Regular seeds are a great choice for cannabis breeders who want to preserve landrace ancestors. They also offer a 50% chance of emerging as male or female plants, just as nature intended.
This sex balance is a big benefit for breeders who want to create new strains and produce superior clones. However, it does make growing from regular seeds less efficient than feminized ones.
Breeding
Breeding regular seeds is a technique used by many cannabis cultivators to produce superior clones. It also allows growers to select for desirable traits such as taste, aroma, yield, and potency, while weeding out undesirable phenotypes.
First, you need to choose which strains to breed from. This is a critical step in a breeding program, as it ensures that you have an excellent selection of genetics for your project.
Next, you need to cross the male and female plants together. This can be done by hand-pollination or via a backcrossing process.
Once you have two generations grown out, it’s time to start backcrossing the offspring to one of the parent plants in order to maintain the selected trait or traits further down the breeding line. This can help to create the most stable possible genetics, with less and less difference between phenotypes in each generation.
Cloning
If you’ve ever tried cloning regular seeds, you know that a lot of work goes into the process. You don’t want to waste your time with poor results, and you need to ensure your clones will grow into healthy plants that can produce desirable genetics.
The best way to clone regular seeds is from the vegetative stage of a plant. This will give your cuttings the maximum chance of developing roots.
To make your cloning as successful as possible, cut your cuttings about a few millimeters under the lowest node of the branch at a 45-degree angle. This will expose more of the stem’s mass, which makes it easier for roots to form.
Once you have your cuttings, place them in a cloning medium (the choice of which is up to you), along with rooting hormone. This can be a powder, liquid, or gel. Water them slightly until the surface of the medium is moist throughout.
Mother Plants
Mother plants are a key element in any regular seed grower’s crop. They allow growers to create clones that exhibit the same characteristics as their original mother plant, thus guaranteeing future cropping success.
To create clones, growers take cuttings from their mother plant while it is still in the vegetative stage of growth. Because a cutting can be stressful to the plant, it is important to keep them in this vegetative state.
Once the cuttings have matured, growers root them and repot them into new pots. This helps the clones develop their roots while they remain in their mother’s medium, thus maintaining their genetic integrity.
Mother plants can be a bit of work, but their clones are worth it in the end. However, they are not for every home grower. They need a designated grow space, and the plants can often get oversized and overly bushy if not maintained correctly. Also, they can be more susceptible to pests and pathogens than clones.
Seed Saving
Seed saving is a great way to cultivate new varieties in your garden and to preserve heritage plants. It is also a very inexpensive and fun thing to do and can be done any time you wish!
You can save seeds from a wide range of plant types and it is important to select for characteristics such as size, beauty, vigor and disease resistance. This will ensure that these traits are inherited by the next generation of plants.
Using the right methods to separate the seeds from the plants is crucial when saving vegetable seeds. Tomatoes, beans and peas are examples of vegetables that should be allowed to dry completely before saving the seeds from them.
Once dried, the seeds should be stored in a cool, dry place that is not exposed to light. They can be placed in paper envelopes or plastic bags to protect them from moisture and keep them from rotting. Label the seed type and the year to help keep track of your collection.
