Yo, what’s good? It’s your boy Dan, and today we’re talking about breeding cannabis strains. Now I know what you might be thinking, “breeding? That sounds complicated and expensive.” But hold up, it ain’t as impossible as it might seem. Even novices can get in on the game and start breeding on a smaller scale. Trust me, it’s worth it if you want access to newer hybrids and want to conserve the genetics of your cannabis for future use.
Breeding your own strains can be a fulfilling experience that yields maximum results with minimal effort. You only need to choose the female and male variants you want to cross and follow the necessary steps and tools needed for the process. The impressive thing about breeding is that it only takes two to three weeks for your plants to bloom completely. Plus, once you’ve successfully bred your cannabis strains, you get the great experience of collecting the seeds.
Breeding also gives you the opportunity to customize your strains for optimum benefit. You can produce a variant that may offer you muscle relaxation, aroma, and psychoactivity that are fitting for your desired cannabis effects and palatability. Different strains would offer different benefits to people who use them, so when you create a strain that is up to your standard of both recreational and therapeutic benefits, its genetics may be preserved for more production.
Breeding your personal cannabis strain also saves you further costs from buying clones or seeds. Although it may require some more effort than simply buying from a dispensary or seed bank, it will always boil down to the economic means and expenses in maintaining the crop.
But before you dive headfirst into breeding, there are a few cons to consider as well. People also face a lot of requirements when breeding their cannabis strains such as various growing environments that have specific phases of the life cycle. At times, the strain will demand an environment that has a long day so that the plant develops. And at the same time, it may also require an environment with a shorter day in order to flower and develop Cannabinoids. Moreover, growing marijuana demands following a routine of constantly moving the plants from one environment to another which can be time-consuming and labor-intensive.
One more issue faced by growers is controlling the sex of their cannabis strains. Growing a cannabis plant containing both the female and male sexes, or either of the two is often the case for home growers. However, only the female variety can produce cannabinoids. It carries all of the active ingredients, recreational and medicinal value, and gives the cannabis strain its distinctive smell. What’s more, the female plant can untimely change its sex and develop pollen which can fertilize the flowers in the same area and leave surrounding male plants useless.
Overall, breeding may require more resources on the part of home growers. But, the pros far outweigh the cons. It is still worthy of your time and effort investing in cannabis strains. Provided that breeding is carried out widely and parallelly, better cannabis strains will then be obtained with fewer resources and less effort on your part. That is when breeders could recover more of their investment!
So if you’re ready to take on this challenge, go ahead and start breeding your own cannabis strains! It’s not impossible for novices like us to grow even on a smaller scale!
