Month: April 2023

If you’re a gardener, you know that seeds are important for the growth of your plants. In botany, a seed is an undeveloped plant embryo and food reserve enclosed in a protective outer covering.

Most seeds are composed of three parts: the embryo, endosperm, and seed coat. A seed also may have additional parts, such as an aril or raphe (fleshy outgrowths of the funiculus), caruncles or spines, wings, and hairs.

Burpee

Founded in 1876, Burpee Seeds is a leading supplier of vegetable, herb and flower seeds. The company offers a wide selection of vegetable and flower varieties for every growing region.

The company also offers a variety of products related to gardening, including seed-starting supplies, tools, ties, fences, and other garden accessories. They are committed to delivering quality products that will help you get the most out of your gardening efforts.

The seeds produced by the company are guaranteed to perform as advertised, but there is a one-year return policy. Moreover, the company has an excellent seed usage policy that will protect you from any misuse or unauthorized distribution of their product.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

As the weather warms up, gardeners and farmers across the country are prepping their summer crops. Johnny’s Selected Seeds is one of the companies shipping seeds across the country, helping people prepare for a successful harvest.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds is a 100% employee-owned seed producer and merchant based in Winslow, Maine. They provide vegetable, fruit, flower, herb and bulb seed to home gardeners and commercial growers.

A central Maine company that has grown into an international plant breeder and seed retailer, Johnny’s is dedicated to serving families, friends and communities with superior seeds, tools, information and service. Founded in 1973, Johnny’s has three facilities including a research farm in Albion.

Keeping up with the digital innovations that foster its mission of feeding neighbors far and wide, this seed merchant has partnered with Salesforce to create an ecommerce store that delivers the products customers want and helps them find educational content to grow their gardens. After implementing Salesforce’s digital solutions, the company’s gross merchandise value increased 16%.

Baker Creek Seeds

Baker Creek Seeds is one of the largest heirloom seed companies in the world. Its headquarters are located in Mansfield, Missouri, where you can tour a pioneer village and visit the company’s seed store.

The company is owned by Jere Gettle and his wife, Emilee. They are passionate about growing unique seeds and helping those in need.

They have a pool of about 250 independent growers who produce their seeds. They also source from small farmers around the country and from seed collectors from all over the world.

The company offers over 1,000 heirloom vegetable and flower varieties. Their catalog is full of color, glossy photos and vivid descriptions of each variety. It’s a dream for adventurous gardeners looking to try something new in their garden.

Kitazawa Seed Co

There’s an old saying about imprinting history and time on a place: It may be in a tattered family photo album, in the weathered face of an old man, or in the seeds that have been planted in a garden.

In 1917, Gijiu Kitazawa started a seed business from his San Jose home that served Japanese-American farmers throughout the West. But when Americans of Japanese descent were forced to leave their homes in the wake of World War II, Kitazawa’s business shuttered for three years, and he was put in internment camps.

Then, in 2000, a San Francisco woman named Maya Shiroyama, who had never run a seed company, offered to buy it. She took the business into the Internet age, broadened its seed sources and added new varieties to the catalog. The seed packets still have the historic Kitazawa look: manila paper with green line drawings of the enclosed vegetable variety. The Oakland-based company is one of the country’s oldest seed companies specializing in Asian vegetables and continues to serve gardeners throughout America.

Regular cannabis seeds are an old-school favourite for both experienced and new growers alike. They offer untampered, pure genetics formed through breeding both male & female parents.

They’re an ideal choice for first-time or novice botanists, as they are more resilient to stress than feminized seeds. In addition, they’re much cheaper to produce.

Breeding

Breeding cannabis strains is a skill that many growers are keen to learn. It’s a great way to take a unique strain and further stabilise its genetics by crossing it with another strain.

The best regular seeds for breeding are those that have been bred by professional breeders, using top-tier parent genetics. This ensures high germination success rates and healthy plants that meet their quality standards.

While the feminized seeds of the 1990s brought a revolution to weed culture, there are still some people who prefer to breed their own strains with regular seeds. For them, it’s more about expressing their creativity with new genetics than producing instant yields.

To begin, it’s important to choose two strains that you are interested in. This will help you select the right pairings for your first breeding project.

Cloning

Cloning is a process where growers take a cutting from one plant and make an exact genetic copy. This is a great way to duplicate strains with specific colours, flavours, potency or morphology.

The key to a successful clone is taking it from the right mother plant. For best results, choose a female that is healthy and strong.

Using a pair of sharp scissors, cut the stem of your chosen plant at a 45-degree angle below the second or third node. This angle maximizes the rooting surface area and facilitates development.

You can also add a little apple cider vinegar mixed with water to the growing medium to encourage rooting. It is also a good idea to keep your growing medium free of pests and disease.

