Determining Sex

Congratulations on taking the plunge into a wonderful hobby. There is no way a home gardener can tell the gender of a plant until the plant is old enough to start flowering. An auto will usually grow its first "pre flowers" somewhere between 3-6 weeks after germination and a normal photo period dependant strain will usually do so once longer nights and shorter days are started - i.e. moving from 18/6 to 12/12 and this can then take anywhere between 3 days and three weeks. Once your new seeds turn up, get planted and start growing, and you are worried about this plant being 2-3 weeks out of step, you could top this early plant, as this will slow it down for roughly two weeks while the plant recovers from losing its top growth. This will also cause the side branches to become the new growing "tops". By this time the topped plant recovers, your later planted seeds should hopefully be catching up to the same size, height wise, of your topped plant, making for a much more even canopy and a simplified flowering schedule, if all goes well. Hope this helps,.... Organoman.