Feminized cannabis seeds explained
Finding a male plant in your cannabis grow can be a serious blow. For one thing, you probably put in weeks just to get your plant grown to the stage where you could clearly identify the sex. Next, if you are one of the new South African growers that have suddenly found themselves with green fingers, you are probably growing outdoors. Your male plant could potentially pollinate any female plant around your grow, for kilometres. Thus, to avoid heartbreak and pissing off your neighbours, you should get yourself some feminized cannabis seeds.
That’s right, we live in 2020. Feminized cannabis seeds exist and have been engineered because every cannabis grower that has grown with regular seeds will tell you of the disappointment that comes from having to kill off a healthy male cannabis plant.
If you smoke joints, you want the female plant
My dad was under the impression that you smoke the leaves of the cannabis plant. The truth is that what you grind up and roll into your joint is actually the dried flower of the female cannabis plant. The vast majority of cannabinoids (like THC and CBD to name just two) are found on the flowers. Those sticky little crystals that cover your flower is actually sticky to catch the pollen of the male plant floating around on the wind.
If you are growing your own weed for the joints you roll, obviously, you want to grow female plants. Growing a cannabis plant to sexual maturity can take months. When you’ve been growing a plant for three months, it would be nice to know it’s going to be a female rather than a male.
What are feminized cannabis seeds?
Feminized cannabis seeds are seeds that only carry the female genetics of the marijuana plant. It’s really as simple as that. That way you can streamline your grow and ensure that you don’t waste time and nutrients growing male plants.
With feminized cannabis seeds, you will know with almost 100% certainty there will be flowers to harvest if you can grow the plant to maturity. Especially for growers that can only grow one or two plants, or that rely on summertime to grow outdoors, feminized seeds have become an invaluable part of being able to produce cannabis reliably.
How are seeds turned into feminized cannabis seeds?
In the beginning, seed breeders would simply stress a mature and fully female plant into producing seeds. This method worked to an extent, but it isn’t as reliable as one would like. A far more modern and common method in 2020 is to make use of collodial silver or silver thiosulphate solution.
Both substances are actually just water with extremely fine silver particles that gets sprayed onto the female cannabis plant. The silver solution interrupts the ethylene, a hormone involved with the flower production. This leads to the female plant producing male pollen sacks that contain only female genetics. When this pollen is used to pollinate another female cannabis plant, the seeds that are produced are almost 100% certain to carry only female genetics.
Where do I get feminized seeds?
Most reliable cannabis seed banks will sell feminized cannabis seeds. I prefer sites like The Vault who always have great offers, free seed deals and guaranteed worldwide shipping. And for website owners like myself or anyone that has a following on social media, they also have a great affiliate program that will earn you 10% commission on every sale.
Feminized cannabis seeds to try in your garden
These days you can find almost any strain or cultivar has feminized cannabis seeds and since growing cannabis is legal or decriminalized in many parts of the world. Therefore it’s safe to assume that some of you reading this will be interested in trying your hand at growing feminized seeds yourself.
Super Silver Haze is a great outdoor or indoor sativa dominant strain that is commonly bred to produce feminized cannabis seeds. Personally I have a lot of success growing feminized White Widow seeds, and the resulting bud was a sweet-smelling dense head. If you are more inclined towards the indica side of things, then your options are certainly not limited in any way. Trainwreck and Zkittles are both indica dominant strains that have various breeders producing feminized seeds.
For indoor growers that are up for a good low-stress training or scrog challenge, there are strains like Starberry Cough or Cherry Pie that produce fruity-smelling buds. These strains are also happy to be trained to grow in a confined space, and with an even canopy can produce 80-150 grams of dense and seriously frosted buds.
Regardless of what strain you go for, you will be saving yourself a lot of time, effort, money and emotional turmoil by opting to pop some feminized beans rather than regular beans. In 2020, who really has the time to be growing male cannabis plants when you just want to grow enough crop to last you until the next growing season?
