With the relatively recent developments of feminized and autoflowering seeds, regular seed is getting less attention. However, it shouldn’t be underestimated.
Regular seeds give rise to both male and female plants. It is then the grower’s job to eliminate the male plants and focus on enhancing the female ones.
Breeding
There is a lot to be said for breeding your own plants. It allows you to create cultivars with a variety of characteristics, from extreme potency and flavour to specific colours and morphology. It also gives you the freedom to reproduce the plants that produce the terpenes, highs, and flowers that you love most.
However, it’s important to understand the process of breeding before you attempt it. The first step is to select two plants that are similar in terms of vigour, morphology, and colour. Then, cover the female plant with a bag for around two days. This will prevent pollination and ensure that the seeds produced are 100% female.
Then, you can use the pollen from the male plant to fertilise the female plant. This will produce a new batch of seeds that are ready for cultivation. This method is popular among growers who want to make their own seeds. It is also more reliable than using feminized seeds, which can be prone to hermaphroditism.
Cloning
Seeds are a little bit more challenging to work with because each small package of DNA housed within the plant will feature slightly different genetic traits. This is called phenotype and can affect everything from height to flavour to yield. However, seeds do offer a wide variety of potential strains.
Clones are simply cuttings taken from a mature marijuana plant. They can be purchased from a store or taken from your own garden. They’re ideal for growers who have a favorite strain and want to reproduce it again.
To create clones, select a healthy branch of the parent plant with at least two nodes. Using a razor, cut above the node to ensure that your cutting is sturdy and will grow quickly. It’s important to keep your clones in a controlled environment and provide them with plenty of water. They should be ready to transplant in 3-14 days, and they need a well-developed root system to thrive.
Size
Seeds come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Some seeds are very small, while others are larger and more spherical in shape. These differences are important to understand because they can affect germination and growth potential. Seed size also plays a role in the plant’s ability to disperse.
Seed production varies among species by over ten orders of magnitude. This divergence is far from the equity expected from a size-numbers trade-off. Instead, the fecundity of a species appears to depend on auxiliary costs incurred in seed production.
For example, trees with spherical seeds (eg. Betula and Quercus) have lower SSP than trees with more angular seeds (eg. Cecropia and Miconia). These findings support the hypothesis that auxiliary costs weigh against fecundity.
Price
While feminized seeds tend to cost more than their regular counterparts, you’ll find that they offer a higher return on your investment per harvest. Feminized marijuana plants produce smokable buds and new seeds at an equal rate, which means that you can grow and harvest twice as many smokable plants with a pack of feminized seeds.
Regular seed, on the other hand, require a bit of extra work because you’ll have to manually sex each plant to determine which ones are male. However, this is a relatively simple process that can be done by any home grower with a bit of experience.
If you’re ready to invest in a quality set of regular marijuana seeds, check out the selection at Herbies today. We offer cheap prices, top germination rates and branded gifts with every order. Choose from an expert breeder catalog that includes the likes of Dutch Passion, Dinafem and DNA Genetics. We’re also a one-stop shop for high-quality clones from some of the world’s best strains.
