maybe this plant would say, "lower that EC--you're turning me into a boy." We can't know unless we run the pheno multiple times. That's how it works in the real world.


All that said, this is still a worthwhile report--and its helpful information. There is nothing wrong with the OP's statement whatsoever, even if his understanding of hermaphroditism isn't perfect (when it comes to cannabis, none of our various conceptualizations are).

In humans, all of the instructions necessary to build the proteins we need to be EITHER female or male are located on the X chromosome. The Y chromosome simply flips a switch that tells these genes to turn on the male parts.

In essence a woman's body already knows how to be a male--they are only missing the switch. Sometimes the switch gets flipped anyway and we get a hermaphrodite. This can happen chemically or sometimes we even force it to happen with gene therapy (though our testis formation is very different from plants anther formation so once the opportunity has passed, it is gone forever).

The same is true for a male, your body knows how to be a female--and sometimes the switch fails to flip and we end up with a hermaphrodite. Again this can be chemical (environment) or we can force it with hormone, or in the case of males, gene therapy.

What you'll notice is that none of these require a mutation or a gametic event. They can just happen sometimes.

Its the same in just about every single branch of the tree of life--including dioecious dicots (cannabis).

I feed 900 ppm. My secret...

I mostly use organic brewed teas drain to waist I mainly grow sour d. I also have more then a few other genetics going form awhile..: its the genetics..

sky high said:

Why is it that time and time again the great plants are credit to the breeder but the poor results are blamed on the grower not following a specific nute regime or possessing some other inconsistency/inadequacy??

Click to expand...

the fact that every single bean hermed for him and none hermed for me (or many others) is a red flag in my mind. really points to a situational problem over a genetic problem, so I'm not sure how its fair to blame the breeder for that. these are pro genetics for pro growers.

when i ran alot of subcool gear i would see a late term nanner here and there on the strains most folks would also have that problem with, and not on those that folks generally regarded as stable. it was pretty rare to be caught off guard by the herm tendencies so id think if LAD was "hermie prone", alot more people would be plucking nanners from their girls. i did not pluck 1 single nanner from my LAD phenos. and thats not true for the tres stardawgs that partied alongside..

there are 100s of beans of LAD popped and journaled on these boards, a good number of starfighter beans, and now even some f2s of the starfighters. if LAD was truly "hermie prone" as the title suggests dont you think we would see more than 2 or 3 threads about it??

she was by far the easiest strain i grew this last round, and since there is clearly such a large difference in my and the OPs feed schedules dont you think that merits some thought over just jumping on the breeder??