Month: August 2023

Growing a great crop requires planning and proper preparation. Choosing what seed type to grow is a crucial decision for home cultivators.

While feminized seeds guarantee only female plants, regular seeds have a 50% chance of producing male and female cannabis plants. This is ideal for breeders who want to create new strains as male plants produce pollen to fertilize female flowers.

Genetics

Regular seed is preferred by gardeners that enjoy the process of breeding their own strains. These growers will use male plants to pollinate female plants to create hermaphrodite seeds that can then be used to produce more of their favourite strains.

Since feminized seeds have been subjected to genetic tampering, they can become less stable over time. This can lead to a number of issues that aren’t always good for the plant. With regular seed, however, this isn’t a problem because the seeds will behave as nature intended and have a 50% chance of producing a male or female plant.

The genetics that come from regular seed are also more diverse, which can be beneficial for breeders looking to create new strains. This can help them find the right combination of genetic traits to create the ideal strain. Cloning can also be easier with regular seed because it will work better in comparison to feminized seeds, which tend to cause more stress throughout the growing process.

Price

With a little effort, growers can easily cultivate regular plants that produce quality buds. This type of cannabis requires the same best practices as other strains and will thrive when provided with adequate light, soil, and water.

SSSC’s regular photoperiod seeds are produced by expert breeders and contain pure genetics that are not feminized or hybridised. This ensures a 50/50 split of male and female plants that are ready for cultivation.

Growers can choose from a range of high-quality regular cannabis seeds, including popular varieties like Amnesia Lemon and Harlequin x Bubba Kush. These strains offer the potency, rich terpene profiles and outstanding yields that growers are looking for. Using regular marijuana seeds also allows for breeding, allowing for the development of new phenotypes and cultivars that may not be available as feminized or autoflowering strains. This can be a great choice for experienced cultivators who want to create their own signature strains. These new phenotypes can be used for medicinal or recreational purposes.

Availability

Regular seeds preserve the genetic stability of the parent plants, offering a wide range of cultivars with diverse phenotypes that cannot be found in feminized strains. This genetic variation is especially useful for breeders as it allows them to create new strains with desirable traits.

The Herbies Seeds collection includes a diverse selection of regular cannabis seeds for experienced growers. Choose from top breeders like Dutch Passion, Dinafem, and DNA Genetics. Our seeds feature an array of flavors, aromas, and effects that appeal to the most discerning smoker.

Some of our most popular options include Chemdawg regular, a legendary cultivar praised for its robust growth and potent effects. Or, try Tropic Thunder regular for a mellow indica experience with fruity notes that taste like a cocktail at sunset. As with all cannabis, it is important to maintain the proper cultivation environment for these varieties. Choosing the right temperature, humidity, lighting schedule, and airflow will ensure maximum yields and quality buds.

Growing

Regular seed plants require sexing to identify and remove male plants before they pollinate the females. This process takes time and energy, but it ensures that growers get a harvest of only high-quality buds. It also helps avoid the waste of growing medium, nutrients, and light that comes with male plants.

Regular seeds also offer genetic stability, which is ideal for breeding and creating new strains. They also allow for phenotype variation, which are the different expressions of the genetic strain’s characteristics.

When grown properly, regular seeds can produce a high-quality harvest with exceptional flavor, aroma, and effect. However, they can be more difficult to cultivate than feminized seeds. They need to be sexed carefully to prevent hermaphrodite plants from pollinating the females, and they need to be kept in optimum environmental conditions. This can make them a risky choice for novice growers. However, experienced growers can minimize these risks by sexing their plants regularly and using the best cultivation techniques possible.

Regular seeds produce both male and female plants, so it is important to identify them early and remove any that are males. This is a more difficult task than with feminized seeds and can result in a smaller harvest if not managed properly.

Choosing between feminized and regular seeds depends on your cultivation needs, experience level and purpose. We’ll explore the benefits of both so that you can make an informed decision.

Stable Genetics

When you cross two different varieties of the same plant, the seeds will produce plants that combine the best characteristics of their parents. These plants are known as hybrids and are often referred to as F1 hybrids. Hybrids were developed to meet specific garden challenges like surviving shipping and disease-resistance, but they can also offer consistency in size and shape and higher yields.

Breeders will stabilize a strain over several generations to ensure that the next batch of seeds will grow the same as the last. To do this, they must select healthy mother plants and mate them to create hybrid offspring. Then, they must repeat this process to produce a stable parent line. This takes time and patience, but it can save growers a lot of grief in the long run. Stabilized seeds will also produce a much larger harvest of female flowers when you take cuttings or clones from them. This is a big advantage over feminized seeds, which can have a low success rate when taken from bag seeds or “special cuts.” The health of the maintenanced mother plant can play a major role in how stable or unstable the next batch will be.

Breeding

For growers who prefer to focus on yield rather than breeding, feminized seeds are an excellent option. Feminized seeds produce only female plants so growers don’t have to worry about identifying and removing male plants in the pre-flowering phase. Feminized seeds also have a lower risk of going hermaphrodite as the result of stress-inducing techniques like topping, fimming, lollypopping, or defoliation.

