Regular seed is a breeding line of Cannabis plants that expresses an equal balance of male and female chromosomes. This type of Cannabis seed provides growers with a versatile tool for experimenting with new strains.
There are several reasons why a grower might choose regular seed over feminized or autoflowering seeds. These include time, space, and cultivation experience.
Breeding
Regular seeds are a good option for beginners and breeders alike. They offer the opportunity to create strains that are unique and specific to your growing experience.
Unlike feminized seeds, regular seed has both male and female DNA. This means that the plants will show sex depending on a number of factors.
If you want to breed regular seed, it is important to select the best specimens from a batch. This will ensure that you have the best genetics for your breeding program.
You will also need to keep track of which plant was used for each germ line cell. This will help you to avoid accidental cross-breeding and produce a more consistent result from your breeding process.
Feminized seeds are a great choice for beginners and commercial growers alike, but they do have some disadvantages. For starters, feminized seeds can produce a lot of offspring, which leads to high genetic variability. This can lead to unanticipated results and may even be less stable than regular seed.
Cloning
Cloning regular seed can be a good way to save money and time. However, clones can introduce pests and disease into your grow room that you would not otherwise have.
Another drawback is that clones lack variety, as the mother plant that produces them is usually limited to one or two strains. This means that the plants produced from clones have a much smaller selection of genetics than those grown from seeds.
This is particularly true if you buy your clones from a dispensary, as the strains they sell may not be the same ones that you’re looking for.
Another downside to cloning is that it may not produce a root system robust enough to transplant into soil. This can make clones take longer to grow than seeds, and you might be disappointed with the final results. Also, clones often have fungicides and pesticides on them that can transfer to your other plants, so be careful about bringing them into your garden.
Pollination
Regular seeds are seed stock produced by the crossing between a male and female cannabis plant. They contain both sex DNA and can be used to produce either 100% female seeds or 50% male plants and 50% females, depending on several factors.
The process of pollination results in hundreds, if not thousands, of regular seeds that will all in turn produce either male or female plants. As a result, it is often necessary to separate males from females in the early flowering stages of growth to prevent the pollinated buds from producing harsh smoke and minimal cannabinoids.
After 4-6 weeks of pollination, you can begin to harvest fully mature seeds from your plants. Mature seeds are darker in colour and sometimes have stripes on their outer shells. If executed correctly, this can be a great way to get your hands on a healthy batch of seeds, regardless of how many colas you choose to pollinate.
Seed Saving
Saving regular seed is a simple and rewarding practice. It can help you avoid seed shortages or other supply chain issues, and it can also build a better-suited stock of plants for your specific garden.
Many types of crops, including beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, self-pollinate and are easy to save. You simply remove dry pods from the plant and allow them to dry for a few weeks before shelling them.
If you are trying to maintain a variety ‘as is’, it may be necessary to save seeds from multiple harvests so that a mix of early- and late-maturing plants is included in the sample.
Hybrids, or plants created by humans deliberately crossing two species to produce a third plant with a random combination of traits from each parent, are not good candidates for seed saving. These seeds denoted on the package as “F1” (short for Filial 1, or the first generation of a plant from two cross-bred parents) will not grow true-to-type, so it is advisable to stick with heirloom or open-pollinated varieties for seed saving.