Once your clone has been cut, rooted and grown in the right environment, it is time to transplant it into a larger grow room or greenhouse. You will want to maintain high humidity levels and a comfortable temperature for the clones to thrive.

Yield

Regular seeds aren’t feminized or auto-flowering, so they produce male and female plants with 50/50 chances. This makes them great for breeding your own strains or creating hybrids with new genetics.

Feminized seeds, on the other hand, are made using at least one hermaphrodite plant as a parent. This gives them a much higher chance of producing hermaphrodites when stress is applied to the plants, such as topping, fimming, or lollypopping.

Aside from being easier to manage, a feminized crop will also typically produce higher yields and better buds. They’re also more reliable and predictable than their non-feminized counterparts, making them a great choice for beginner and expert growers alike.

Breeding your own strains and hybrids is a very rewarding experience. It’s a great way to find specimens that produce the terpenes, high, and flowers you love.

Security

Regular seeds offer several security measures to keep seedbanks, plant breeders, and growers safe. First of all, they provide more stable genetics because they haven’t undergone any genetic modification to make future generations less pure.

The second reason that regular seeds are a good choice is that they offer the opportunity to produce new strains. For breeders, this is a major plus since it allows them to create genetics that are unique, stable and consistent with every generation.

Despite these advantages, however, it is important to note that regular seeds do have a few limitations. For starters, they produce on average half male plants, meaning that you’ll need to weed out these specimens in order to get the yield you want. Also, some regular seeds may be too weak or have poor vigour for their intended purpose. The best way to avoid this problem is to choose quality seeds from reputable seed providers like Herbies.

When you are choosing your weed seeds, it’s important to know the difference between regular seed and feminized seed. Feminized seeds are easier to breed and produce a larger harvest than regular seed.

Despite these benefits, many growers continue to use regular seeds for their indoor growing operations. This is because they are less expensive and they don’t require sexing. They are also more stable than feminized seeds.

They are cheaper

When it comes to buying seeds, there are a few different types of seed. One type is feminized. This is a strain that produces female plants, which ensures a higher overall yield than non-feminized seeds.

However, feminized seeds are more expensive than regular seeds. This is because feminized seeds are more complex to produce and they have a higher likelihood of producing female plants than regular seeds.

Feminized seeds are also more stable, meaning they will produce the same genetics every time you plant them. This makes them ideal for breeding and taking cuttings.

Another type of seed is variety blends, which are often made from surplus alfalfa seed. These can be cheap, but they may contain poor quality alfalfa genetics or varieties that aren’t compatible with modern cultivars.

They are easier to breed

Regular seed allows growers to cross their favourite male and female strains to create new cultivars. By combining the best traits of each species, they can achieve a variety of results, from extremely potent strains to those that produce terpenes and flavours you love.

Moreover, regular seeds are easier to breed than feminized ones because they haven’t undergone genetic tampering that makes them less stable in the long run. They also have a better chance of producing robust descendants and offer better clones than feminized plants.

Feminized seeds, on the other hand, are designed to produce only female plants. They are ideal for commercial growers who want a specific ratio of female to male plants in their crop.

Feminized seeds are more expensive than regular seeds, but they are much more likely to deliver smokable buds. In addition, they are also less likely to attract pests and diseases than regular seeds. This means that growers will spend less time dealing with these issues and will be able to harvest their crop whenever they please.

They are more stable

While feminized seeds are still the most popular among cannabis growers, regular seed is a good choice for a variety of reasons. One is that it allows for more genetic variation and a better chance of discovering new phenotypes.

Another reason is that regular seeds are more stable than feminized seeds. Feminized plants tend to produce half female and half male offspring, making them very difficult to breed and create a robust strain.

For this reason, regular seeds are the best option for breeders and experienced growers looking to create a new strain. They can also be ‘fused’ with other strains to create new hybrids that have strong yields and potency but also maintain the original characteristics of each variety.

This stability is important if you plan on keeping the mother plant for taking cuttings/clones (asexual reproduction). Because the seeds from regular plants have endured essentially no genetic tampering, it’s much more likely that your offspring will be robust and have the desired traits.

They are easier to grow

Regular seeds are more commonly used for home cultivation and are often cheaper than their feminized counterparts. However, they do have a few drawbacks.

They are not as predictable and may produce male plants in addition to female ones, which is something that you’ll have to take care of when growing them.

If you decide to use regular seed, you’ll need to make sure that you weed out the males before they pollinate. This can be a difficult process, but it’s worth it in the long run as it will ensure that your plants will be primarily female and produce a higher-quality crop.

You can also breed your own strains from regular seed, which is an excellent way to create new combinations of traits and terpene profiles. Depending on your growing preferences, you can even experiment with mixing indica and sativa strains to create balanced cultivars.