However, regular seeds offer a higher genetic diversity and are the ideal choice for breeders who want to create new strains from scratch. These seeds are photoperiod, so they require a change in the light cycle to initiate flowering. Regular seed is also preferred by growers who enjoy making their own marijuana seeds from male plants that can be separated from the females and pollinated with the harvested pollen. This process is called crossbreeding and is an essential part of creating new strains from scratch. This is especially useful for cannabis growers who want to customize the terpenes, high, and flowering speed of their favorite strains.

Genetic Variation

Genetic variation is an important factor for breeders. As each plant produces both male and female plants, regular seeds contain a mixture of genetics that can be used for breeding purposes. These genes can also provide growers with an opportunity to cross their favorite strains and create new varieties of marijuana.

A gene is a sequence of DNA that codes for certain traits. Each gene can present two alleles, which are variant forms of a particular trait. Different alleles can result in the same physical trait, but they may be expressed differently depending on environmental factors.

Seeds from regular cannabis plants are able to reproduce and produce male plants, which can be used to pollinate the female plants. This allows growers to cultivate their own seeds, which can be more affordable than purchasing feminized seeds. Regular seeds can also give growers a wider range of genetics, making them ideal for growing multiple varieties of marijuana.

Price

Regular seeds are a staple for breeders who love exploring the different traits of their favorite strains. They are the best choice for experimenting with hybrids as they allow you to create male and female plants, which is essential for breeding.

Our Moby Dick regular seeds come from the infamous White Widow and Haze parent, displaying the most desirable traits of each. This colossal marijuana hybrid reaches heights of up to 11.5 feet and produces massive yields. The potency of this weed is legendary, providing an intense cerebral experience that boosts your creativity and productivity. Its euphoric touch gradually fades into a relaxing body buzz, letting you unwind and rest.

This strain is a great option for intermediate growers and up. Moby Dick reg seeds are resilient and fairly easy to cultivate. However, sexing your crop is a must to avoid unwanted cross-pollination.

For breeders seeking genetic stability regular seeds are the way to go. They are also essential for growers wishing to create their own clones.

Unlike feminized seed, regular seeds produce male and female plants. This means growers must pay attention to sexing, pulling out the male plants before they pollinate their crop.

Stable Genetics

Stable genetics are an essential trait for cannabis plants. Breeders must stabilise a strain over several generations by selecting healthy mothers and fathers, cross-pollinating them, and then evaluating the offspring to identify desirable traits. This process requires a significant amount of time, and it is often difficult for cultivators to justify investments in long-term breeding programs.

Seeds from stable parents can be used to produce clones that are identical in size and yield, and they can then be planted again to create new seeds. This is how a strain becomes a cultivar that can be sold to customers, and it is one of the reasons we think agtech companies specializing in plant trait development are compelling investment opportunities.

Feminized seeds, on the other hand, are not stable. They have been genetically tampered with to ensure that each seed produces a female plant, but they are not as robust as regular seeds. As a result, they do not grow as well or produce as much.

Breeding

Unlike feminized seeds, regular seed will always contain a small percentage of male plants. This means that growers don’t have to worry about sifting out male plants in the pre-flowering stage and that they can focus all of their water and nutrients on their females.

Because of this, regular seeds can offer breeders a wider genetic diversity. This allows them to highlight specific traits in particular strains and create new phenotypes. However, this does require a significant amount of cultivation experience and time.

Some of Royal Queen Seeds’ best regular strains include Critical, a hardy and easy-to-grow cultivar that produces high yields in ten weeks. There’s also Bruce Banner, which is a superhero in every sense of the word and can yield large crops with THC levels up to 29%. It is also available in feminized form, if that’s your preference.

Genetic Diversity

In plant conservation and restoration, maximising genetic diversity in seed collections is an important goal. Achieving this requires collecting seeds from a wide range of populations to capture variation within the species – and variations among populations (e.g., patterns of population structure).

In both Centaurea and Betonica, pairwise genetic diversity analyses separated conventional seeds without certified origin from the main cluster of natural populations – but they also strongly overlapped with regional seeds and some of the restored populations (see Figure 3).

However, it is not clear whether this is due to adaptation to different disturbance regimes or to differences in seed-collecting strategies. Further investigation is needed to understand these relationships and develop best practice guidelines for ensuring that native seed collections adequately represent the genetic diversity of standing populations. Generally speaking, a high level of genetic diversity in seeds should be possible even with small sampling sizes. Achieving this will require a combination of methods including random sampling, population structure balancing, and using multiple collection sites.

Sexing

Regular seeds do not produce hermaphrodite plants by default and this is a big plus for many growers. Male cannabis plants are a nuisance to any sensimilla grower or seed breeder as they pollinate the female plants which can result in a lower yield than expected. It can also waste a lot of time and growing medium when trying to sex them.

Determining sex early on in a young plant can be difficult, as it depends on the strain and how rapidly it grows. However, most strains do have a small flower that shows in the vegetative stage that indicates if it is a male or female.

Feminized seeds eliminate the need for growers to sex their plants early on and this can save a lot of time, space and resources in a cultivation environment. It can also allow for faster and more consistent results in terms of harvest. There are also many traditional landrace genetics that have not been feminized and these are worth considering when working with seed.