When choosing the ideal regular seed or hybrid strains for your next indoor grow, determining whether to grow regular or feminized seeds is certainly a very important step. Regular seeds are easier to cultivate, and they tend to produce much better results when they are planted. Hybrid cannabis seeds, on the other hand, are generally a lot harder to grow but yield a very nice amount of high quality cannabis. So which is better? Which are the keys to indoor gardening success in today’s world?
Regular seed vs. feminized seeds: This really comes down to two factors – your genetics and how you care for the plants you grow. Regular seeds tend to be much easier to maintain and are often easier on the plant than feminized seeds. Regular seeds are also generally more adaptable to different kinds of growing environments, so if you’re planning on growing outdoors, you’ll likely find a regular seed that will do just fine. On the other hand, if you want to grow indoors (without the risk of becoming ill from exposure to harmful contaminants) you’re going to want to stick with feminized seeds.
Here’s why feminization is the key to indoor growing: regular cannabis seeds don’t have their own unique DNA built in. All seeds have an inherited set of genes that tell them what to do, and which parts of the plant to grow. While this sounds good in theory, it doesn’t always happen that way. For instance, some plants just aren’t naturally inclined to grow well as indoor plants, meaning that if you buy a feminized variety, you could end up with a plant that’s going to grow poorly indoors.
The reason that feminized seeds are so successful is because they have been specifically tampered with in order to make them start to grow differently. When you buy a seed, it’s possible that the retailer may tamper with it in one way or another to “increase its chances of becoming a female.” This means that the seeds will contain more females than males – and vice versa. In fact, some retailers will even go so far as to say that the seeds are “identical” when it comes to gender. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the practice of breeding plants to make them produce more females, it’s important that you’re only buying a product that was altered in this way.
Some seeds will contain a small amount of “active ingredient,” but most of them will be completely inactive during flowering. They’ll contain something like diosgenin, which has been shown to help regulate the sex of a plant. That means that the plant will start to flower much earlier and sooner, allowing it to mature much more fully and produce large blooms. This is ideal for indoor gardeners who want plants that come up ready to flower, without the fuss and mess of waiting for a flowering plant to come up and begin to produce flowers. It’s also a great option for anyone who doesn’t have the time or patience to wait for a flowering plant to bloom.
Other feminized seed varieties have been developed by hybridizers and farmers who’ve found that they can get other traits from native plants that will make their plants more attractive to consumers. For instance, some feminized varieties will produce more fruit in certain conditions. Others will have greater resistance to insects and disease. And some varieties are just naturally more resistant to heat and other environmental stresses, making them more appealing for growing near outdoor gardeners.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with using feminized cannabis seeds. In fact, many experts agree that it can help plants produce larger and higher-quality blooms. The only problem is that some female plants will still choose to be male instead of female when it’s time for flowering. If that happens, then you’ve got a problem. The growers haven’t yet figured out how to deal with these feminization problems.
It may not be too difficult to figure out how to deal with these problems once the growers figure out how to feminize seeds. Until then, don’t assume that just because a plant is being advertised as “regular” or “female” that it actually is either. Some producers claim that they market cannabis plants as “genetically altered” even though the term refers only to the way that the plants’ DNA has been altered to make them appear like a feminized seed.
