Yo, what’s good? My name is Dan, and if you’re new to the ever-growing cannabis scene, listen up. You need to know about feminized seeds and why they’re important. Basically, marijuana plants come in two sexes, male and female. But listen up, the female plants are where it’s at. They grow buds that are essential for smoking.
Seriously though, anyone who’s smoking cannabis should thank the female plants. Unlike the male ones, the female produces the cannabinoid-rich flowers that offer a little bit of everything, from flowers, effects, and THC. It’s the main reason why consumers seek it out.
Feminized seeds carry all-female offspring and can be relied on carrying female-only genes. This means that growers can enjoy all the buds they can get from their female marijuana plants.
Let’s be real here. Male plants are still valuable, but for growers who cultivate for their flowers, it’s almost zero. In calculation, if you want twice as many females, you would have to assume planting twice as much too. By that, it means having to double your expenses. This is not the route growers would want to go through.
So why cultivate feminized cannabis seeds? There are many advantages for growers. By eliminating the speculation of growing regular seeds, feminized seeds modernize the growing process, saving space, time, and overall efficiency.
It’s especially key for individuals who want to cultivate marijuana for medical purposes or just for their hobby. Since most cannabis provision aims to limit the plant cultivation one might produce, growers who cultivate marijuana plants in small clusters for personal use only want to ensure that they’re getting the most out of their harvest.
Male marijuana plants not only take up space in your tiny garden but they can also sap time and resources for growers. This holds true for growers who are on a tight budget. It is best to plant feminized seeds knowing you’ll get the most benefit out of it rather than guessing what the harvest might offer. In this way, budget growers are efficiently saving money and time.
Also, when growing regular seeds it takes longer periods before you can eventually know their sexes. It’s like a guessing game! While some plants may exhibit early signs of their sex before flowering, most marijuana plants start to express their sex when they start developing past their vegetative stage.
So how are cannabis seeds feminized? There are only two ways known to feminize a seed.
One natural method is by stressing out the female plant; by stressing them out, female plants produce male pollen sacs which can self-pollinate themselves! However, this will not guarantee that most plants will turn out to be females. Also, most offspring will turn into “Hermies” or grow both female and male sex organs. It’s not advisable because you may harvest seedy buds that aren’t of high quality. That’s why this method isn’t recommended, especially for beginners.
The second one is through chemical inducing by spraying colloidal silvers to the buds sites for 3-4 weeks after switching to 12/12 light cycles. Colloidal silvers are substances that cause female marijuana plants to produce male pollen sacs. However, this method is very daunting but is successful most of the time. It is also the method used by the most popular seeds of the world.
In case you wonder how strains are made or what a marijuana hybrid or cross is based on its lineage, it all comes down to cannabis breeding.
Breeders breed cannabis plants to further “upgrade” or “enhance” one’s gene such as growth profiles, aroma, taste potency yields and a lot more. When you try to grow or breed seeds it is essential to know where they came from and what parent or lineage they have.
Plant breeding can be done at home or on a bigger scale with the legalization of Marijuana in most countries or states; breeding has become increasingly popular over the years.
To breed cannabis basically involves a male and female marijuana plant ideally with a strong male strain pollinating your females. When males are mature enough they start growing pollen sacs which pollenate female marijuana plants from 20 onwards.
There’s also another way you can help your females be pollinated by carefully harvesting male pollen and directly applying them to the female.
In conclusion, breeding feminized seeds is a worthwhile venture to ensure every seed is a guaranteed female. So what are you waiting for? Time to get them plants busy!