Regular seed offers a natural growing experience, and provides the opportunity to cultivate both male and female plants. This produces an ideal ratio of 50/50 female and male offspring that can be used for breeding.
This is the preferred option for many growers who want to breed new strains and cultivars at home. It also means you can enjoy a larger harvest thanks to the genetic stability of the plants produced.
Breeding
Many old-school cannabis strains are only available in regular seed form. That is great if you want to keep the line of descent as close to its original form as possible. Breeding regular seeds also gives you the opportunity to create unique crossbreeds that will produce never-before-seen phenotypes.
Feminized seeds, on the other hand, are much easier to manage as they eliminate the chance of male plants ruining a crop. Feminized seeds are created by pollinating a female plant with another hermaphrodite plant, and the result is that the seed will contain only female (XX) chromosomes.
With regular seeds, however, there is always a 50% chance that the seed will grow into either a male or a female plant. This is why it’s important to always buy a larger sample of seeds than the number you plan to grow, so that you have enough to cull any male plants that may emerge. This is especially true if you use stress-inducing techniques like topping, fimming, or lollypopping your plants to encourage more lateral branch growth.
Cloning
A big reason that many growers prefer clones is that they are exact genetic copies of the parent plant and carry over all of its desirable traits, including flavour profile, morphology, yield, etc. They also tend to be stronger and more resilient than seedlings, especially if they are treated with a lot of care and have access to plenty of light.
When taking a clone it is important to only take a branch from a mature, healthy mother plant that has at least two months into its vegetative cycle. This is because a branch taken from a flowering mother plant will attempt to produce flowers and will divert energy away from rooting, making it less likely to be successful.
A clone should be kept in a sterile environment until it has formed roots, at which point you should move it to a tray of nutrient rich soil or coco coir. Ensure that you use gloves and disinfect your razors and scissors when handling the cuttings.
Pollination
Pollination is the first step in producing seeds and fruit. It occurs when pollen from a male plant’s anthers rubs or falls onto a female flower’s stigma, where it sticks and fertilizes the flower’s ovule. This creates fertile flowers and produces seedlings that resemble their parents, including heirloom varieties like tomatoes.
Whether by wind or insect pollinators, plants spread pollen grains from flower to flower. These particles are fine powders that have a golden yellow color, and they can be carried long distances on air currents.
To successfully save heirloom varieties, gardeners must ensure that their plantings are isolated from errant pollen from other gardens and landscape features. Recommended isolation distances range from 10 feet for primarily self-pollinating crops to several miles for cross-pollinating species. The distances reflect how environmental conditions, landscape features, and insect populations affect the way pollen travels. In addition, the size of plantings and the timing of flowering also affect how far a variety’s pollen can travel.
Harvest
As the name suggests, harvest is the gathering of fruit and vegetable crops at their physiological maturity. This is a highly technical process based on a number of different factors, including the length of the growing cycle, the moisture content of the grain and its unique physical characteristics.
The term is also used to refer to the act of selecting and keeping a particular male plant for the purpose of creating new cultivars or breeding. This type of cultivation requires the use of regular seed, which have a 50% chance of emerging as either male or female plants.
Many growers choose to use regular seeds rather than feminized ones, as they allow them to better understand the full cannabis growing cycle and provide superior clones. To identify whether a packet of seeds is regular or feminized, look for two letters stamped on either side of the seed and a three-digit number. Regular seeds are less expensive than feminized ones, but both types of seeds have their uses.
