Topping Cannabis Plants Gone Wrong, and Removing a Male

Removing a Male Tahoe OG, and Can Topping Cannabis Plants be Problematic?

In this post I want to talk a bit about how not to top an outdoor cannabis plant, and to tell about an extra male plant I decided to cull.

I have topped alot of cannabis plants in my day…I like super-cropping more, but sometimes topping is the way to go. The plants for this supersoil hugelkultur grow were getting tall in the two months I grew them indoors before putting them out.

You can read about that and more in the many articles I have written about this grow here…2026 Stony Oasis Farms Projects.

So I topped them just once so they would slow down vertical growth, and not be a problem transporting them to Stony Oasis. But, topping them just once (which is something I have never done before) was a mistake.

When you top just once your are making the plant have just two main branches, and since they were just two feet tall, these two main branches are only 2 feet from the base of the plant. This actually ended up weakening the entire plants structure…especially when those two main branches become big and heavy.

You can see in the image of the male I culled on the right how the main step slit about 2 feet up from the ground causing a knuckle…which ends up being a weak link in the plants structure.

Culling an Unwanted Male Cannabis Plant

This grow has been a bit weird in a few ways. I sprouted the plants on about March 1st, then grew them indoors for about 2 months waiting for the spring weather to break, and no more frost likley. I took the plants up to Stony Oasis, and planted them in the hugelkultur bed. Then up there in the mountains spring did not really arrive for another month, and the plants just sat there, not growing and being eaten on my squirrels.

Finally spring sprung and they began to grow, as the summer progressed I could see they were very well fed by the super soil…no additional fertilization needed! I generally feed hungry plants when I water them…these plants said no mas…they need no more food.

Once they got old enough to begin to show sex I realized I had 3 males…I look at what strains they are and as weird as this is they were all a strain I carry called BadAss BB’s….all 3? And I had no female BadAss BB’s. From the looks of the preflowers all the other 12 plants were female…the chance of this happening was not great at all. Pretty weird.

But, as can happen one other plant turned male as well a Tahoe OG. Since I had already decided to go with the BadAss BB’s male…or I should say all 3 BadAss males…I decided to cull the Tahoe OG male.

And, there he is on the right.

Culling males is a very easy thing to do and the plants always give you a week or two to figure it out. I usually wait till they are going into full bloom, but no flowers have opened yet to release their pollen. I have seen plants show maleness in preflower, but then turn 100% female. I have also seen female preflowers, then the plant turns 100% male…so preflowers are a suggestion of sex, but not entirely reliable. But, once the plant begins to fully produce unopened flowers, and they are male…it is time to cull if you do not want him.